West Virginia – Checking In!!

08/17/2011

Our West Virginia folk are doing well down south with plenty of sunshine and not much rain so far! They love playing in the lake at ACE Adventure Center (it has lots of the big, floating toys such as water trampoline and the big icebergs campers climb on and slide down) and go there every spare moment they have. They have also been playing tether ball, volleyball and chat around the campfires they make.

After driving down on Monday and settling in, the group spend yesterday morning at the lake and getting to know each other. After lunch they got down and dirty at the mud obstacle course where they climbed over logs, through tunnels and up and down slides – racing to the finish line. A favorite was a challenge called the “Tough Mudda” in which participants race to see how many laps they can complete in 20 minutes (the winner ended up doing 6 laps at top speed!!).

Today the group had a chance to raft for the first time this trip. They jumped into duckies (big inflatable kayaks) and paddled hard downstream. The rapid nicknamed “Surprise” had quite a few of our campers falling out and swimming down (don’t worry – that’s normal & expected in duckies and on the river!!) the rest of the rapid. Another highlight was the duckie tower wars. During the tower wars, campers stack their boats on top of each other in a calm section of the river and climb up on top where they proceed to playfully joust for the title of “king of the tower.”

That’s it for now – check back Sunday night to for the next update!!

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.