Letterboxing (With a Detour to the Beach), Manomet and Bourne MA

On Saturday, my friends Jen and Justin (Road Ogre Snapdragon and Road Ogre Ginger of our letterboxing group, the New England Road Ogres; btw for those unfamiliar with letterboxing, information is included at the end of this article) came down to visit from New Hampshire. They had talked about going to the beach here on the Cape, but as it turned out, my brother had rented a beach house in Manomet for the long weekend, so we decided to meet there.

Our first destination was Cleft Rock in Manomet to find The Daring Dolphin. It's located at Cleft Rock, a Town of Plymouth park. Cleft Rock park is located right on Route 3A, but there's no sign so it's a bit hard to spot. The main feature, a large boulder split down the middle, is located pretty close to the parking area.

The split rock forms a natural "tunnel" that is big enough to walk through.

Here's is Justin, taking a picture of the back side of the rock.

There are actually two split rocks here. The second one is smaller. I took this picture from on top of the main Cleft Rock:

From the top of the rock, we could make out the water of Cape Cod Bay through the leaves. Apparently it's possible to get a very nice view of the ocean if you visit in the wintertime.

In the nearby woods we came upon a rather surreal sight:

Jokes about bears in the woods followed. :)

We found the letterbox (1 for 1 so far for the day!), and then headed back to the beach house where a bunch of my family were staying to go for a swim. My brother had picked out a pretty incredible place, right on the water.

Here's the view from the lawn, looking north along the beach.

And looking south from on the beach:

Here's a view from the beach of the house itself.

My brother has four kids, all boys, ages 2,4,6,8. So as might be expected, he and his wife keep themselves quite busy. My mom was staying with them, and my aunt, and various cousins and friends were coming and going. It was all very casual, and the house was stocked with plenty of snacks and cold drinks. It was great of my brother to have the place open and welcoming to friends and family alike.

After a bit of beach time (I only went in the water briefly; it was a bit cold!), we headed out in search of more letterboxes.

We searched for, but failed to locate the Ellisville Harbor Letterbox at Ellisville Harbor State Park in Plymouth. (1 for 2...). We saw kingfishers and a red squirrel and we got a nice view of the saltmarsh:

From there, we drove to the Herring Run Recreation area along the Cape Cod Canal.

It's got a great view of the Sagamore Bridge, and a paved trail you can walk or bike along the Canal to the Bourne Bridge. Here's the Sagamore Bridge:

There were cormorants all along the canal, diving for fish in the water, and then flying up to the lightpoles to dry their wings and get some sun.

There wasn't much traffic along the canal. No big ships. But we did see the occasional sailboat.

Which fits in with the "Sail Away" letterbox we located, making us 2 for 3 for the day. From there it was off to Hyannis for some seafood and a good ending to a fun day out.

Letterboxing Resources

Letterboxing is a treasure-hunting activity in which the participants find boxes containing rubber stamps (often unique hand-carved stamps). These stamps are recorded in a logbook, and the finder also carries a personal stamp that is stamped into a logbook kept in the letterbox.

Two of the best online resources for letterboxing are Letterboxing North America and Atlasquest. These are good places to look for more information if you're interested in giving it a try. There is also a letterboxing group here on Gather.