I spent all day Saturday out at one of our area campsites with the camping advisers from all around the area having a meeting, doing crafts, and participating in general hilarity. :)
I am so impressed with the dedication and passion our area camping advisers have for camping and I really enjoyed just chatting about some of the events and activities that we want to do in the next year. It should be a lot of fun so stay tuned!
We started off the day with a sit down and talk meeting about what we wanted to accomplish next year as a camping committee. We got this really cool s'mores cookbook with a whole bunch of recipes from s'mores Rice Krispie squares to milkshakes. I will definitely be using it this summer. :) We also used the red and green Popsicle sticks to play a safety game where someone would ask a question like "cross the street without looking both ways" and you would put up the green for yes and the red for no. It would be a great activity for younger kids to learn basic safety skills.
This is our clothesline of favourite things about camping, songs, recipes, activities, and cooking methods. It is a really good way to share ideas and could be left up throughout a weekend to keep adding to.
One of the activities we did was make tracking sticks, I will put up a post on how to do this soon but here is a picture of me staining the stick with watered down acrylic paint. Although I am not completely happy with my finished stick (I rarely am with things I make, you could call it a character flaw) it was a great idea and could be very useful!
Of course it was raining (and has been for the past two weeks) but I really like the look of raindrops on plants, and our campsite has some of the prettiest wild roses around!
This rock was painted by my friend Sara about five years ago at a Gold Camp we were at and I was pretty excited to see that it was still at Hilltop House! There are so many memories associated with stuff like this and it was really fun to see!
We had a delicious lunch of soup and make your own wraps and then had this yummy looking dessert. It is a wrap cheesecake. The theory behind it is that you always buy too many tortilla shells for camp and have leftovers. This dessert uses a tortilla wrap, cream cheese, and a few other ingredients to make a delicious concoction. I am not a fan of cheesecake or gooey things but I thought I would try it and it was pretty good. I ate the strawberries and cinnamon sugar mix and the ends of the tortilla but saved the gooey-ness for my mom :) Thanks mom!
On our way down to the waterfront for some pond dipping we had a leaf scavenger hunt. If you use good judgement and do not completely strip trees, it is okay to collect leaves for things like this but you should use discretion when doing something like this with your girls.
I have always thought the waterfront out at this campsite was beautiful, especially this time of year and I was pretty proud of my little camera for capturing some nature shots. Even though it was raining and overcast it is still beautiful Alberta!
Pond dipping with collapsible strainers duct taped to sticks. The strainers were great for surface dipping but they were not quite sturdy enough for deep dipping. We found a lot of great little critters.
When you are doing a pond study I think it is best to get bins like the one in the picture, plastic spoons, ice cube trays, and magnifying glasses so you can observe all of the bugs and plants from the water. Remember to return all of the life to the water when you are done!
This is the crazy little monster I was talking about on twitter (@girlguidechange). It is a rat tailed maggot (EWWW!!). It had a body like a caterpillar, a mouth like a leech, and a really weird tail we did not even think was attached to the body. It was definitely one of the most interesting little things I have ever seen and if you download the picture you can zoom in and really see what it looks like.
This is a pond peeper! It can be submerged in water to see what is going on below the surface. I thought it was a really cool idea and would be fun to use in clearer water...
This is a muskrat! I saw two swimming in the lake and then disappearing into the plants so they were probably a little muskrat family which made me smile. :)
I also got a picture of this really cool looking bird (I can't remember what it is called) that was flying all around the area we were looking at.
Another beautiful picture of the lake!
This was our supper dessert (we always seem to have lots of desserts at these things...) I was impressed by the pretty trefoil design on the top!
Our last activity of the day was making a nature journal out of six envelopes. I will probably do either a video or a blog post on this soon. I was pretty proud of my front cover :).
We had a really good day and got a lot of things accomplished. Thanks to all of the camping advisers for doing such an awesome job this year and I can't wait for next year!
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