Day 1: In Which My Hike Begins...

This day is the first day we were at Cardigan. I would say that this day was mostly based on the geographical theme of movement. When we arrived, a large whitish bluish mass of a lodge stood before us and a cheerful learning instructor named Hope came to greet us. We were told to go over to the grassy clearing to the left side of the lodge, and that is where we spent about half of day one. In the beginning, three instructors came out to greet us, Hope, who we already knew, Bekah, and Robin. They had us play some games and do some activities while the other staff were cleaning out the lodge for us so that we could move our stuff inside. After a while we stopped to have lunch, and Lauren, Caroline, Hailey, Ana and I all went to the far side of the field under a small tree to eat.

After lunch, we were split into groups. I was in Bekah's group with Hailey, Jaclyn, Charlotte, Caitlyn, Alex, Michael (Jeff), Glenn, Jason, Karl, and Preston. We got to know each other and then sat down and picked a group name. We came up with the Purple Panthers, which is kind of lame because I was thinking something more abstract like the Radical Radishes, but we stuck with it anyways. So, after we decided that we set out to do a water study on Bailey's Brook. Before we left, Bekah assigned us different jobs like the Navigator, the Leader, the Magical Forest carrier, the Toastmaker, and the LNT Ninja.(Leave no trace) Just as we were leaving the grassy field for the trail to Bailey's Brook, we saw a tiny little snake! Our group decided that it would be our first sketch so we set everything down and sketched it. We all circled around it and Karl kept trying to touch it with his boot which was not appreciated, so it started to get scared and after about 3 minutes we let it go and set off again towards our water study.

The Water study took about 2-3 hours, although it was not far away from the lodge. We just had to go on some flat hiking trails for a couple of minutes to get there. In the beginning, we had to sketch and write down the coordinates of Bailey's brook. We had to fill out this laminated paper with tons of questions that would help determine what the condition of it was. I got to do that and use this awesome colored pencil thingy that was very cool to write with on the paper. After that was done, we looked for critters, and then tested the water. I think that testing the water was the best part about Bailey's brook because it was cool dying it and then matching it up with the right color. Once that was done, we were about finished for the day and packed up to trek our way back to the lodge.

At dinner, the AMC staff does this thing called an "ort report." It's where they measure how much food is left on your plate, which they call ort (our remaining tidbits). That first night our ort was 0.7 pounds. Once we finished, we had to go upstairs to get ready for the "night program" where you go outside and experience walking in the dark. My groups did lots of fun activities, all without flashlights. Bekah said that we had to let our eyes adjust to the darkness and then we could see better. We played bat and mouse in the grassy field, and then she blindfolded all of us and we had to hold onto a rope and walk on a trail blindfolded. We then got to take our blindfolds off and listened to her talk about how bats can see in the dark and why we can't see as clearly. We found that if you looked at someone's head, then it would disappear! Also I learned that you can create lightning by chewing a hard winter green mint lifesaver, which happens because of the sugar clots exploding inside. Then right as we were about to go back Bekah gave us each a marker and told us to figure out what color it was and write it on our hand. I thought mine was orange because I held it against my orange fleece and it looked the same! But when I got back, I found that it was purple.

Lastly, this was a very special night because there was a lunar eclipse! It happened right there while we were at cardigan and it was so cool. We went out to the front of the AMC lodge at 9 o'clock and saw that half the moon was red! Later before we went to bed I found that you could see it from the window on the staircase, and it was almost completely red. I kind of wanted to see when it turned totally red, but we had to go to bed. People from my bunk room kept trying to sneak out to the bathroom to look because you could see it from there too!

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.