After the evening meal all groups met and hiked up the trail to the "Fireside" and we told stories and sang songs and clapped a lot and did a short play and sang some more and I took some blurry pictures because I forgot to change the settings on the camera and casually walked around snapping to my heart's content. You can see a few of the results of this carefree evening above.
After "Fireside" we headed to the gym in hopes that we could get the kids really tired before retiring to the cabins for lights out. I'm not quite sure that it worked though. It was shortly after midnight and I was still working on getting my guys quiet. However, as always happens the guys eventually wound down and went to beddy-bye land.
GOOD, I mean REALLY GOOD! I was tired. I was GOOD and tired and I needed my beauty sleep.
Day 2 dawns anew and all is right and wonderful with the world. The guys get up and get ready for the new day and we all head to the dining hall for breakfast. We arrive and shortly find that breakfast will be French Toast, sausage, oatmeal, and the obligatory side items for the French Toast and oatmeal. I had hoped for more because the day was destined to be long and tiring. But then I remembered that kindly old Quaker gent advising us all, "Nothing is better for Thee than me!"
First stop for us, the horses and Instructional Period #4 ....after a short hike to another camp of course.
The camp wranglers were very good. They introduced all the safety equipment to the kids and and explained it to them. After getting the kids into the riding helmets, one of the wranglers began to explain how to handle and direct the horses. As you can see above, the kids were in rapt attention to the presentation....except when the horse began to make deposits of recycled grass. (No, I didn't take a picture of that; after all this is a family blog.)
The kids are getting ready to hit the trail.
After a long day on the hot and dusty trail it feels good to get back to the barn. OK, so it wasn't a long day on the trail; it was only about 30 minutes on the trail. And it wasn't really hot and dusty. It was quite comfortable under the pine trees. But, it was still good to see the kids arrive back at the barn.
What's this? One of the girls has one 'ornery critter. It doesn't want to go the proper stall. That horse has a mind of it's own and it is up to this newly trained "horse trainer" to coax it into the stall. She was successful after several attempts. The girl told me later that her arms were sore because of this one 'ornery critter.
And speaking of critters, that was our next Instructional Period. The students made their way to the habitat room where the counselor took a few moments to talk about some of the animals within the habitat room and, of course, her expectations of the kids while in the room.
The big star in the room was the sloth; and not just any sloth but a two-toed sloth. That's the sloth on the rope in the left picture.
While I was scurrying around the room snapping pictures I was focusing on two tortoises on the floor. After a few moments I looked up and turned around and was face to face with the sloth. I jumped and gasped. The kids giggled. I moved away. the kids giggled some more and pointed at Mr. Horst.
The Ball Python in the picture on the right had not quite learned about the Law of Gravity. During our time in the room we would occasionally hear a "THUMP!!!" It was the python making it's way up the side and trying to move along the top edge of the display window. And then, THUMP... old man Gravity reached up and pulled the python down. Thank you Sir Isaac Newton for keep this critter under control.
There were also tortoises, a tarantula, parakeets, snakes, snapping turtles, gold fish and other critters in the room that I can't remember at this point in time. Ask me some time next week when I'm not thinking about it and I might recall them.
Yesterday at school one of the kids from the trip was outside my classroom looking at my pictures on the bulletin board. She was looking at the picture of the sloth. She couldn't remember it's name.
I couldn't either.
While she was looking at other pictures she suddenly remember the name and shouted it out.
"Yeah, that's it," said I excitedly.
But now I've forgotten the name again.
I'm going to have to go to school on Monday and ask the girl the name so I can bring some fame to this poor old sloth of the two-toed variety, as opposed to the three-toed variety.
Tomorrow, Nature's Niche and Canoes. Maybe more, but not less!
© 2009 Barry T Horst
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
