By Dylan McDonough
The snow was silently coming down as I arrived at Camp Roger for Adventurers. I was particularly excited about this one because adventures are always exciting, especially while hanging out with great friends!
For our first adventure we went with Hannah and Mary Jo. Since there were fewer kids this day due to the snow, we broke into two groups instead of three, with my group having two teachers. Snowshoeing was the main topic for the first adventure. The Blazing Bobcats went down to the snowshoe shack. Hannah explained why we need snowshoes in the first place. When you spread out your weight on the snow, you do not sink as far down. Once we all had our snowshoes on, we headed outside again. Last year, I tried snowshoeing and did not like it. I even called snowshoes my kryptonite, but this time it was better because there was more snow on the ground.
At one point we had to follow Hannah’s footprints in the snow. She made a big eight slice pizza shape in the snow. We played Fox and Geese with our snowshoes still on. One kid was the fox that had to chase everyone around in the pizza shape. You had to stay in the lines Hannah made. If the geese got tagged or fell in the fresh snow, they were out. I have to say, it was really fun! At one point I fell face first and was stuck in the snow. And then the wolf came right around the corner, and gulp! Dead. After the life and death chase, we all tried to see who could jump the farthest with snowshoes on. I went the farthest!
For our second adventure, without snowshoes, we went to the edge of Ridge Hall, near the sledding hill. We made a track of snow for a weighted sled without a pilot to go down. Everyone picked spots along the track to work on. Asher, Avery, and I worked on the middle area. I added a jump to our track! The strategy was to get enough momentum for the round, metal sled to go all the way down the hill. The first couple of runs were a failure. We adjusted for the problems that stopped the weighted sled from going all the way to the bottom. Our weights were three small logs which sometimes fell out slowing down the sled. We wrapped a string around the logs to prevent this from keep happening. On the last run we had to give it six pushes throughout its run to reach the bottom. Just because the logs
did not have a great run down, did not mean we couldn’t. We ran to the other sledding hill where sleds were waiting for us and we zipped down! Asher and I got on one sled and raced down while hitting a stump which veered us toward a wall of haystacks, and WAM! I got a mouthful of frosted hay.
For our last adventure we went with Mary Jo where we read a book about ice caves. The pictures were really unique. One ice form looked like a frozen plane in a frozen cloud that was raining. Afterwards, we went outside to make ice cream! There was a machine in a bucket that we had to fill to the rim with snow. There was a paddle inside that would mix the snow with a vanilla mixture. While we were waiting, my friends and I played King of the Mountain, or I should say King of the Iceberg. Mary Jo showed us another book about snowflakes. Every snowflake is different, and has six points. We paired off into groups of two, and were handed mini microscopes. Asher and I were in a group with one microscope. Everybody was trying to catch a snowflake and look at it through the microscopes. At first Asher couldn’t get the microscope to work just right. Finally he got it but then I dropped it in the snow, clogging the nozzle. While Asher unclogged it, I went to find snowflakes, but it is very hard to find one single snowflake. Then I found it…the most perfect snowflake on a mound of ice. Then, crunch! Someone stepped on it. Mary Jo did get one snowflake and man, it is not what you would expect! It was truly amazing. Lastly, we got the ice cream machine working. In conclusion to a long story, it was ice cream soup. I guess we can’t make a living at this.
For the last event we all went down to the sand pit covered in snow. There were two tractor tires with bowling pins on top of them. We separated into two groups, the Angry Anteaters versus the Bad Bananas. I was on the Bad Bananas team. For the first competition, we had to make and throw snowballs, trying to knock down the bowling pins on your tractor tire. At this point in the day my hands were very cold so I could not pack down snowballs, but I could throw just fine. The Bad Bananas won the first round! The next game was a dog sled race. The “dogs” were actually kids pulling other kids on a sled. Whoever got all of the kids across first won. Oh, it’s on! When it was my turn, I put my hands and feet up in the air, but I celebrated too soon because the Angry Anteaters beat us fair and square. The last competition was ultimate tog-of-war! Everyone got on a side and pulled. My gloves were all wet so the rope practically slid right out of my hands. This caused
me to slip backwards causing confusion and disorder on my team. With this opportunity, the Angry Anteaters simply pulled us across the cones. Mr. Doug explained a new game that we had never done before. You know those contests where you have to toss the egg to each other trying not to break it? Well, we were doing that, but with snowballs. It was a good thing because I just got new gloves on and didn’t want egg guts on them. Avery and I were paired up this time. Although our snowball fell apart on the first try, we kept “pretend throwing” the little snow bits across to each other, but that still did not really work.
This Camp Roger was thrilling and exciting. I especially liked learning about snowflakes and seeing them under a microscope. I also like that snowshoes are no longer like kryptonite to me
