Gold Country

Day 1:We're loading into the bus at about 7:30 in the morning. That's when I usually wake up for school. I sat next to my best best friend Ashley, I brought Mad Libs and we did them almost the whole way there. My other best best friend Abbi brought her mp3 that could record voices. We recorded for about 1 hour and 12 minutes. The drive there was about 2 hours long. We sat in back of our guy friends. They all wore baseball hats on the bus. We poked the dot on the top of their hats about 1 million times. One didn't mind but the other wasn't to crazy about it . We got off of the bus and went into the town hall.

We sang a few songs and tested our eye for detail (A.K.A our eagle eye) with Sarsaparilla Sara. Then we met our naturalists and got into our groups. I was in Flea Valley. My naturalist was named Gunslinger Gordo. We went to the general store and bought items for cornbread. We made cornbread in a dutch oven on a fire. While it was cooking we made our gold pouches to hold our gold viles. Our gold pouches had our group name and our gold rush name written on the front. My name was Claim Snatching Sarah. A claim is where you found gold.

We finally ate our cornbread and were given a souvenir bandanna. I ate all of the leftover cornbread; it was so good. We had to come up with a cheer for our town (our groups were called "towns"...remember, mine was called Flea Valley). Our cheer was "we got fleas!" So everytime we heard someone say "Flea Valley" our whole group would yell "we got fleas!"

Next we made a shelter. Our naturalist and parent chaperone's dumped water on the shelter while we were in it. We totally got wet. The shelter was made from a tarp, some rope and wooden poles. I am so glad we slept in bunkhouses and not in our shelters...it would have been horrible to sleep in our shelter.

We went to our bunkhouses to get settled in and put on bug repellent. Then my mom went to serve dinner. We had the best tacos ever! Then we went to hoedown. Where we danced to the music of Slim Pickings. They needed a volunteer to show us how to do the dance and I rose my hand and they picked me. Next we went to the campfire. Everytime we heard the word campfire we said "campfire we love campfires". There were skits and other fun things.

Day 2: For breakfast we had:eggs, biscuits, turkey sausage, country style potatoes, and cold cereal. Then we had a 7 hour hike. At the top of the mountain there was a beautiful view. James Marshalls monument was huge. We saw the actual wood that Sutter's Mill was made out of. Next we had a spaghetti dinner. Then we went to our last campfire with a native American guest who told amazing stories.

Day 3: We're moved out by 7:30, and it's time for some waffle sticks. After breakfast we had our final town meeting. Then we have lunch and we're off. I had soooooooo much fun and I wish I could go again.

Sarah Jane