Brummelbear's Letterbox - the Big Day!

It's finally here!

Sunny skies greeted us on Saturday as we gathered in Royal Oak to celebrate Brummelbear! It's like he was smiling down on us as 70+ friends gathered at First Presbyterian. 

First we setup his Letterbox containers - 23 cachers went home with a complete kit including stamp, ink, logbook, golf pencils, trademark Brummelbear pencil sharpeners and swag. Will they take the 1-year Brummelbear challenge? We already heard that 1 has been hidden/submitted and two are in the works!

The other side of the awesome fireplace (why didn't I take pictures of the fireplace?!?!) were the raffle prizes! Stamp journal & ink pads, rubber stamp-making kit, Tiger goods, rooster steampunk geocoin, and...

Michigan State Park guides and stickers! We have the geotour coming this summer!

So much fun! We had lines of people even before the event began - LINES OF FRIENDS joining us for fun, and TaGeez checked them all in!

Look at our cool logbook! It's a letterboxing event so, anyone who checked in with a stamp received an extra raffle ticket! Quite a few of them are home made! And we had an event stamp for their books, too!

And for the first 48 through the door (we had over 70!), we gave out these cool packets! I wrote this newsletter about hiding & finding letterboxes, items to carry in your letterboxing pack, and the top 10 letterboxes in Michigan. After the event, there were groups who went out and found some of the local ones! I LOVED reading those logs.

Packets had the newsletter, a stamp journal, packet of Wet Ones plus a raffle ticket.

And much love from the family! My brother & sister-in-law secured the room for us, set out coffee & water, and were just awesome in their support. Little sister, WikidKriket, came to share the love, too!

TaGeez, WikidKriket and Scrapcat

And they came! We counted over 70 friends joined us for the celebration!

Including his wife (Diana), sister (Harriet) and one of our speakers (Bruce of Bapman Crew)! Bruce kicked off the presentations with a great history of letterboxing wherein warship would notify the supply ships of battle victories and destinations by leaving messages behind in rock piles. As with the other presenters, Bruce also shared some of his favorite letterbox stories, too.

Looks like a lot of happy faces! 

After Bruce, Tim (Rattrak) spoke of his favorite letterboxes and tips for hiding letterboxes, too.

In between the presenters, I energized the crowds with a little audience participation (rewarding raffle tickets) and letterboxing tales, too.

Roger (South Lyon Trekkers) rounded off the presentations with letterbox stamps. As he started his presentation, Roger said, "Everything I need for this presentation is in my clothes." And the rest was just as fun! It was a good 20 minutes of pre-made stamps, custom stamps and (woo hoo!) handmade stamps. 

Success! Victory dance with Caching Fire afterwards!

Speaking of which, I put together a letterbox journal with a trackable attached, and its already made its way to Alaska!

The Triangle Stamp is our event stamp!

It was a beautiful event, and I really think we would've made Brummelbear proud.  Tired, happy... TaGeez and I relaxed afterwards in Atwood at the Park while our friends enjoyed the Letterboxes nearby. We're keeping our eyes open to see how many new letterboxes appear in the next year.

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