Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Day 4 - Monica Gummow

Today was our last day at Horn Field Campus. We had so much to do yet before we left for Canada, so we got started on our to-do list right away. After a short, light breakfast prepared by Katy, we began the task that we had all been waiting for: the gear shakedown. During the shakedown, we all take out all of our clothes and equipment and decide what was suitable for our back-country Canada trip. I know many of us were nervous that we had packed too much, not enough, or just the wrong things in general. After sorting through all of our items, most of us had done ok when we had packed at home. For those who needed new equipment though, a trip to REI was planned for tomorrow when we would be driving through Minnesota.

After we had gone through our individual gear, we sorted through the group items and split up the gear amongst the members of our tent groups. Once we had all of our things packed, we got together anything we had left and packed that away in storage until September. Away went all of our bags and then we moved on to the next exciting thing. Jeff taught us how to maintenance the vans and attach the trailers that carry our gear and canoes.

Lunch was nice and quick and then we all split up to get more tasks accomplished. Corey and I went to the laundry mat to do everyone’s dirty clothes one more time. Tony and Sarah went to the health center to get physical forms and Steve and Brandon went to the RPTA office to handle some other paperwork. Since the laundry and physicals took a while, we were on campus for 4 hours. We were gone so long everyone else had time to make a grocery run and clean all of our cabins.

Once we were all back at Horn Field, we finished packing some things in the van and before we knew it, it was dinner time. After dinner we rushed to get cleaned up because it was party time!! As an ECOEE tradition, an ice cream social was held as our send off party. It was great seeing our professors from the RPTA department and ECOEE alumni. We received lots of advice and well wishes; we even had the privilege to have Dr. McGowan teach us a last minute paddle stroke. As our guests left for the evening, I’m sure we all felt a little sad about officially leaving our friends and professors. Although, the long day ahead of us and the forth coming adventure made the evening extremely bitter sweet.

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