Today we got up at 5AM. At this time of day the birds are just starting to tweet and dawn is just 15 minutes away. One the trail there is two lines of thinking: break camp early and get your miles in while it's cool and dry or sleep in and hike through the heat of the day when storms might hit. Getting up at 5, I was thinking we were the former but three hours later it looked more like the later or a third category. I had a headache all night long and didn't get but a couple of hours of sleep. A morning Advil knocked it out quickly thank goodness.
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| Zastrow Porch Talk |
We did eventually get on the trail. Today's path would take us through the Zastrow staff camp before continuing to our final stop at Abreu.
At Zastrow we started with a porch talk. At porch talks, a staff member will tell you all about the programs offered at the camp. Here they were offering orienteering, geocaching, and a tour of the Wood Badge Museum.
We choose the orienteering class. We broke into three groups. Alex and Scott with me, Jacob and Curtis, and Carter, Anthony, and Brandon. The course record was around 20 minutes. The first mark showed a bridge crossing. Because we crossed a bridge coming in we were certain that was the bridge we needed to go to. Well it was a different bridge. We did find the creek and tried working our way up stream the best we could. At one point Alex looked like the master in the movie "Remo Williams : The Adventure
Begins" as he seemed to just walk across the creek with very little effort playing his ukulele.
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| Curtis and Knuckle Mountain |
Finally we found the bridge but 30+ minutes had already come and gone. Now that we had the scope of things in our minds the next 9 marks were pretty easy. The last mark was a little more difficult because it required going down a steep hill. The view was awesome before we started descending. We completed the course in 57 minutes. Carter's group abandoned the course after 8 marks and came in next. Finally Jacob and Curtis came in but decided not to descend the steep hill and backtracked a good piece to finally claim their last mark. This was a good course and proved the importance of using your map and compass and making tactical judgements.
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| Carter |
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| Anthony |
Some of the boys decided to play horseshoes for a while. Most had never played. They were going at it so hard I think they had confused it with a video game.
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| Wood Badge Museum |
We decided to eat lunch on their porch. After lunch we decided to take the Wood Badge lodge tour. The tour guide Don, was very interesting and had a lot of information to share about Wood Badge. We then had our photo taken with the famous Wood Badge Elk.
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| Abreu Camp Map |
It was time to get on the trail again as we headed to Abreu. Now as we were in the heat of the day we finally made it to Abreu. We formed our pack line and gathered on the porch. Not wanting to put our packs on any time soon we decided to take the Abreu house tour.
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| Abreu Home |
Our actor took us through the house talking about the Abreu family and visitors to the Abreu farm. She also showed us the kitchen and all of the modern features it offered.
After the tour, we walked to the Cantina where we purchased a cold root beer drink for a dollar. The Cantina also had a pickle eating contest which no one from my group accepted; however, we later learned that Dylan from crew 1 entered the contest but came up 3 seconds short of earning a free pickle. One thing we missed because we arrived late was the adobe brick making class.
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| Abreu Overlook |
The camp staff member then walked us to our campsite. We had to provide two member to help with the Mexican dinner so the rest of us setup camp. We had a brief rain but it quickly passed. It was a nice break not having to cook tonight.
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| Mexican Dinner |
We walked up a very steep hill to the pavilion which overlooked the Abreu homestead and Cantina.
Before we ate, each crew had to come up with an advertising theme why settlers should visit Abreu. Our crew won second place with a corny chant made by Scott and we were the second group to eat after the cook staff and the first place winners. Supper was very good.
Back at camp, Alex lit a fire and surprised us with a pound cake and cake icing. It was good but most of us over ate at supper so he had a hard time getting us to eat it.
So far our hiking days have been very easy. Tomorrow is probably longer than first two days put together. Very tired from the night before I went to bed earlier hoping for a better day.
Photo Highlights:
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| Nice bridge across creek |
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a
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| Morning dumping of food and gear from bear bag. |
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| Cactus |
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| Me at the creek |
Today we got up at 5AM. At this time of day the birds are just starting to tweet and dawn is just 15 minutes away. One the trail there is two lines of thinking: break camp early and get your miles in while it's cool and dry or sleep in and hike through the heat of the day when storms might hit. Getting up at 5, I was thinking we were the former but three hours later it looked more like the later or a third category. I had a headache all night long and didn't get but a couple of hours of sleep. A morning Advil knocked it out quickly thank goodness.
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