Girls Camp - Waterfront, Games, Service, and More

Waterfront was so fun this year. We had a lifeguard named Loraine that came to help out. She was awesome. She made it all so cool. She brought this board with little boats on it. You would put your little person in a boat and then she made stickers to put on the boats and when they called your boat, you went out. They had such fun names like "The Black Pearl" or "Nautilus" or the "Santa Maria."

She also had challenges for the girls to complete if they wanted. There were objects hidden around the lake, or paddling across and back could gain them a cute little wooden canoe pendant that Loraine and her husband had made. 

Plenty of girls earned the wooden canoe, but the challenges were not the main focus. As usual, the waterfront was a war zone. These two were probably the  biggest culprits. They were lethal with their super soakers. Get near them, get wet. (Notice the super cute yellow shirts. They said, Just Keep Paddling and those were the other shirts that Katie and Stephanie made for us. So adorable.)

I had a lot of fun the day I was down at the lake. I was already pretty wet by the time my ward arrived. Daisy told me to join her boat with Sabrina and she said we would go hose down other canoes. (Maren and Becca were in our sights.) But imagine my surprise when the biggest attack came from behind me. Daisy couldn't handle having such an easy target right in front of her, so she kept aiming her gun at me. Naturally, I turned my soaker right back at her and in no time neither of us had a dry inch on us. I would say that most of the ward was excessively damp by the time they reached the shore.

Besides water saturation, the other big draw was the salamanders. The missionaries provided nets and buckets for the girls and lots of people caught little critters. Sabrina was intent on catching one, so when our boat wasn't hunting others, we were hunting salamanders. And she caught one. It was so cute. The girls got to hold it and Sister Mcsweeney even gave it a kiss. :)

Other girls caught some little axolotls with their fringe faces. It was a really fun day. Pretty much anyone who came down to the dock got into the action. Check out our awesome brethren.

Singing Groves was on Thursday evening after a particularly drippy afternoon. (The rain was really random. We seemed to get sun when we needed it, but the rain showed up every day at some point.) We didn't want to hike up to the grove area with the wet trails and wet grass area, so we did it in the amphitheater instead. We had the girls enter under a beautiful arch that Ruth and some other 5th ward girls put together. 

It was really neat to all sing the Stake song together. It always sounds amazing to combine beautiful voices. And then in turn, each ward got up and sang a song.

It actually ended up being kind of short. We planned to sing two extra songs at the end, instead of letting people start singing random songs. That still was only 11 songs. But then Alissa said she felt inspired to teach us a new song. It was Shalom Chaverim. It was so simple and beautiful. We sang it in a round and I thought it was the perfect way to close Singing Groves. We took some pictures after with our awesome arch. In the second picture, notice Alissa in the window. :)

Friday was our last day and there was still plenty to do. It was Daisy's birthday!! She was actually a stinker and had come to camp dressed in my converse (which I didn't bring on purpose so they wouldn't get dirty) but after waterfront and the super wet hike, I was out of dry shoes and I was so happy to remember that Daisy had a pair I could use. I went running down yelling 'Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy..." to make sure everyone remembered it was her birthday. But it didn't matter since we sang to her during flag anyway. We sang Opera style and it was epically amazing!

Then we did games and service. The Stake was split in half and everyone took turns playing games or working on the two service projects. You already saw Pal's trail and how awesome that looked, but we also made plarn balls. (Plarn is plastic yarn) We brought a gazillion plastic bags to camp and the girls cut off the ends and tied them together to make large balls of plastic yard that can later be woven into mats. (That is not very detailed, but I wasn't that involved and I'm not sure how it all worked.) The girls were awesome and went to work with a will.

The other half were playing games. There was stuff all over to do. There was nine square, which happened to be right by our ward campsite, so they had been playing a lot already. There were group games like spoons. There were large sets of connect four. There was a spikeball net, but they were playing street rules which was basically tossing the ball back and forth with your shirt. (Very fun, but June would not approve, since the net was hardly involved.) There was Kubb. (I played with Loraine and then some of the girls from 5th and 8th.) And I ended up in 8th ward playing Double Ditto with them. It was all really fun.

Friday evening is the night when all the Bishops come up to hang out with the girls. They often bring dinner. In our case, they brought Kentucky Fried Chicken and a cake for Daisy. (That was sweet that they remembered.) 

Friday was our last theme, which was connecting with others. It was the day most of us wore our camp shirts, so flag ceremony looked very Hunter Green. Also, for role call, all the brethren got up and went to the front for a large epic roll call that ended in a spontaneous dance party. Can you find Tyler in there? He came up to chop wood on Friday, and it was so nice to have him there for Daisy's birthday dinner. :)

The last night was the Brethren's skit. All three of the new presidency were able to be there. President Moore, Carlson, and Hull. They had such a funny skit about a meeting where they discussed the fall out from camp. They had funny lines about neighbors complaining about Sister Mcsweeny hanging up their chickens and about Sister Lamoreaux having spontaneous dance parties in surgery. (See, it will follow her forever.)

And then camp was winding down. Each of the wards had a testimony meeting. I don't go to mine so that the girls can speak more openly without me. Instead I stayed at our camp, where we burned the epic chain. It was so cool and it made the biggest bonfire ever. I think someone got a picture, but I couldn't find it.

We packed up a lot of stuff that evening so the morning would go smoothly and boy did it ever. The busses came early and everyone was out of there before the planned departure time. Yay!! It was an amazing camp. Just one more shot with some of the SYCLs before we get in the car and head toward showers and warm beds.

Once again, there were sheep all over the road on the way out. Is that always a thing on Saturday morning? Or were we just lucky twice?

That's it folks. I would say it was a roaring success. I only heard great things from the girls and leaders. I loved being up at Shalom with them, and I hope we can do it all again next year!

Girls Camp - Hiking and Some More Hiking

I probably did more hiking at camp than anything else. And it was so fun. Maybe it is because I did more hiking this year in general, but I loved all the hiking at camp. Let's go over some of the hikes I did.

SUNRISE HIKE

This hike is always a great one. Sure, it is hard to get up so early in the morning. I think we had to meet around 5:15 am to get up to our destination in time. (Sunrise was right around 6 am) But I love this hike. It is one of the most beautiful. You'll be able to tell from the amazing pictures. Everyone from our ward went, since they didn't know it was optional. :) I know not everyone was there, but we had a great turnout and it was wonderful to hear from our new Stake President, President Moore. He is such an awesome man. It was so great to have him at camp the whole week. I hope the girls feel like they know him a little bit better. Anyway, enjoy some photogs from our morning hike.

PRACTICE HIKE

My next hike was a practice one. Katie was in charge of the hikes and she had maps for all of us. The hikes were divided into three: Easy, Intermediate, and Hard. However, Shalom has been empty for a couple years and trails tend to become overgrown without use, so Becky, Stephanie, and I decided to hike the intermediate hike the evening before so we knew where we were going. And it's a good thing we did. The trail we were supposed to take was Pal's trail, but it was gone. There was a sign and then absolutely no trail, so Katie gave us a different route. We started by going up the exact same way as the Sunrise hike. That was easy enough. But we continued on to Joe's Trail. You may laugh at Stephanie and I who are still wearing our makeup from the skit we did earlier that evening.

We traveled down Joe's trail, past some good landmarks like Turtle Rock but suddenly there wasn't a trail. We found a sign that said the trail went both ways, but there was not a trail in either direction anymore. So...we turned around and found another way back. It passed by some lovely beaver ponds and an X in the middle of the trail. Once we found the X we knew this was the best choice. After all, X marks the spot.

INTERMEDIATE HIKE

We made it back using most of the original map and we were all set for the next day. I was surprised at the numbers we had. Somehow I figured that people would settle for something in the middle, but it ended up being the other way around. People split and the majority went for the Easy or Hard. So we had a small group, but that was nice. Ivory came on my hike, so she is featured prominently. Remember, it starts up on that same hill. The weather was overcast to begin with which made it nice and cool.

The sky and the trail were so pretty. It was such a lovely day. Stephanie found 11 different kinds of wildflowers the day before, so we challenged the girls to find more. Ivory took this to heart and found 24 varieties. She smoked us. (But to be fair, we were looking for the trail more than for flowers.) Ivory also found a little butterfly buddy that stayed with us for a fair amount of time.

Stephanie and Katie had gotten together to make everyone shirts. So we looked stunning in our Hiking Crew gear. We stopped at the beaver ponds again because that is a nice resting point. I stood on a stump and zoomed out and it almost looks like I took a picture with a drone. But no...it's just me on a log. 

This is Ivory on a log.

It really was a great morning for hiking. It sounds like both the other hikes had a great time as well. Here is Nicole and Christy on the hard hike and some of the campers on the easy hike. Jenni got some great shots of the wildlife on her hike. 

She actually got a few good shots of the animals and I was trying to get pictures as well while we were up at Shalom. We saw deer, bunnies, lots of potguts, some salamanders (to be spotlighted later) and almost a bear. One of the deer had two baby fawns following close behind. They were adorable. Also, can you find all three pot guts in the wood pile?

DISCOVERY HIKE

On Thursday evening we were discussing the service project for the following morning and I mentioned that it would be really cool if we could clear some of the trails, or at least Pal's trail since it didn't exist anymore. The missionaries said it was marked and you could see some ribbons on the trees, but it is more helpful to have a trail under your feet. Everyone thought that would be a great idea to clear some trail, so we set out in the morning to see what trail was still there. Katie and Becky started from the non existent side and Stephanie and I hiked out to the far side we had seen before. 

It was a fun hike, although super wet. The trail was there, but it was very overgrown and with the morning dew, we ended up with our legs being soaked from the knees down. Our side of the trail was pretty easy to follow. It did split at one point and both sides looked good, but we chose the right and continued that way. We felt like it was a good choice since we were still seeing ribbons on the trees.

Eventually we could hear Katie and Becky. In fact, they were VERY LOUD. We heard them long before we saw them. We walked into a field and there they were. Except they were at the top of the hill and we were at the bottom. "Why are you way down there?" Katie yelled. "Well, why are you way up there?" we asked. We were both supposedly on Pal's trail. Katie kept telling us there was only one trail, but we had to disagree since we were clearly standing on a different one. Can you see Katie and Becky way up there?

We also found out the reason they were so loud. Katie had seen fresh bear poop on the trail. They kept yelling, "We're OKAY!" to each other to make sure all bears would hear them and go away. Stephanie and I were pretty clueless. We were just enjoying a nice morning hike. 

We never met up. Our trail spit us out on the main road, down from Pal's entrance. And they didn't finish the top trail since it disappeared. But we went ahead with the service project anyway. I wasn't up on the hill, but the pictures look amazing and there is definitely a trail now. I'm so proud of the girls (and brethren) and all their hard work. 

CONFIDENCE COURSE

I'm adding the confidence course in here as well. (There was room for a few more pictures.) I got to help out with confidence course on the last day. Everything is set up so it's easy for the groups to come over, read the instructions, and figure out the task. There were lots of fun challenges. Most groups got through a lot of them. Some even finished them all. Here are a few pictures from the tasks. 

This was the day I got sunburned a little. It rained in the morning and I don't think I got my face sunscreened like I should have before heading to the course. My cheeks picked up some pink while I followed the girls around to take pictures.

All the outdoor stuff was so fun. I honestly wanted to go up and hike Pal's trail again, but I ran out of time before we had to leave. What a beautiful area Shalom is and what a blessing it is to have such a lovely place to come closer to God.