We camped!

We are back and we survived just fine.

All in all I would rate this trip as fairly successful. True, it was grey and cold the whole time, but it never rained beside one extremely brief shower so we were extremely lucky. The meals went over well. There was no spatting or nastiness between the girls at all. Far from it, they were all so friendly and happy with each other that they talked constantly. There attitude toward us, the poor adults, was less than warm at times, but not unexpected. We stopped taking it personally a long time ago. Our girls are not crafty and have never been, but still we try to do at least one craft on trips like this. The craft this time went so horribly bad that it very well could be the last craft we ever attempt.

An action shot of the Girl filling her air mattress. We may be Girl Scouts, but nobody likes to sleep on the ground!

I mentioned it was cold? Even so, East Harbor has a beach and the girls insisted on going. And since the new model of our troop is "Let the girls lead" we took them to the beach. The sane adults sat on the cozy sand and watched a dozen crazy girls go bounding off into the water. When they all emerged, a very short time later, shivering and blue they admitted that it was a mistake to go. I'm not an "I told you so" kind of person, but inside I was cheering. Back at camp warm showers, building up the fire and hot cocoa happened in quick succession.

An unexpected highlight of the trip was a visit that I arranged by a park ranger. We were originally going to take a tour of Toft's Ice Cream, but they cancelled on us. Plan B involved the park ranger talk. Luckily, this woman was extremely interesting and complex. She had been with the park system for 18 years and had seen quite a bit of crazy stuff. On top of that, she raced sailboats, spoke Latvian and went to Ohio State on a volleyball scholarship. The girls listened like angels, asked intelligent questions and answered her questions maturely. I couldn't have been more proud.

The grand finale of the trip was Cedar Point. Cold, grey, but the lines weren't very long. We cut the girls loose with check-in times and made a very full day of it. I rode the Millennium Force for the first time and it truly deserves the title of best roller coaster in the world. Wow!