Simple Living Camping Trip

[nggallery id=4] I’ll tell you about our camping trip, since Jill might leave out all the “cool” stuff.  Part of our simple living was seeing how we would function in the woods for a few days.  Our trip began on a Thursday afternoon…

Jill, myself, Olivia and Sophie walked down the hill to meet our team.  Our teacher handed us the coordinates with the location of our tarps–yes, the tarps which would be our only shelter all 3 nights (no tents!).  So we used our compass and map to locate the tarps.  Then we continued navigating down the trail until we reached the coordinates of the campsite.  We spent the afternoon fashioning our shelters with tarps and rope, using the knot skills which we had just learned in class.

All weekend we worked as a team to cook our meals over the fire, heat up water for coffee (mmm Chad brought some Starbucks coffee…), and to do various projects.  We knocked some trees down with a chainsaw, we put up a small water tower which we hooked up to a solar water pump, we split firewood, and we learned how to take a live chicken and turn it into dinner!  Our final challenge was to find our dinner for Saturday night’s meal–again, we had the coordinates, a compass and a GPS as backup.  I felt like I was on the Amazing Race!  After 2 hours of trekking through the woods, we found a cooler with steak, shrimp, veggies and kabob sticks!

Yes, the nights were cold, but Jill and the girls survived all 3 nights with me!  I am proud of them for sticking it out.  They had hand warmers stuffed all in their sleepers, pockets, and sleeping bags!  Overall, we had a great time, and I think our teacher gave us an “A+” 🙂