Trip Highlights

08/05/2007

Adventure Village

The 3-day trips are back and the stories are endless and entertaining. Here are some highlights:

Delaware Canoe

· We have a few canoe adventure trips out right now so we had to tap into one of our larger heavier metal canoes to outfit the Delaware voyagers. Olivia, Montana and Luke took the helm of the metal boat and its extra weight and sluggish response caused it to quickly be named the “Iron Snail”. By day two their teamwork and skills improved and the boat was rechristened as the “Silver Dragon”.
· All rocks in the river became “whales”, and all sticks became “snakes”. As dutiful citizens of the river, the kids all warned anyone they saw of the existence of the elusive river whales. I am sure that everyone was appreciative.
· The weather was amazing and the kids all slept with tents wide open so they could see the stars as they went to sleep.
· The boys learned a valuable lesson. Wide open tent flaps and headlamps left on for a while inside the tents attract moths and other insects. Evidently the efforts to evacuate hundreds of moths with the same headlamp that attracted them was comedy at its finest.
· Rock skipping became a celebrated pastime and Olivia skipped a rock for the first time!
· John and Tim took their turn at the iron chef challenge and combined tuna, grape jelly, peanut butter and cheese all together inside of a tortilla and actually ate it. Their faces showed disgust, but their pride claims they were a culinary masterpiece.
· Montana: “I liked watching the eagle circle the boat. I think we were going so slow that they thought we were dead”

Action Sports Adventure

· Day 1 was all about the ropes.I spent most of the day with the guys and heard some variation of “I’m so glad I chose this trip, this is sooooo coooooool!” at least 20 times.
· Overcoming fears was a big theme. Elissa, Molly Collin and Emily all had moments of pause as they stood upon the top of the Zip tower 50 ft. in the air. Each of them had their own triumph and pride in their actions.
· Day 2 was spent overlooking the grassy fields atop Pete’s Pavilion. Sam led the group in a 4 hour sing along of Bohemian Rhapsody.
· Graham spearheaded a fort building project that resulted in a two story waterproof chalet in the mountains.
· They each strapped a mountain board to their feet and hit the grassy slopes.
· At the Skate Park on Day 3, Collin was the first to try the intimidating heights of the quarter pipe.He fell hard, tried again, fell hard, tried again, fell hard, tried again and landed the drop in.His smile was HUGE.
· Molly stood atop a ramp gathering courage for twenty minutes finally landing it with ease.
· Evan rolled in, leaned forward a little too much and landed hard and spent the rest of the day with a bloody lip and a smile.
· It was a great trip!

A complete selection of pictures are uploaded on to the Flickr site, so take a peak over at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fvadventures/ to see more!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zach eigenbrodt

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Zach couldn't keep himself out of the woods when growing up. He started working at a Northern Wisconsin YMCA Camp as a wilderness trip leader while in college and fell in love with getting kids into nature. The smiles on kids faces after returning from a once in a life time wilderness experience is why he is here today. Zach brought his talents to Frost Valley YMCA, in 2014, when he started as the Trips Coordinator and soon was promoted to Adventure Director. Zach loves all forms of Wilderness exploration, though some would say his heart lies most with canoeing.