Last Week of Camp

Andrew and I went to Green River for church on Sunday. The pastor was gone and asked Andrew to fill the pulpit. He did Sunday school and then preached for church. We left right after the morning service so we could join the staff for the afternoon activity.

Mr. Dean took the staff up Sacred Rim in the afternoon. It was an hour-long hike (fairly easy) that took us to an overlook of several lakes and a great view of some of the mountains in the Wind River Range. It was beautiful up there. We had a picnic supper when we hiked back down. As we traveled down from the area toward Pinedale there was a pretty nice sunset that we stopped to take pictures of.

Monday was a pretty busy day. We did a white-glove cleaning of the cabins. There was a contest between the boys and the girls for who could clean the best. The Program Team took a white rag and wiped it wherever they wanted in the cabin to check for dirt. Of course the girls team won.  Our dessert that night was a major icecream bar. Because of the altitude sometimes the icecream containers will bulge open. The store can’t sell it that way, so they gave a bunch of half gallons to the camp for free. There were about a dozen different flavors and lots of toppings to put on it. We were pretty exhausted that night.

Tuesday we did a few more odd jobs and the SALT counselors left around mid-day. The pastor in Pinedale has some horses, so the rest of the staff got to go horse-back ridding. Andrew and I went in the last group (groups of 3). Andrew had a good horse, but she seemed to know that Andrew didn’t know what he was doing. She would see the lead horse trotting, and she would look back at him and then start trotting. My horse was kind of ornery. She wanted to eat and was SO slow. But then when she would see the other horses trotting she would take off too. I had a hard time controlling her, but thankfully she knew where she was going and it wasn’t too bad of a ride. The pastor said we got the hardest ride because the horses were tired and didn’t to go any more (we just rode around the block). One of the counselor girls, Alicen, got bucked off by the horse. Her wrist was hurting her, so on Thursday she went to the clinic and found out she had broken a bone in her hand. She came back with a cast on.

Wednesday we hiked Gypsum mountain (the one you see from the front porch of camp). It took about 50 min to drive to the base of the mountain, and it was a drive you wouldn’t want to take in anything less than a 4-wheel drive (let’s just say there was an ax in the back of one vehicle and we took a vehicle that could pull trees off the road). We hiked through the woods for about an hour before coming to a small lake and the base of the mountain. That’s where the hard hiking started. We had lunch in the last little flat section with trees and then we went up about 5 pitches of sharp loose rock. It was kind of scary. The top was awesome. It’s a couple of football fields long and has some grass up there. We could see the highest section of the Wind River Range and the Tetons. There is a container on the highest part of the mountain and when people hike the mountain (mainly people related to camp) they write their names and the date on a piece of paper and leave it there. There were storms around us, so we didn’t stay very long and quickly made our way back down the rock. It was scary because we weren’t always protected, there was lightning, and the rock was loose. We were trying to get down before the rain made the rocks slippery. The last group made it off the rocks before it started to rain. We were very thankful for that. It took about 7 hours to do the hike.

Thursday was the start of Singles’ Retreat, and we didn’t have anything scheduled until supper. I think it’s the most free time in a day since we got to camp. We had 2 campers, the speaker, and the rest of the staff for the retreat. It was my first Singles’ retreat, and go figure, I attend when I’m married.  We had a lot of fun. The speaker was Jeremy Ehmann, youth pastor in Elko, NV and a past camp staff member. We all enjoyed it and thought it a good way to wind down from camp.

The retreat ended Saturday at 11:30. Right before our last activity at 10:15, Sam (girl counselor) and Seth (retreat camper) went riding on Seth’s dirt bikes. Sam came back with a cut under her big toe. Mr. Dean thought it might need stitches, so they gathered her belongings and took her to town. On our way out of town we stopped at the Loftus house to say goodbye. Sam actually had broken her foot. She didn’t cut her foot, the skin had torn apart when she broke it. She flies home on Sunday, and then Monday she’s going to her doctor to get a cast on her foot. What a great way to end camp!

The car is packed. We are taking Matthew to Denver so he can fly out tomorrow. Once his stuff is gone there will be a lot more room. We are planning to drive to Virginia to look for housing. One of the camp speakers is a pastor in Roanoke, and he has offered to let us stay at their house while we look for housing. Our plan is to be in Virginia by Tuesday night. I need to touch base with school to get my schedule worked out. We plan to head back to Greenville next Saturday. Then we will have about a week to visit with family and move to VA before I start school. Whew! There’s lots going on.