We Will Never Forget & Gabriella's Flag

This weekend's letterboxing adventure took us to Eagle Rock Avenue. Originally we set out to find three letterboxes - two in West Orange and one in Roseland. However, the park in Roseland where the third one was located was closed by the time we got there.

The two in West Orange were both conveniently located at a park called Eagle Rock Reservation. This park has a really nice 9/11 memorial because it offers a fantastic view of the NYC skyline. We've been to this park several times, so I supposed that's why it didn't occur to me to take a picture of the skyline or the memorial. And going through all of the photos I've taken since we moved to New Jersey, it appears I've never taken a photo of the memorial and skyline before, either. Oh well. Instead here's a big tree stump with me standing on top of it. Apparently the tree was cut down because it was not doing well - the inside of the trunk was all hollowed out.

The first stamp we found is called We Will Never Forget. It's located near the southern wall f the memorial, and was very easy to find. So easy that I forgot to take pictures. Unfortunately the box was waterlogged - while we were able to stamp our books with the letterbox's stamp, we were unable to leave our stamps in the letterbox's book because it was so wet. Which reminds me that I need to contact the placer of this box and let her know that it is in poor condition.

The second box was also an easy find, but required a little more work on our part as it was hidden about a quarter of a mile into the woods. This box is named Gabriella's Flag. Gabriella is the little girl statue that is part of the 9/11 memorial.



Gabriella's Flag was placed back in 2004, so its book has many stamps in it. Ours are the first ones of 2007, however. In flipping through the pages, Kenji discovered a nice Totoro stamp, which, of course, is super-cute. :)



As I mentioned earlier, we had set out to find three letterboxes today, but the third one was off-limits to us because the park where it hides, the Essex County Environmental Center, was already closed. But that was okay with us because it was getting nigh supper time and we were hungry. Turns out we weren't the only hungry ones though... Looks like we caught Punxsutawney Phil's cousin getting his share of greens in this evening.