Hanging around with a noose around your groin is basically what teacher's do (on field trips, and sometimes just daily).
We were off 14 km down the road to a gem of a spot I had never been to in my life. All these years teaching in the area and living here too, I had never been to Camp Kintail. Founded way back in 1929, they have a few hundred prime acres nestled along the shores of Lake Huron. It has roots in the church, but it was a secular day through and through for the class Liesa and I brought this year. I half figured there would have been a bit of a pre-meal blessing, or at least a token camp fire song about religion. But alas, nothing. Just a day of great weather and lots of fun and activities.
We got to the big stuff first. The ropes course would be our first destination. It looked good enough for Navy Seals in training. In fact it looked great. There were no less then 12 different vertical paths and challenges. They all seemed rather difficult too. However the inner climber sprung out among the adolescents and they were up walls, across wooden bridges, swinging from a zip line, and the like for a solid hour. The only problem in this station was the 12 obstacles were only minded by 6 or 7 be layers. So a bit of standing around. I wanted to get-at a few of the challenges myself, but I figured the day and its liveliness was for the students, not for me..... Though I did manage to get a few of them donkeys to hoist me up the squirrel swing or whatever it was called. Thankfully they didn't drop me like a sack of flower.
Next up was the beach. It was sunny and warm out at over 20 degrees centigrade, but Lake Huron must have been a fresh 60 degrees Fahrenheit max. No sense no feeling - most of the students were in the water and splashing about. The paddle boards came out, a number of kayaks, and even some canoes got going.... The water was a bit rough - I couldn't see the life guard having too much ambition to go rescue a capsized student in such cold conditions.... So I was out myself in a scow and keeping and eye on everyone. I stayed dry and had a good paddle to boot.
There was a nice hot lunch for the 130 kids or so involved at Kintail for the day. We sat in groups of 8. I half expected a bit of a religious saying or prayer to kick things off, but instead roles were assigned and kids found themselves with a job in order to expedite our salad, fries, chicken burgers, drinks, and so on. It was a well oiled machine indeed. The fun, or so the newbies thought, was when it was post lunch and staff started walking around with a scrapper-spatula. The promised this would be an exciting job to help. All of the rookies put up their hands, and no sooner were they are garbage duty scrapping the excess food off of the plates and into the trash!
Anyway the rest of the day was good. There were a number of other balance games and games of chance.... Archery and sling shots were also let-go. They had a fairly large 100+ foot enclosed slide.... We were in groups to geo-cache.... Just a fun day. Lots of pictures, but all of kids.
