Good Works Pirates

I spent this last week in a tent at Camp Alpine surrounded by at least 75 young women and 25 or more leaders. It was our annual Girls Camp week and I was excited to be a leader with my friend and YW's counselor, Kristan. We had seven beautiful and amazing girls in our unit. This years motto was Seek Him and pirate themed so our unit's name was The Good Works Pirates.

Kristan and I showed up on Monday to set up our tent and decorate our camp site. We had a treasure chest, rope net, treasure map, banners, signs and other items to spiff up our site. Our tent was set back in the trees with a babbling brook right behind it. Our tent looks quite small but it was HUGE! We had a large queen size mattress in the back and ten feet by 12 feet in the front for all our food and belongings.

Here is our assignment board and list of activities
for the day along with our drinking water and dish water.

Our picnic table with map and tents around.

The first day we went to the confidence course which was a lot of fun. We worked together as a team to accomplish different activities. Climbing up a wooden wall, walking across a rope bridge with our eyes closed, trustingly falling into the arms of our comm rads, holding hands while crossing stumps without falling, and other exercises. It was a lot of fun.


Here some of our girls were trying to start a fire. I say trying because we were unsuccessful at fire starting until the third day at camp. The wood and pine cones were so damp we just couldn't get it going. We even made up a jingle about it to the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.
I celebrated my birthday while at camp. My roomie gave me some body butter and lip gloss. Some of the leaders brought me a cake and sang to me. Our YCL's made a birthday card which they all signed for me. It was really sweet; I had a great birthday!
On Thursday we went on a nature hike and learned about poison plants and edible plants. We had the longest hike at 5 miles. It was a lot of fun and very interesting. Here is a picture of all the second years, our YCL's, the leaders, and our nature guide.
Sitting around the campfire that we FINALLY started on Thursday night. We roasted marshmallows and star-burst. I had never roasted star-burst before, but it was pretty good. All liquidy on the inside and caramelized on the outside. We also had Reese's Peanut Butter Cup s'mores. They were SO tasty!

We had a wonderful time at camp. Besides all the fun, we became certified in lots of survival areas like: using knives, cloud identification, fire starting, emergency first aid, etc. We had amazing Devotionals each night, crafts, archery and swimming during the day. We even had a polar dip, which I did NOT participate in but Kristan did. There were so many great things each day and night I can't really pick one I loved. I was sad to go back into the world at the end of the week but excited to see my family and have some flushing toilets once again. Not to mention being warm at night. It rained the first couple days we were there and got so cold at night. But we got through it and I look forward to going again next year.