Last week Emma and I went to Girls' Camp at Camp Esther-Applegate. This was my second year as a Cabin Mom. We had a lot of fun, but I missed Dan and my younger kiddos at home. Ben did an awesome job of babysitting and Dan kept all of them in line. He worked shorter days, but the house was in pretty decent shape when I returned, so he did well. The camp is right on Lake of the Woods which is halfway between Klamath Falls and Medford. There are cabins with 12 bunks in each. There is a nice mess hall, craft lodge and showers, so it is very civilized. It rained the first few days, but it wasn't too big of a deal. The theme was STAND with separate days being: stand for (tennis shoes), stand firm (hiking boots), stand up (ballet slippers) and stand in (high heels). The first night was the commitment hike and it really tied the theme into nature and spirituality. It was very well done and set a good tone for the week.
Wednesday the girls certified for their year. The YCL's put on a Standards Fair that was really well done. They had worked hard on their presentations and it showed. There was a talent show that girls performed at. Last year Emma played the flute in a duet with a friend, but this year she didn't do anything.
Thursday, we had an awesome hike that a guy in our stake put together. We stayed on a trail for a couple of miles and then walked about a mile off trail following flags that he had tied. It was a bit challenging and we had to climb over downed trees and up rock piles and stuff. Our group had a blast, but the others didn't like it very much, so we probably won't have a hike like that again. We stopped at and established destination for lunch and he had set up a slack line, monkey bridge, and a zip line for us. At night, the girls did their skits and we had
Friday we had a jamboree which consisted of a bunch of goofy fames with loose Book of Mormon connections. The girls had a lot of fun with it. They had water activities, but I had taken a shower that morning and didn't want to get into the lake. I was going to stay away, but I wanted to see what was going on. They were holding canoe races. First the first four years went against each other. Emma was on the second year team and their boat tipped over after they got rammed by the first years. Then a couple of YCL teams went against the winner of the girls' team. Then I went with 3 other adult leaders against the winning YCL team. We beat them, but it was a close race. Then another YCL team said they wanted to go. Being very naïve we decided to race them. They didn't race, but came after us to swamp us. When we saw what they were going to do, we canoed away from them and almost made it to shore when some of the older girls came and swamped us. I was fully clothed including jeans, but swam out with a couple of the other leaders and swamped the YCL girls who were chasing us. We felt vindicated.
Friday evening we had awards and a slideshow presentation from pictures the camp photographer took during the week. Then we had a fireside by the Stake President and his wife and a testimony meeting. It was very spiritual. Some of the girls in the stake have very hard lives and it is good to see them have a chance to grow spiritually so that hopefully they will have the strength they need to survive through their teenage years.
Emma on the zipline
Camp leaders
Emma and I doing the Polar Bear. We did it three days and got a little necklace for it!
The Young Women
Getting Swamped
We have been hiking/walking a fair amount lately. At first we were trying to get the kids into shape for our trip to the Redwoods that we took a few weeks ago. We are planning a trip to Yosemite later in the summer, and so we want to keep the kids in shape. In order to do that, we have been trying to find some good, local 5 mile hikes. We have found some pretty cool ones, but I'm not going to post about those. I might get a post up about the Redwoods if I can find the time, but on the 4th, we hiked up Mount Scott. It is close to Crater Lake and actually in Crater Lake National Park. It was a 2 1/2 mile hike up to the top. The kids all did fine. We enjoyed the beautiful view. We could see Mt Shasta, Mt Thielson and Mt McLoughlin easily. We think we may have been able to see Mt Hood and the three sisters, but we're not positive that they were them.
It says 8,938 ft.
