Marching and Rolling Along

  It is hard to believe this is our last day of 4-H Biotech Day Camp.  What in the world could we have left to cover?  That's what our campers were wondering as we jumped in the van and headed North today.  When we stopped we were at the home of Fort Bragg, Fayetteville, NC.  More importantly we stopped at the Airbourne and Special Operations Museum.  Our plan of attack is to meet up with Bladen and Hoke counties and spread out to experience military technology advancements, technology training through the simulator, and a little more about the Special Operations and Airbourne groups by hearing about their history in the movie.

  Since the simulator can't hold all of us at once we split into two groups; one went into the simulator to experience computer generated military modes of travel (especially in battle) and then we got to experience real life military vehicles in different terrains.  Including an amphbius vehicle for which we we skimmed the water and then engaged hostile forces using night vision before sliding into the belly of another vehicle.  In the real life military simulation we skimmed tree tops as we moved through a forrest, we experienced driving through the dessert in humvees, and we came off the back of of transport plane in a vehicle.  Sooooo much fun!

   The movies were great insights into how Airbourne was started and the early training they did.  Did you know that you could not be married and had to volunteer to be one of the first Airbourne members?  We also learned about various assaults and reasons for the way they train the way that they do.  It is so cool to know that they jump out of perfectly good airplanes and what they can do when they hit the ground.

  Then we went into the museum to check out the history of this elite fighting group and got to see firearms, planes, and even a wedding dress made from a parachute (now that is a cool story).  Our youth visited WWI, WWII, Vietnam, and more recent effort such as Dessert Storm.  For all of them these conflicts were before their time, and in some cases this is the first time they have heard of these military battles.  

  After touring the museum we headed back to Lumberton for lunch.  Golden Corral was gracious enough to allow us to use their group meeting space for lunch.  Our campers got to pick whatever they wanted and it turns out that they were very hungry.

  From there we headed to Lumberton Bowling Alley where everyone had the opportunity to bowl.  They learned the science of spinning balls, momentum, and power as they knocked down pins.  Each of them worked hard and played three games with some pretty impressive moves.  If you check out some of the scores we had youth with as many as six strikes in a game...not bad for beginners.

  It wasn't long before we said goodbye to our friends from Bladen and Hoke Counties.  We got in our vans and headed back to our offices.  Everyone smiling and thinking about what a grand time they had this week for biotech.

  If you think this is the end of our summer, stay tuned...because next week we will be changing it all up and grinding it down.