More Postcards from Susan

I checked my mail slot on returning from vacation to find it brimming with postcards. Wow, what a treat! Susan continued sending me postcards from pretty much every destination on her trip. What a fun way to share with me her family's adventures. Thank you Susan - how thoughtful of you to think of me.

This first card is from Hershey, Pennsylvania. Of course they toured the chocolate factory. Susan tells me on the card that the town smells like chocolate! I can't imagine that.


This card she picked up at Gettysburg. According to her note, Susan is related to Robert E. Lee!


And this one is obviously a beautiful card from Washington DC where they visited the Museum of National History, Museum of Air & Space and the National Zoo among other sights.


And last but certainly not least - New York. I love this photo of the Statue of Liberty.


It's amazing to me that Susan found the time to send all these postcards while traveling. She is in Los Angeles with her family right now. Her dad just suffered his second stroke in a couple weeks. My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family at this difficult time.

Postcards from Susan

My friend Susan is on vacation in the northeast and sent me a couple of wonderful postcards. This first one is of course from Niagara Falls:


And this one is from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Susan tells me Cooperstown is Baseball USA with shops that sell baseball everything!

I have to say I'm so impressed that Susan, who is on this multi-stop adventure of a vacation with her husband and three kids could make time to send me some postcards. Thank you, thank you Susan!!

Postcarding Fun

I've been trying to get back into sending postcards regularly. It takes a little bit of time if you like to keep things organized. But it's so much fun, and it's always a welcome surprise when the mailbox holds a bit of friendship instead of just junk mail and bills.

This week I got this beautiful card of Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz:


And I received my first ever postcard from New Zealand! This one depicts the area where the Americas Cup Yacht race was held.

Old Family Postcards

I wanted to share these postcards which are part of my sister Jozi's collection. These three postcards were all sent from my grandmother in Elma, Washington to my mother in Olympia. They date from 1956-1957. The first two had 2 cent stamps for postage and the third one had a 3 cent stamp. You can click on the pictures to see them larger.

This first one is funny:


This card depicts skiers at Mt. Rainier in the wintertime:

This lovely linen card fooled us at first because it says Mt. Baker on the back. But it's from a Mt. Baker in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado! Not the one in Washington. I suppose I would have figured that out if I had looked at the picture more closely. This mountain is not shaped like our Mt. Baker and the vegetation below does not look like Western Washington.

Christmas Postcard from Germany

I recently received a wonderful surprise in my mailbox. A Christmas postcard from Germany! The card was not signed and contained only the note "Merry Christmas Carm, from an unknown Postcrosser." Thank you to whoever you are, my unknown postcrossing friend. I love it!

Postcard From Finland

Yes, I'm still trading postcards using Postcrossing, and sometimes PostcardX. I recently received my first postcard from Finland. The birds are beautiful. I'm sure the one in the background is a quail, but not sure about the one in front. Do you think it's a quail or some kind of turkey?

New Postcards

In the last week I received cards from Hamm, Germany; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Lithuania and this one from Paris. I was particularly thrilled to get a card from Paris because I took several years of French in middle school and high school. I remember lessons on French history, architecture, art and culture. Of course I dreamed of going to Paris. Maybe someday...

Postcard Update

Last week I received postcards from: A Coruna, Spain; Dillenburg, Germany and this one from São Paulo, Brazil.

With each card I learn a little something about the place where it came from. The card pictured shows the Statue of the Bandeirantes. The Bandeirantes were early explorers who travelled West and North to the Amazon River. They are responsible for "establishing" Brazil's vast borders in South America. By planting the Portuguese flag far away from the Atlantic Coast the Spanish Crown had to recognize their marked territory as part of the Portuguese Empire. They were courageous, but often brutal killing thousands of the indigenous population. They searched for gold, emeralds, and other precious stones. São Paulo was their primary staging area.

Postcard Trading

This summer I took up a new hobby - trading postcards with people across the country and around the world. I use two web sites as a source for addresses. Postcrossing.com is an international and structured postcard trading project. I like that the site tracks the cards sent and received and will also display a history map for you. As you can see from my map below there are many users in Europe (especially Germany and Portugal) although there are more countries participating every week and the site is becoming increasingly diverse. The person who created Postcrossing is from Portugal and that's where it originated.

The other web site I use is PostcardX. There you click a link to receive a randomly selected address for sending. The PostcardX site is about 70 percent United States users, so if you want postcards from around the U.S. that would be a good place to start.

Each week I send a couple random postcards plus responses to cards that were sent to me. I receive an average of 3 cards per week between users from the two sites. It's a great way to learn about different places around the world. If you would like to see my postcard collection you can click on the Flickr badge in the sidebar.