Weather FIip Flop
Dear Parents and Friends,
Today was a total flip flop of yesterday. We awoke to rain this morning and lots of it. My rain gage at the house registered 2 ¼ inches of rain overnight but by the end of lunch we had beautiful sunny skies and it’s a cool and clear evening here. The rain has had a cooling effect on our evenings and mornings and the low tonight will be 62. High tomorrow will be 86. We’re weather watchers here and for a number of reasons. The obvious is that we have children and staff all over our property and we monitor the weather throughout the day especially in the afternoon when thunderboomers can come through our valley. Sometimes we’ll postpone a tubing trip on the river or a creek hike because of incoming weather. Today was a good example as we had to cancel a creek hike on the Brookside creek because of all the rainfall. The group hiked the Hillside creek which is much smaller and had a great time. As a paddler I’m always monitoring our local rivers and streams. Rain fall is important to our program because of the many natural flow rivers in our area. We also utilize several dam controlled rivers. And while most of our campers are close by on the property we monitor the weather for our trips out of camp, like the Riverside group over in Linville Gorge right now on a climbing trip. You learn a lot just by watching the clouds each day, smelling the air and feeling changes in the humidity levels. On some days you can smell the rain way before it gets here.
The recent rains have made the farm a treasure trove of food items and I was shooting some video down there today. Our group of master GV gardener’s picked broccoli, beans and carrots today. I had to leave before they fed the baby calves but did get some good footage of them harvesting milking Bessie and cow and playing with the baby chicks. Tonight for dinner we ate directly from the farm: Meatloaf from our cows, green beans and carrots from the garden. There was apple strudel for desert. We don’t really advertise that we raise our own beef unless the children ask and usually that’s not very often. I think many of them secretly know and suspect but it’s just one of those things we all keep on down low. We also eat the fish we catch from the Millpond but fish are not in the same category as a cow.
From photos today you’ll see some kayaking on the lake, fishing at the Millpond, horseback riding and farming. Tonight was international campfire and most all of our countries were represented. We visited so many countries on our travels from GV Airlines. Captain Matt and Flight Attendant Judy led us on our journey.
The week is beginning to fly by and it seems that the first couple of days went by very slowly and now everything is moving faster as the session progresses. It’s hard to slow camp down but we do manage to do so. Mealtime provides a relaxed time for good food and conversation at the table. Today at our table were talking what super power you would want to possess. One young camper said all of them. Others talked about being invisible and one wanted the power of ignite and explode things. From super powers our discussion transitioned to lava and the center of the earth and volcanoes. I’m not sure how that whole discussion started but it was fun and I was struck by how the kids provided their own thoughts and observations. By the end of the meal the food slowed us down and we settled into a game of blow pong before announcements. Blow pong is played with a ping pong ball and you try and keep it on the table just by using your own wind. Navigation blow pong is even harder and something you have to work up to after a high brow discussion like we had. You can ask your camper about it when they get home. Slowing things down for all of us is a good thing. Camp can be loud and noisy and it’s good to be quiet and reflective for short segments during the day. We live in a world where the natural sounds are mostly covered up. As I write the Hillside creek babbles along and says to me it’s about time to close this recap of the day. One young camper told me today that she slept so well because of living in a cabin on the Brook. “It’s so nice and it causes me to go right to sleep”. What a life the camp life is. Stay tuned!
PS Internet was down last night so pics from yesterday and blog didn’t get up until this morning. Rural DSL is sometimes finicky.