Day 1 at Mount Cardigan

Day 1

The bus pulled up on the muddy gravel driveway in front of the AMC lodge. I was feeling glum because it was raining and I had been looking forward to the trip for weeks. Hope came onto the bus and talked to us about what we were going to do. We got off the bus and unloaded our things into the tack room. We sat in the nature corner and Mr. Woolner read off our bunk rooms so we could bring our luggage up to our room. Then we went up into the dining hall and Hope asked us what we wanted to know about them. We waited until the rest of the instructors came into the room, they told us all about themselves. We went with our instructors into our designated spots. I was with Beckah who was in the nature corner and we talked about the rules and we made a five finger contract. She told us we were going to do compass readings and we were given 10 minutes to go get our water bottles and put on rain gear. She showed us how to use a compass and we headed outside into the rainy weather. We followed a set of instructions and compass bearings. These bearings lead us to certain trees that had a page in the booklet we were following that told us what the trees were. There were many trees such as beech, white pine, apple, Norway maple, and spruce. Many of these trees were not always there and got moved, this is an example of movement. These trees are the Norway maple from Norway, the Scotch pine from Scotland and many more. Our ideas were also moved so were the instructors. One instructor was from North Carliona. As we were going around we were collecting the leaves of the different trees to sketch when we got back into the lodge.

We walked into the mud room took off our boots and we went up into the nature corner and we sketched the different leaves we had gathered. We wrote down the longitude and latitude. After we had finished they gave us some free time to hang around. She told us to come down at 5:45. Our group that night was to set up for dinner. When we came down she told us how to setup for dinner and some of us brought cups, water and lemonade from the kitchen to the table while others put out silverware.

After dinner we went outside for a night time activity. The activities were based around nocturnal animals and how they can operate in the dark. We started off by doing an acitvity based on echo location. Someone with their eyes closed would say bat and someone else would say moth, similar to Marco Polo. The next activity was holding a rope with one hand and moving around blindfolded without being able to see. We ended up down on the hiking path where we were about to do another activity but our group was a bunch of nimrods and we did not get to do the activity. Towards the end we ended up writing on our hand with a marker to see how good we could see the color. We also did a bioluminescence activity where we chomped down on mints and saw the spark. After that we headed inside and Mr. Woolner read us two stories. One about Black Beard and Good Night Moon. Mr. Woolner went on vacation to North Carolina and that is where he bought the Black Beard book. During the Black Beard story Mr. Woolner was showing us how tall Black Beard was. He stood on the stone and wood table and suddenly it collapsed! Then we headed to bed.

This was Wednesday,September 30,2015