Friends of Willard Brook Letterboxing Day 2007

Welcome to our second annual letterboxing day! We hope you enjoy hunting for the six letterboxes that are hidden around Pearl Hill State Park. After you find the boxes, please return them to their hiding places so others can have fun searching for them!

The Thistle Box

Careful! This leads you down an eroded trail with lots of roots! Don’t trip!

From the parking lot of Pearl Hill State Park, walk along the paved road towards the field. Just before the bridge, go left past two picnic tables to the Nature Trail sign. Follow the trail as it meanders along Pearl Hill Brook. Go over the wooden bridge. Watch your footing. There are lots of roots in the trail! The spring floods surely carried away lots of soil. That means there is lots of trail work for Friends of Willard Brook to do!!! Go over the second bridge. When you reach the third bridge, don’t go over it. Instead, walk between the two rivers and then follow the path up the hill. Down to the right is a beautiful beaver meadow. When you reach the T intersection, follow the beaver slide down to the water. Your treasure is hiding along the shore in tree roots to the left of the slide.

The Cinquefoil Box

From the parking lot of Pearl Hill State Park, walk west down a path towards a large body of water. Before you reach the water, look at the pine trees to the south. One pine tree has a large bat house. Follow the dirt road at the base of the pine tree toward the south. At the black and orange beaver, don’t follow the arrow! Go straight ahead. When you hear a babbling brook, follow the sound to the roots of a hemlock tree near the bank. There you will find a great surprise!

The Dandelion Box

From the parking lot of Pearl Hill State Park, walk towards the bathroom building. Follow the dirt road in front of the building towards the pond. When you get near the pond, be very quiet and listen for the waterfall. Follow the road through the picnic area towards the water noise. When you reach the dam, look downstream into the water. Do you see any turtles in the water? Facing away from the dam, walk into the open field. Stand on the cement rectangle, and look towards the far edge of the field. Walk straight to the middle of that edge. This time, the treasure is hidden above ground level behind some bark in the fork of a tree. After you sign and stamp the book, carefully put the box back in its hiding place!

The Cattail Box

To find this letterbox, take the Friends Trail which starts in the main field of Pearl Hill State Park. From the Friends Trail sign on the brown wooden post, follow the yellow diamonds. Count 15 diamonds that are leading you onward. Don’t count the diamonds that lead you back home. When you reach the lucky 15^th diamond, go past the diamond and through the oak and pine tree pair that mark the trail sides. At the young hemlock tree and beech sapling on the left, walk carefully down the slope in the direction of the water. A large white pine on your right is sheltering your treasure! Nature has another treasure at this tree --- look for ant-lion pits in the sand!

The Daisy Box

Careful! This one takes a while to reach!

From the parking lot, follow the road that leads towards the campsites. Walk across the field, and then go the “wrong way” up the camp road (take the left fork at the one-way sign). Follow the paved road up, up, up. Finally the road levels off. Keep on going! When the road starts to go downward, look for the yellow diamond markers of the Friends trail on both sides of the road. Follow the Friends Trail to the right, just before a dirt road. Cross over the dirt road. The trail goes down steeply and to the right. Keep following yellow diamonds until the trail levels off. Ahead of you is a deep, dark hemlock grove. Be on the lookout for a triple-wide old rotting stump off the trail on the left. Your treasure is hiding there.

To return to the parking lot, you can either retrace your steps OR continue on the path to the pavement and turn right, following the pavement back.

The Deer Box

From the parking lot of Pearl Hill State Park, walk along the paved road over the bridge to the picnic area in the pine grove. There you will see two orange trail markers on a tree. Follow the beaver’s arrow. Stay to the left of the next beaver. The third beaver shows you which direction to follow. Look for animal tracks in the path as you go around the pond. Smell the sweet fern! Look for a huge ant hill on the left. The trail may get a bit muddy, but the beavers finally lead you to higher ground when they point to the right. Once you are on the dry trail and you start to round a curve, look uphill for the funny white pine with the outsie belly button. Just above that tree is a stump holding your wonderful treasure.