DAY 2 - Exploring Routes
Day two started with chocolate chip and banana pancakes! As a group, we discussed our options for after breakfast. We came to the decision that given the predicted weather, today would be a good day to walk up Center Hill. We did our daily household chores and cleaned up our personal spaces in preparation for the day.
Before heading out, we all made sandwiches and personal trail mix. We walked up Center Hill and sat at the top snacking for a while! We tried to identify some mountains and eventually the girls decided it was time to continue on. On the way down, we stopped and identified club moss and then carefully practiced our skills at hiking down wet rocks and roots.
After our hike, we went to an overlook that looks out on Webb Lake and the surrounding mountains. Everybody picked wild blueberries so that we could make a pie in the afternoon. It is hard to say if more made it in our bellies or in the containers...
On the way back to camp we stopped at Kinneawatha, an old girls camp that is now a town park, and ate our picnic lunches. When we got home, we enjoyed a well deserved swim to cool off before rest time! The girls sure love rest time and a few of them even fell asleep!
After rest time we sat in a circle on the porch around a basket of dried herbs and prepared personalized herbal tea bags. Chloë and Grace read descriptions about the properties of each herb and then the girls picked which ones they wanted to add to their blends. We had fruit smoothies for an afternoon snack and then finished our tea bags by drawing labels, which were then sewn on.
The girls then had free time and could choose what they wanted to do - we made pizza dough, baked a blueberry pie, took showers, played board games, read, journaled, drew, and worked on friendship bracelets. Although dinner was approaching quickly, the girls were very hungry after our walk so we ended up having a second snack of frozen grapes and quesadillas.
We cooked our pizzas over the fire for dinner and they were DELICIOUS. There is nothing quite like the combination of homemade pizza dough, the faint taste of campfire, caesar salad, and a hungry stomach. We were very satisfied!! To top it all off, we had fresh warm blueberry pie when we finished!
Our evening craft was making seed bead bracelets and “barefoot sandals”. Afterwards, we went for a dip in the lake to cool off before getting ready for bed. We then got cozy in our pjs with a cup of tea and shared shout outs, or kind memories, from the day. The girls didn’t have much to share tonight so we talked about how that could improve - we could all do more kind things for each other and we could also recognize each other’s kind acts more during the day. We concluded that if we did these two things, then we might have more to say during the evening shout outs.
Chloë read out loud while Grace helped the girls with their bracelets and drawings. After several chapters of Nancy Drew, and even more yawns, we brushed our teeth and headed upstairs to read in our own beds before lights out. It is a quiet group but they are slowly starting to get to know each other more and open up. We are looking forward to what tomorrow brings...
