The first thing we did on day one was get on the bus, after the bus ride ended we arrived at the AMC Mt. Cardigan Lodge.Then we went out back to play a park ranger game that was kind of like sharks and minnows but you only went when they called out something that had to do with the animal you thought of. Afterwards we went to where our bags had been unloaded and brought our bags up to our rooms to meet our bunk mates and unpack. Once our time was up we all checked to make sure our hiking bags were packed with all the necessary items and because the cold and windy climate on and around Cardigan made us have to wear lots of layers. Soon trail guides and parent helpers were herding us out of bunk rooms to the porch in the back which was where I found that most of session two had already gathered. It took a while but once we were sure that everyone was there the trail guides told us a few rules and expectations we had to follow. After they were done each trail guide told us a little bit about themselves and called out the names of the kids in their group. My trail guide was Fern and I was the first name she called, once they were done calling names we went inside to eat our lunches because it had taken us longer to arrive then we thought and kids were getting hungry so we ended up deciding instead of having lunch on the trail like we had originally been supposed to we would instead eat lunch in the lodge. Soon lunch finished and we went outside to meet with our individual groups. In Ferns group we played a small game together and then started to think of a group name for ourselves. Half the group thought of one part of the name and the other half thought of the second half when we finally put them together we had come up with the name Fantastic Flying Gorillas the half of the group I was in was the part of the group that thought of gorillas. Fern opened up a notebook and wrote Fantastic Flying Gorillas right in the center of the page then, for good measure, she underlined it and circled the entire thing she then wrote down a few expectations we had decided on as a group and we all signed the page
Finally the time had come to take our first hike together as a group, each group ended up leaving at their own times and my group left second to last, we were headed partially down Manning trail which is the main trail off the lodge. To make this trail people had to cut down lots of trees and spent much time grooming the trail so that people could hike on it, they also added a Jobox at the intersection of two trails for the nearby campers to put their food in to protect the food from bears. They also had lots of trail markers on trees and when there was not enough trees they would paint it on a rock or stump, this is an example of Human Environment Interaction. We had to make a lot of drawings of plants and continually had to stop. Because we stopped so often I had to keep putting on my jacket and then taking it back off again because my body temperature kept going up and down. One of these stops was when the two halfs of the group tried making two rainbows out of different colored leaves it was hard finding blues and purples but then someone noticed that if you turned a specific type of leaf over the underside would be a weird purple/ black color. Finally after lots of walking and drawing we came back to the lodge and had an hour of free time, then we ate dinner and my group was supposed to be the set up crew but it ended up being taco night so we didn't have to do it we all ate tons of food and one of my friends ended up eating like five tacos. Dinner ended quickly and we had brownies for dessert however, like dinner, those were gone quickly too and we went upstairs to check we had warm enough gear on because after that we would be going on a night hike that we were not allowed to bring any flashlights for so people were getting a little freaked out over how we were supposed to see.We were once again herded outside to meet with our groups when I got outside Fern made us go all the way to the fire pit so we could be away from the light, after talking for a bit she made us wear blind folds and form a line with our hands on the person's shoulders in front of us, it was annoying because the line kept stopping for no reason and kept slamming into the person in front of me who sadly was a guy. After stumbling around in the dark for a while we finally got back to the lodge where Mr Woolner told us a story all about Blackbeard once it was over we were finally allowed to go to sleep and I passed out almost immediately.
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Day 1 Cardigan Sketches by Annalise L is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.