1120. "New Beginnings" CT HHH
North Stonington, CT
26 Jul 2020

Well, to be frank, we weren't sure if we really wanted to reinstate this retired old Hitchhiker Hostel in a new spot or not. After all, we've had "mixed feelings" for years about treating hitchers as "trapped commodities" rather than the "fun surprises" to be found in random letterboxes that they were originally meant to be. We still remember the excitement generated by the first ever hitchhiker, the "Y2K Bug", as well as the consternation we felt at the change in attitude towards hitchers that ensued when Jay Drew planted the very first HHH ever at Rocky Neck in CT so many years ago. Called "The Inn of the Beginning", it was ostensibly a place where one hitcher at a time could start off on a new journey, but one person who lived nearby would apparently bike over and try to take each new hitcher away before anyone else could get a chance to see it, even doing the same thing at our "Inn of the the End" in RI, the second HHH ever, but fortunately it turned out that we were mostly "out of range"!;-) Anyway, we had a one-at-a-time/ take one-leave one policy that worked pretty well at our hitcher hostel for a few years, but then hostels with multiple hitchers started to proliferate, and it seemed like at some hostels people got greedy and took all the hitchers, or at others the poor things languished for years as if imprisoned, because no one was interested in them anymore! So, for a long time now we had retired our hostels and reverted to leaving hitchers only as the (hopefully) "fun surprises" they were originally intended to be.

With the coronavirus pandemic, however, came a new look at some of our old boxes, so we thought we might as well try to get a few more of them back out there for newer letterboxers who aren't traveling so far from home these days, and perhaps they would reciprocate by planting some local boxes for us and others to find as well. We also had a hitcher that wanted to get to Oregon that we had brought back with us from Florida in February. We had planned to travel to Oregon in April, so we figured we'd take it out with us then. Of course, COVID cancelled that trip, so we thought we'd try again in October, but now it doesn't look like a fall trip is going to happen either, so we decided to just leave that particular hitcher here in this hostel for someone who might be getting to go out that way before we might be able get out there next spring. If you can't move this hitcher out west soon though, please leave it here for someone who can, (or for us to take out hopefully next April!;-), but please do consider leaving a smaller hitcher here that can more easily be swapped to continue that old "take one - leave one" tradition, since we didn't happen to have an extra one with us at the time we planted!

Anyway, to find this quick and easy box, which many years ago used to be located off I-95 exit 3 in RI, now simply go to the large Park and Ride lot along the Frontage Road that is on the north side of I-95 in eastern CT between the two halves of exit 92 for route 2 (E-bound) and route 49 (W-bound). This parking lot is also just west of the backdoor exit gate of the CT welcome center, which is sometimes left open. Find the storm drain between the 2nd and 3rd lamp posts counting from the east end of the parking area and hop over the guardrail to two large ledge rocks a few steps away. In the crevice behind where these 2 rocks meet is where we left this box under 2 smaller stones and some leaves.

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