I got back from another Girl Scout camping trip with my Junior troop, although many girls who were younger came along to fill room. Initially, I was disappointed that many of the Juniors couldn't come due to family/friends commitments, out of town, sports, etc. Just did not seem to be a good weekend time wise. Despite this, we decided to forge ahead and go camping anyways.
We had chosen a camp called Amahami, outside of Binghamton, NY and is a rather large camp. It has a beautiful lake, our site had a pavilion for eating that overlooked the lake.
Friday night was decent outside and the first half of Saturday was beautiful outside, then Mother Nature decided to unleash rain on us. Some thunder, lots of torrential downpour rains, this lasted for a few hours. Didn't seem to end until we decided to go to bed around 9 or 10 pm. Crazy! But what did we learn? To make best of what you are dealt with. We managed to get some kind of dinner, they managed to entertain themselves (to a certain point) while raining but it was a big downer. It was nice when we woke up Sunday, but again a thunderstorm swept through and downpour of rain during part of our travel back.
We had the experience of having a site director (voluntary) check us in, stop in our unit a few times during our stay, make sure that our unit was ok before we left which was unusual compared to other GS camps. They also had a very knowledgeable Assistant ranger (again, voluntary) who gave us lots of pointers, let us borrow some cast iron griddles and even gave us some packets of wildflowers. He let us in the cabin that was built in 1936 right next to the fire tower that we climbed up and down (100 ft) tall, several times. It was built by the Civilian Conservation Corp 211 in 1935, the cabin was built in 1936. The fire tower was de-commissioned in 1998 and eventually the state sold it to the Amahami camp where many, many people visit this piece of history. It was manned up until 1988. Its purpose was to look out for forest and brush fires, since the tower had a 55 mile view all the way around. Very fascinating.
So what did my girls and I learn? Make sure we are prepared! I missed many things like enough paper towels, cooking spray, stuff like that. Also bring tons of craft supplies so you don't hear "I'm bored!" at all---ever! But we also did learn how to survive during non-stop rain---songs, games, board games, things like that. We also learned you didn't have to have 20 girls to have a good time. The 9 we had all did great together with ages, ranging from 1st grade to 4th grade.
I also learned that the girls want to try canoeing which is something we can work on next year. Never too late to learn.
Now all my gadgets are charging and my "batteries" are charged. And its back to work tomorrow.
All my love,
~Carleen
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