Hiking, Bugs, Facepainting, and Rain

I've (Carrie's Mom) been asked to guest blog about Troop's 52823 Encampment Day this last Saturday, May 31 - I've been lucky enough to participate by being one of the two troop leaders for Kylie's Brownie Troop and Encampment is an end of the year opportunity for girls to do some camping with our entire service unit. We decided that we would just do one full day this year as the girls are still young and exposing them right away to two nights of camping overnight might be a little much for some of them. We left at 11 a.m. and returned home that night around 9:30 p.m.

These are the things we did at camp:

We hiked,
We noticed and talked about things in nature,
We caught a dragonfly and a frog,
We played many games (bowling, croquet, volleyball, Capture the Flag, Parachute games, tag and several more I can't even remember),
We painted our own original design with fabric paint on white t-shirts we could keep,
We ate lunch in the forest,
We ate a spaghetti dinner in the dining hall prepared by the older Cadet troops,
We made ice cream sundaes with tons of different and wonderful toppings,
We danced at our 50's dance and learned some of the latest dance moves,
We discovered the clay on the lake bottom and pulled enough out to make clay shapes,
We face painted each other's faces with whatever we liked,
We got to "tour" another troop's cabin so that we could see how cool it was,
AND JUST GENERALLY HAD A GRAND TIME.........That is until we all had to seek shelter in one of the basements of a cabin on the grounds that had multiple showers and bathroom stalls with no windows - Bad weather had hit and a funnel cloud had been spotted in the area while the weather sirens were blaring - There we were around 40 of us in one restroom intended for maybe 10-15, sitting in the shower stalls or on the floor while singing Girl Scout song after Girl Scout song - It was hot and a little scary and a couple girls were afraid but after an hour we got the all clear signal from the weather radio and were free to go - As soon as we left the building we were caught in a pouring rain on the 4 block hike back to our base. By the time we got back there, we were all soaking wet and ready to call it a day. The ride home was quiet as we were all very cold, wet and tired but we agreed we had made a major memory and were anxious to try it all over again next year. This next time we'll even stay overnight! After all we're Brownies of Troop 52823! Yeah!