Day 1

September 30, 2015

by Emily N

Yellow color group

This is a quick sketch of a sugar maple leaf that we saw on our hike.

When we arrived at Cardigan lodge, it was pouring rain. We all filed out of the bus which is an example of movement. Movement is one of th themes of geography.Oncew we were all off the bus, we slowly took our bags to the mudroom area on the first floor of the lodge. When all the bags were finally in the mudroom, we went upstairs to the dining room, and played some fun games, like "frog detective" and a "rock-paper-scissors" game. Eventually, we were able to set up our bunk rooms. There were two floors of bunk rooms, each room holding four to six people. my bunk room was Bea Burack, Mia Richter, Addie Locke, Meg Kimball-Rhines, and I. Later, we went back downstairs and the AMC lodge leaders introduced themselves as Robin, Hope, Tabitha, Bekah.

Later, after a long lunch, we decided to go outside on a short little hike in the woods, even though it was still raining. Again, we gathered in the dining room, and the lodge leaders announced who would be in their hiking groups for the days we were there. I was in Hope's group, with Bea, and our chaperone was Mr. O.D. The group leaders told us to go back to our bunk rooms and get changed into warm clothes for the hike.

When we were all finally dressed and ready to go, all of the hiking groups met in their designated meeting spots to talk. We played some "getting-to-know-you" games and then headed out on the trail. It was raining heavily, but as we walked out, we managed to stay dry. When we got to a little river we stopped. Our group walked around to the edge of the river and Hope explained to us that we would be doing some experiments that had to do with the acidity level of the water in different spots. We used little vials to capture water in different spots, then put dye in them. If the water from one spot was more of a certain color, it had more acid in it. We tested water in a few different spots, then conducted another short experiment. Afterwards, we were let loose to wander around and find cool animals and plants.

After a while, we headed back, half soaking wet, and snuggled back into our dry, warm clothes. When we had all settled back down, we were given free time. I chose to play Twister with Meg, Bea, Nolan. Nolan wound up winning, after Bea became a human pretzel for the 10th time and finally fell over.

Our dinner was really good, a lengthy meal of lasagna and salad. After dinner we also had a really good dessert. The group leaders explained to us what "ORT" was (leftover food), and we were taught the "ORT report" song. Our "ORT"(leftover food) for that meal was only 1.7 lbs. We were then dismissed to go back to our rooms and get ready to go outside, yet again, to do activities in the dark.

We met in our meeting spots before we headed out. As we walked out into the darkness of the forest, other groups followed behind. The groups all went to different spots, my group, Hope's group, went to the woods. We played some games in the dark and listened to the sounds of the woods, then headed over to the field and looked at the stars.

Back inside, we all got into our pajamas and got ready for some story time before we finally got to bed.