What a nice start to Denver’s second session – the weather that plagued the Front Range all weekend decided to lighten up enough for us to have a nice first day of our first 2-week session. Our day started at Base Camp (the Vanguard Classical School, 8th & Yosemite) where staff member Zach sang the “Fishing Song” and challenged the new campers with a name game. We then piled into the van and headed for Cherry Creek State Park. New campers were introduced to many of the important Altogether Outdoors rules such as ‘drink lots of water and wear sunscreen’ and the different parts of ‘Leave No Trace.’ Returning campers did a nice job explaining how our rules help us to have a fun time at camp. Campers collaborated for a while to decide on a team name. We are now called the Wonderful Aqua Ninja Nerd Club. Campers then got the chance to decorate their own waterbottles and we shared how each bottle was unique. We played a water-drinking game to get used to the bottles.
Lunchtime was spent with campers getting to know one another better. The group then chose to go on an exploratory trek around the West side of Cherry Creek State Park. We walked to the floating dock where we were met by many adult and baby Geese. We then followed “Goose Beach” all the way until we ran into a small pond that blocked our path. So what did we do? We problem solved. The campers decided to find a trail that went around the pond. We had to try a few different paths but eventually succeeded! During our trek we had some fun tracking deer and eventually saw a deer in the distance! When we returned from our trek the campers enjoyed free play with one another.
The rest of the afternoon was spent creating our group code (a set of rules we WANT to follow at camp), planning for tomorrow (we’re going insect catching and making nature journals) and eating GORP (camp’s version of trail mix). In the van on the way to our pick up spots we talked about our ‘rose and thorn’ (good and not-so-good parts of our day), sang “A boy and a Girl” and ended our day “On Top of Spaghetti.”