July 4th is always a fun day at camp because all the groups and staff get to join in for some group activities! We missed the Woodsmen group who had already left for their two and a half week canoe trip. This year the activities started at one o’clock with prison dodge ball, a game that meshes prisoners base and dodge ball. You have to concentrate to remember who is on your team when you play with a big group!
After that we did our annual cherry seed spitting contest. Some of us are pleased to get air behind that cherry seed and some of us can hurtle those seeds over halfway across the basketball court!
Grandpa Dolyn tried to fool us by blowing really loudly and throwing a cherry seed, but we weren’t fooled. He actually shot that seed pretty far, but Grandma Donna outdid him. 🙂
(He’s tricky, isn’t he?)
This year Anthony won with a whopping distance of 40 feet and 11 inches!!!
A new activity for us this year was building rockets. Each group and a staff group was given a mailing tube, duct table, and several sheets of card stock. Chief Andrew showed us the one he built earlier at staff retreat so we had an idea how to design it and then we got busy. Some of us made tail fins and others designed the cone for the head by shaping and taping paper. We put gravel in the cone to help give it weight. The duct tape held everything together, but it also helped us decorate our rocket. We got judged on distance, design, and teamwork. We launched the rockets with an air compressor from a spot just next to chuckwagon and they flew all the way into the upper playing field!
It was high time for some water play after all that sweating! Miss Kathy told us about a game called tanks and engines. You get into teams of two people. One person is blindfolded and gets to throw water balloons at the other blindfolded people. The other person on the team is the guide. They can only talk to you, not touch you, and they need to help you get to the station to pick up more water balloons and give you verbal cues to help you aim at other people. If you are blindfolded and you get hit with a water balloon you can take your blindfold off and you can’t throw any more balloons until the game is over. It was fun {and funny to watch}!
Thanks to all the rain, we got to swim in our own pond instead of driving somewhere else to a swimming hole. That was awesome!
Supper was a fabulous meal of pulled pork sandwiches, potato salad, corn on the cob, and homemade black raspberry ice cream!
The Pioneers worked on writing their articles while the ice cream was being cranked, but the Mountaineers waited until we got to our spot to watch the fireworks and were waiting on it to get dark.
And, of course, the day ended with a bang as we watched fireworks explode over Cumberland!
