Saturday, August 27, 2011

Day 15 - Jennifer Longshore

The Group woke up with high spirits today even though it was early and chilly. Each tent group broke down their camp and canoe partners packed their boats in preparation for the day’s journey before coming together for a lesson form Steve about weather.

Once Steve’s lesson was done and announcements were made we quickly made our way down the river. We had a long way to go today, but for most of the day the boats were filled with laughter and not grumbles.

We managed to line or steer our canoes through three sets of rapids instead of portaging, which saves a lot of time and keeps everyone in a good mood. As we turned around the bend after our third set of rapid navigating we were met by something we didn’t think we would see our entire time on the river – other people! A friendly man and woman with their playful dog had heard us passing through the rapids and had come out of their cabin to see what all the noise was about. We were all shocked and excited to see some new faces after so many days of only having each other to stare at. The nice couple took a couple pictures of our group all together before we said our goodbyes and continued on our way.

We finally made it to Lake Selwyn, but Corey, our leader of the day, had a difficult time finding us a campsite. He finally settled on a place, but it was a little small so Jeff and Steve had to paddle around the corner to find a site of their own.

While the rest of my group set up camp and began setting out the things we needed to cook dinner, I set out to fill our dromedary with water to cook with. I went to the water’s edge and scooped up a bowl of water to put in our drom, but it was full of bugs so I needed to go out farther to find cleaner water. I got in a canoe and headed out about 15 feet from shore. I had no trouble at all filling up our dromedary in the canoe by myself but as I turned to head back to shore, I suddenly flipped the canoe. I was able to save my paddle and our water bag, but my group’s large cook pot sank to the bottom of the lake. I was able to pull the canoe to shore and get it flipped over by myself but I had no luck at all finding the pot even after dawning goggles and swimming down as far as I could. Leave it to me, the clumsiest member of our group, to be the first to flip a canoe!

After camp was set up and dinner was prepared we met for debrief and then Corey taught his lesson about biomes and ecosystems and Nicki taught her lesson about staying warm while sleeping. Her lesson couldn’t have been given at a more perfect time since the nights here are getting colder and colder.

Once lessons were done it was time for homework and bed. Hopefully everyone did a good job hanging their bear bags since we saw bear tracks on the beach on our way here. I guess we will see if anyone has any food left in the morning…

Until next rotation,
Jen

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