Lancaster County Park LbNA #27901 (ARCHIVED)

This letterbox is pretty easy to find after a 15 minute hike. A map of the park can be found from a link on
http://www.co.lancaster.pa.us/parks

First, find your way to the Lancaster County Central Park. If you enter the park from Strawberry Street, take a left after crossing the bridge rather than drive up close to the swimming pool. As a boy, I used to swim at the pool when the park was simply called the Lancaster County Park, so that's why I named the letterbox after the old name of the park. It'll always be the Lancaster County Park to me, even though today I guess it's called Central Park.

Detailed Directions

Continue along Rockford Road as it follows the Conestoga River for a couple miles. Eventually you'll want to turn right onto Bill's Boy's Boulevard, and then make another right onto an Average Appendage Avenue. Turn left in the Duffer's Direction and pass by the park's only archaeological site. Turn right onto a curvy causeway of the Kiwanis King. You'll cross one of the few remaining Lancaster County covered bridges and park in the parking lot of the #21 pavilion. Walk back towards the bridge, snap a picture of it, then head off on the Wildflower Trail, which starts at the top of the little hill on the south side of the covered bridge.

Before long the trail passes under some high voltage electric lines in a grassy part of the trail. Immediately after reentering the woods, the path will cross over a rocky outcrop. Starting from this slightly rocky point in the trail, you'll follow the trail less than another 1/4 mile through the woods looking for another place where the path crosses a large rock.

Along the trail you'll see a couple trees on the left side growing close together. My niece called them the two kissing trees! Keep walking forward along the trail as it curves up, over, and around. Soon, on the right, you'll see a huge fallen tree right along the trail that kind of looks like a rifle. Behind it was the original hiding place for this letter box, until June 2007 when the tree containing it also fell.

Continuing past that spot the trail twists and turns some more until you come upon that part in the trail where a large 7-10 foot long mostly-underground rock on the left side of the trail extends into the trail a little bit. Start counting paces as the trail slopes down hill, and after 30 paces stop. Directly to the left you'll see a bunch of branches pointing down the hill, toward a tree with a hole in its base. In the base of the tree, inside a leaf-filled hollowed out part of the trunk, is what you came to find!

Once you have finished, please make sure you slide it completely back into its hiding spot and cover it up with the available tree bark to keep it warm and secret!