Day 2: My Hike Keeps Going...

The second day of the Cardigan trip was our big hike. Today's geographical theme was regions. We woke up at 7 am and had to be at breakfast for 7:30 am. I got ready really fast and went downstairs to the little cozy area on the dining floor. It turns out that they had nice, creamy, hot chocolate that you could get! I went down there at the right time. It was so good I had about 2 and a 1/2 cups of it. They only let you get 1/2 of a cup at a time, so I kept going up there! For breakfast we had eggs, bacon, watermelon, and blueberry muffins. It was so good but our ort was more than we wanted it to be. It was 0.6 pounds!

Once breakfast was finished we had to go upstairs and pack up for our big hike. Then we came back downstairs to make our lunches. I found out that day that the lodge makes some pretty good chocolate chip cookies! We were instructed to meet with our groups in the fields so that we could get started on our hike. Overnight, another instructor came named Tabitha and they took Alex and Michael from my group and put them in hers. It's easier to hike in smaller groups so it's a good thing that there was another group that was made.

For the hiking, two groups went one way and two groups went the other. Bekah's group, (my group) and Tabitha's group up to firescrew, over to Cardigan, and then down, and Robin and Hope's group went up to Cardigan, over to firescrew, and then down. Only three of the groups made it to the two mountains, though. Hope's group only got to go up to Cardigan and back.

Surprisingly to me, the hike in general didn't seem too hard to me. I thought it would be really long and that I'd get bored, but it was actually really fun. We reached lots of false summits and what we called an Alpine zone was actually not one! Because of the fire it makes the top of Cardigan look like it, but it was actually only what you call a false Alpine zone. I was the Navigator for a fourth of the hike, and I was so good at it that we got lost! We started going down a steep hill past this huge boulder. I started to slip so I put my hand on a tree to stop myself, and when I took it off it was full-on covered in sap! We stopped along the way to do Plot Studies, where we'd measure out 10 ft. by 10 ft. squares and then study the wildlife inside of them. We did three of them in total, all stretched out between our hike. Each time we had to fill out a paper about it and choose something to sketch from that square. I chose a beech tree leaf for the first one, spruce needles for the second one, and dead spruce branches for the third one. During our first one Preston found a woodpecker and I got to see it from about three feet away! Also along the way if we saw anything cool than we'd stop to sketch it. I think the coolest thing I saw was the Alpine moss like stuff on top of Firescrew, because it reminded me of coral from the ocean. The absolute location of that Alpine moss was N 43 degrees 39' 21.9" and W 71 degrees 54' 28", and the elevation was 3,039 ft.

Later after a dinner of Sweet & Sour chicken, we went outside for a campfire. There we sang some strange songs that I had no idea even existed, listened for owls, and made up skits to try and make it look like our group had the most fun on our hike. Our skit was, well, let's just say a little loud, but other than that it was okay. I was a woodpecker. It was a really fun night and after the campfire we were sent up to our bunk rooms to get in bed.

To the right is a sketch of the "Alpine Moss" on the top of Mount. Firescrew.
	This is a sketch of a dead spruce branch within the bounderies of our third Plot Study.
This is a sketch of both a big root and a bent tree at the location called "Grand Junction."

We were at Cardigan Lodge for three days: Sunday (Day 1), the day we arrived, Monday (Day 2), the day of the big hike, and Tuesday (Day 3), which is when we got poured on.