Girls Camp

I had the opportunity to go to Girls Camp this year. (It was in July, but I'm just posting about it now.) It was a great experience, but it was so much more work than I thought it would be. It seemed like we were either prepping for a meal, cooking a meal, or cleaning up from a meal all day, every day. SO much cooking!!! We (as leaders) have since decided that next year will be different. Lunches will be sandwiches and we'll have cold cereal for some of the breakfasts. We just went WAY too big with our meals. They were yummy, but OH so much work. It made it difficult to enjoy the scenery and feel the spirit.

It seems like the girls were touched, though. And since camp is all about the young women, then our efforts were successful. I *did* get to have some fun while I was there, though. Silly me, I chose to go on the difficult hike. I didn't know if I'd ever get to hike up to the Lone Pine, so I figured I should take the opportunity while it was there. (It's a Camp Shalom landmark.) The hike wasn't really too difficult, but it was certainly an adventure. The man leading our hike decided not to take the trail for part of it and lead us up a steep hill. I'm glad nobody slipped, cause that person would have fallen all the way back down. We were much happier when things leveled out and it wasn't quite so treacherous. Then the rain came. It felt good and helped to cool us off. Unfortunately, it also made the trail into a mud pit. We slipped and slided back along the trail for quite a ways before things were more easily navigated. The hike ended up going 1-2 hours more than it should have, but nobody got hurt - just VERY dirty.

The girls at Lone Pine

After we climbed the treacherous hill. And, yeah, my eyes are closed. Lame.

The YCLs also put on a Legends hike on one of the nights. They wanted me to come along so they wouldn't get too scared. (They make up scary legends and take you on a hike in the middle of the night through the camp/surrounding woods.) Little did they know, I get scared too. I was pretty good at hiding it - I tried to laugh instead of scream. I'm afraid my laughter got a bit maniacal sounding for some of it, though. Ah well, it seemed to help the girls not wet their pants or anything.

Some more of the girls - after our relay races

One of the girls got indigestion on Wednesday night and threw up in our cabin. Not cool. Then she had to get up twice in the night to pee. (No unchaperoned biffy visits, so everybody needs a buddy.) Luckily, I only had to walk her to the biffy for one of them. The next night she also had indigestion, but we loaded her up with various remedies and gave her a bag to puke in just in case. No puke this time - hooray!! But still a middle of the night biffy run. I didn't get much sleep despite the gigantic and relatively comfortable cot I borrowed from my in-laws.

So, it was a fun week - but certainly not a vacation. I enjoyed myself and got to know the girls a little better. Oh yeah, it also rained every day. We had to cancel a few things because of it, but it didn't spoil things too badly. Anyway, girls camp is highly recommended. Hopefully we learn our lessons from this year and do better next time. There is so much more to say about camp, but I'm pretty sure nobody wants to read about it. Ah well, I just didn't want to forget to post.