Not Finding a Letterbox with Astro D

Last week sometime Astro D went out to look for a new box planted by PI Joe. She had trouble finding the box which is weird since it had just been planted a few days before. She was sure she was in the right spot but there was no box. She contacted me and asked if I wanted to go out with her today and try to find the box. I met her at her house and we made our way to the Dale Ball Trails off of Hyde Park Road. We headed down the trail following the clues and when we arrived at a junction we stopped. Here she wanted me to continue with the clues to see if I would end up at the same spot as she did. So I continued with the clues and after counting off the number of steps I stopped. I wasn't quite at the landmark mentioned in the clues but it was close enough. Then I looked uphill for the tree mentioned in the clues. When I located it I asked Astro D if that was the same tree that she found - it was. We made our way up the hill and to the tree and found a SPOR nicely stacked behind the tree. There were rocks but no box. We started talking and it actually looked as though the rocks were stacked but no box was ever placed there. Usually you would see an imprint of the box but we didn't even notice that. We moved some dirt and really checked the spot but still came up empty handed. Since we hadn't found the box we decided to search all the trees in the near vicinity. We found nothing! After a little while we returned to the trail and walked a little further and checked behind other trees. We spent about a half hour searching all around the area but we came up empty handed. We even started joking that PI Joe had forgotten to actually put the box in place. Of course that was just a joke. But it is sad that a box just planted has disappeared in less than a week. I hope we were just in the wrong spot and eventually the box will be found. We had a nice walk and enjoyed looking for the box - a great way to spend the morning.