Roughing It- DAY 1

This past week I had the privilege of escorting Lego-Man and almost his entire 5th grade class to a YMCA camp located here in God's country, Alabama.

It was a 2 night, 3 day field trip taken each year by the 5th grade class at our school.

Before I committed myself to chaperoning on this trip I had to clarify one little thing. Would I have to stay in a cabin with the 5th grade girls? Because I only have expertise, right now, on 3rd grade girls.

Nope, the moms of the boys got to stay in a cabin all by themselves. No boys, no girls, just grown women. Check out our DELUXE camp accommodations:




Check out my bunk:




How about these bathrooms:




Too bad you can't see the huge dead spider in the shower, that lost it's life to a half a can of Lysol by another mom within the first hour of our stay!

Unfortunately, the dad's who escorted their daughters on this trip got stuck in the cabins with the other dads and their sons. *snicker* *snort* I mean, too bad they didn't get their own cabin.

Once we got our cabins situated and had lunch we literally hit the ground running.....i.e. hiking. The camp has planned educational activities to teach the kids a variety of outdoors topics.

We began day one with a couple of get to know you exercises, grown-ups included (oh joy).

Check out Lego-Man getting into the spirit of one of the games:

For a little explanation, he had to change 5 things about himself and then the person across from him had to guess what he changed. It must admit these games were a lot of fun and allowed me to meet and develop a "bond" with some of the other moms.


Next we began our official hiking segment of the day, we stopped in the woods to learn about predators and prey. Who wouldn't want their classroom to look like this:

(kids faces are blurred for privacy)

The highlight of Lego-Man's day was our last daylight activity.....CANOEING!

Notice I said, our last DAYLIGHT activity. Because after dinner we went on a "NIGHT HIKE". Yes, that's right....at night.

In the dark.

NO FLASHLIGHTS allowed.

Oooookay.

And, ummm, for obvious reasons, no photos were taken.

The cool factor was quite high for the kids, but this middle aged mom was a bit skeptical of hiking in the woods in the dark. I believe another mom can be quoted as saying, "this in the dark stuff is making me nauseous!"

The kids (and adults who were not nauseous) learned a little bit about the night sky including how to find the North Star. Which was right up mine and my boy's alley. We also participated in a couple of experiments on luminescence. F-U-N.


The night hike completed our activities for day 1. Since day 1 at camp technically got started around noon, I could barely stand the thought of a WHOLE day of camp ahead of us on day 2.

Day 1 wore this ol' gal out.....stay tuned for Day 2.