Twenty Five Hours in the Woods

Sunday, 7:00 am:  Arrived at camping unit: Ridge Lodge.  Met trainer.  Cleaned latrine.  Hoisted flag into tree.
Other campers arrived.  Eggs, bacon and toast were cooked.  Dishes were washed and hung to dry in dunk bags:

9:30-ish.  Hiked down to the Pooh Tree:

Yip yip yip yip...uh-huh, uh-huh

And walked along the Potomac:

Discovered poison ivy.  Leaves of three, Let them be!

Around noon:  Learned some fire-building skills:

Got my fire started with vaseline and cotton balls.  Was given the honor of being inducted into the One Match Club for starting my fire on the first try and keeping it going.  Felt pretty awesome.

 1:00 or so:  Lunchtime!  Chili on the propane stove, and this corn bread, cooked in a box oven.  That is an OVEN made out of a cardboard BOX!  You can really cook stuff in a box!

After lunch, we practiced putting up tents, learned some knots, learned some knife-safety skills, sawed some wood, and had a little down time.  I took some pictures.  Signs of fall:

At dinner, I was in charge of the camp fire.  Here is my fire.  I built it myself!

After dinner it was time for s'mores and entertainment.  I was assigned to be the entertainment.  I played the ukulele and taught everyone a song that Daphne and Kevin wrote about camping and marshmallows and bears.  It was a hit.  Plus, we heard GREAT HORNED OWLS! 

Then, it was time for bed.  We all slept inside the lodge.  I didn't sleep very well.  But only partly because of the SPECTACULAR snoring going on across the room.*  Mostly because I was too excited to sleep.  I loved camping and was awake in the night thinking about taking my troop camping and how much fun it will be.

(*There was also some audible passing gas going on over there!  Possibly my fault for cooking chili for lunch.  But in my defense, there WAS a jar of Bean-O on the fixins table next to the Fritos and cheese.  I took some and had no problems.)

Monday, 6:00 am.  Woke up, packed up my stuff.  Cleaned the latrine.  Checked and cleaned campsite. Received training card signature and became officially Camp Certified.
7:00: Said goodbye to everyone and took a long peaceful walk by myself through the woods and down to the river again.  Only sort of worried about bears trying to get me.

8:00:  Said goodbye to Ridge Lodge, and went home for breakfast.

PS.  GREAT HORNED OWLS!!!!!!!!!!!