Our Whirlwind First Day of Activities

What a day! We started off fairly early with a wonderful hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, biscuits, and bacon. Of course there was also stuff like cereal and fresh fruit available to us as well. After our breakfast we made sure our cabins were clean and ready for inspection before moving on to our first of many activities.

I guess what is important to understand on the first day, is that we are all broken into groups based on our ages. There are the Head, Heart, Hands and Health groups as well as the Earth, Sun, Adventurers, and Trekkers groups. Each age group does different things based on their age, for example the Trekkers will go off site for almost two full days and a night camping out, canoeing in a river, repealing. They will cook their dinner over a campfire and other really cool stuff. The young groups such as the Head, Heart, Hands and Health groups do activities such as Arts and crafts, archery, making ice cream, visiting the Heritage center and other similar activities. Although the agents can't be everywhere all the time we try to hit as many activities as we can and take as many action shots as possible to record our camping experience and memories in photos.

Our campers started activities around nine am. They had adventures such as archery, swimming (in the brand new deluxe swimming pool) canoeing, arts and crafts and making ice cream. Arts and crafts this week is really neat, today they made photo frames, we understand that they will have the opportunity to do really cool pottery projects and maybe even some tye-dye-you just never know with this creative group. Today we even caught them doing a science project making goo. By using cornstarch and water the youth made a magical gooey substance that was hard as rock if you poke it, but if you scoop it is was ooey and gooey and funny to feel between the fingers. While goo and frames were being created another group was on a cooler mission, making ice cream (or actually raspberry sorbet) by hand. One camper would sit on the ice cream maker while the other would crank and they would take turns until they had a sweet cold treat.

Our adventures and trekkers also hit the dock and then the water practicing their paddling skills for expert canoeing. Other groups also took to the lake, some in canoes, some fell out of canoes and some just hit the water in their life jackets for the fun of it.

Of course after a day of fun we washed up for dinner (ham, mac and cheese, green beans, and corn bread) and then rest time. We all met at the flag pole to find out who has the cleanest cabin. You see every morning two agents or volunteers inspect the cabins for a very competitive cabin cleanliness award. In the end cabin one (the girls) won the golden faucet and cabin seven (the boys) took second place the silver toilet seat award.

Our evening activity centered on water if you were in Head, Heart, Hands or Health while the older youth took to the wall. The rock climbing wall that is. Our younger youth split up between the pool and the lake for some fun exhausting swim time which also included volleyball and a rousing game of Marco Polo in the pool. The older youth did their best to harness up and climb to the top of our rock wall, some even made it a competition climbing side by side.

After all this fun it was time to hit the showers and head to bed. After a hot exhausting day we all enjoyed laying our heads on our pillows and dreaming of all the fun we would have tomorrow. Stay tuned to the 4-H blog for more information on our adventures at Betsy-Jeff Penn 4-H Center.