Day 1 at Cardigan

By: John J

Yellow color group

September 31-2 October2015

As we got off the bus it was raining. I was soaking wet and muggy. We got a whole bunch of bags out of the back of the bus and brought them inside to a big room. It was kind of like a mud room.The place here was outstanding! A nice warm lodge with the most fresh wood floors you would ever see. Trails here and there going up into the woods. The birds hovering over the roof of the lodge calling. What an amazing environment this was! After that we went up to the dining room and the guides gave us info and we played some games. We basically just got to know the guides. We found out who our hiking guides where and decided where to meet. My group met in the library/multi purpose room. After lunch, we went to meet up with our groups before we took a hike. On the hike we started to notice brooks, streams, types of plants and even little waterfalls!

We took water samples and they changed colors. We then began to search for salamanders and frogs and other animals.

After that we just kept on hiking. We saw so many cool things and creatures.

The Picture you see above is a really big white birch leaf we found.

We could easily see human environment interactions by seeing the blue tape on the trees and all of the places where people used to live. Even though now it's just woods, it's pretty cool to think that people have actually lived there. We then played a game where you got a partner. You blindfold your partner and you bring them to a tree. You walk them back to the center where they were and took off their blindfold. Then they would need to go find the tree you assigned them. That was pretty fun. Then we collected leaves from all different trees, put them in a bag and headed back. When we got back we introduced ourselves. We then took sketches of our leaves. I kept thinking about how much physical geography there was on the hike. Like trees and places where you could see where the weathering took place. Then...Free Time! During free time I played football and had fun doing so. After free time had come to an end it was time to eat. So we went upstairs and began to eat. The dinner was amazing, we had lasagna. It was great. After that we found out how much ort we had. Ort meaning food waste. They would weigh the ort and sing a little song. Then they would reveal the truth of how many pounds we got. After dinner we went back down to our meeting places and got ready for our night walk. Our night walk was the coolest! First we sat down in the pitch black dark woods. We listened to all the different sounds and just calmed down. It was so relaxing. After that we played bat and moth. It was fun. Then we went over and watched the stars. Hope, my guide told us a story while we covered one eye and stared at a bright light she put down. After the story you would uncover your eye and one eye could see clearly, and the other you couldn't see a thing. After the night walk it was story time. We all gathered in the living room and listened as Mr. Woolner began. He was reading and acting as he read. He hopped up on the coffee table with a theatrical voice. Then out of nowhere...BOOM! Mr. Woolner had fallen through the table. He was fine but the table wasn not. After storytime we got ready for bed. Mr. Woolner came in and gave us candy, which was awesome. About five minutes later, lights out! I went to bed thinking what a day, what a day.