Day 3: And Comes to an End...

This third day was our last day at Cardigan. Today we mostly used the geographical theme of human and environment interaction. We had to wake up at 7 o'clock again, and pack up our stuff from in our bunk rooms. My Dad was a chaperone there so he put mine in his car to take home. After that was taken care of we headed down to a breakfast of french toast and sausage, where we finally beat our ORT goal! We got 0.4 pounds. After that we made our lunches and then met outside on the porch, where Bekah explained to us what we'd be doing today.

We headed over to the campground area to do an old compass course, but soon found out that something was wrong! The course was written a long time ago, so everything was moved around and different than the course described. It was then quite obvious to us that we couldn't do it, so we sketched a really cool Striped Maple instead. That was located at N 43 degrees 38' 58.8" and W 71 degrees 52' 32.8" at an elevation of 1, 338 ft. Bekah also had this delicious trail mix that she gave each of us with these weird seeds and M&M's. Once that was done, we went over to this trail that went to Welton Falls. It then started raining buckets and we had to stop and put on our rain gear. I didn't put on my rain pants because I thought that the rain would stop, but I soon found out that that was not the case. We stopped eventually at a dirt clearing by the rushing river and did an activity that involved each of us having a card around our necks and we had to hold hands with whoever that we related to. This had to do with human environment interaction because one of the cards said "person," so we had to see how us natural things related to that person. Then we got to eat lunch, which was a challenge considering that my backpack was soaked and my brown paper bag was wet and dripping. My pants were getting all wet so I then put on my huge rain pants that I borrowed from my Mom. The waistband was way too high up for me and they kept sliding down. But, at least they kept me dry!

After lunch we packed up and started to hike back to the lodge. We were all soaking wet but we didn't care! We also found that it took way less time hiking back then hiking to where we were. We got back in less than a half hour, and then Bekah sat us down on an old rotten log and told us to get out our sketchbooks and write the word, "unless" on the page. We were then told to draw anything we wanted in our sketchbooks that had to do with this trip. I chose to draw the newt that Bridget, Lauren, Ana, Caroline and I found. In the background, we could hear the logging going on next to the lodge, which is kind of ironic considering that Bekah was reading The Lorax to us.

Once that was over, we headed back to the lodge to say goodbye. When we go there, Bekah had us get into a circle and tell us the "rose, thorn, and branch" of our trip. The rose was something we learned, the thorn was something we struggled with, and the branch was something that we grew on. Once everyone in my group had done that, it was time to say goodbye and head back. We waved from the windows of the bus, and then poof, we were off down the windy road towards home.

This is a sketch of the newt that Caroline, Ana, Bridget, Lauren and I found out by the pond in front of the lodge. I got to pick it up and it's little feet felt so cool!

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.