Girls Camp - Day 3

This was the day of our hike. I woke up at 6 am to wake up the other leader going on the hike and prep the snacks and drinks for the hike. Upon leaving the tent, the first thing I noticed was that there was frost covering all of the cars and that it was cold. Between 6 and 6:15 (when we were going to wake up the girls going), I realized that my fingers and toes were so cold and they were only getting colder. The other leader, who was still in bed, and I decided to postpone the hike until a little later, when it had warmed up.
They all went back to sleep, but guess who couldn't sleep. I went back to my sleeping bag and warmed up for a while. Finally, I got up when I heard a fire going. Once we got going that morning, we had breakfast burritos (I had cereal and a nutrition drink) and we started prepping for the hike.
Not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post, but we were told there were snakes up there. The first day, the girls found a snake and I wasn't there for it. Ha Ha. The day before, one of the camp hosts had shown us a huge walking stick. He said to bring it with us while we were hiking and to bang it one the ground to scare the snakes away. For some reason, I got that job.
The trail we took was super scenic and it was relaxing for me. We saw one snake zipping into its hole, as to avoid us. I thought the stick was doing it's job so we kept it up. As we continued, there appeared to be a random brown stick in the middle of the trail. I was going to keep walking but I couldn't. Instead I stopped  and started banging the stick quicker. All of the sudden the "stick" took off for the grass and trees on the side of the trail. Oh man! The girls flipped, which looking back now makes me laugh because I just stood there pounding.
Remember how I said it was super pretty there. Here a picture:

This one was on the way back down. I'm guessing they forgot about the snakes because they kept walking way far from the stick. I did remind them once and withing 5 or 10 minutes we found another one. This time it was rustling in the grass by the side of the trail. Our priesthood leader and the other leader looked at it. Turns out, that one was shedding it's skin,

Anyway, enough about the hike, except to say that the girls were champions, did not complain much at all, and the weather turned out great!

After we got back, we had sandwiches for lunch and started doing crafts from finishing lanterns, to making lemon candles, to girls camp magnets (which sadly did not turn out that great). We also had a spa day for the girls. I know what you are thinking. You're camping. It wasn't anything too elaborate. They did oatmeal face masks, with cucumbers on their eyes. One girl wasn't going to do it. I ended up chasing her down with a blob of oatmeal mask on my hand. It ended with her sitting in a fetal position on the ground and me smearing the oatmeal on her knees. Ha Ha. It was great!!!

They also did manicures and soaked their hands and then painted their nails. One of the girls wanted to paint mine and finally convinced me to let her do them. I told her not to make it bright. She ended painting them hot pink. Ha Ha. I made her put some white on them to tone it down, which she added as polka dots. 

Next on the agenda was a nature walk where we took nice pictures of each girl individually and also took a lot of fun ones too! It was pretty fabulous and fun. My fourth year girl who helped plan it did great!

After the nature walk, we began dinner preparations, which would be dutch oven style chicken, potatoes, and cobbler (of course)!

Dinner took place a little later, but it was nice because we were able to decorate the table with the lanterns and candles that they had made. After dinner, we had our testimony meeting, which to this day remains one of my favorite parts of camp. The evening ended with some snipe hunting and the whisking the girls off to bed........ Or so they thought!!!

The leaders had other plans. We went in one time with these little light up toys on our fingers and making noises. That was great. Then we distracted them once again by making them turn out the lights and trying to spark the lifesavers. While they were working on those, we surrounded them and attacked them with glow-in-the-dark silly string. Ha Ha Ha. It was so funny to see the and hear them. Good times!!!