We had a successful camping trip at New Discovery! We lucked out with beautiful weather. Once we were properly coated with sunscreen and bug dope, we hiked up to Owl's Head for a beautiful view. We saw a bird soaring overhead, which we believed to be a turkey vulture. We had great views of Kettle Pond and Lake Groton. We had some lunch at the top and explored the vegetation. Brownies found 140 Lady Slippers (although some of those may have been counted twice)!
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| rock tunnel |
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| Top of Owl's Head |
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| Brownies with my dog |
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| sign & map of view |
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| Kettle Pond with Camel's Hump way in the foggy distance |
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| Spruce Mountain |
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| In search of Lady Slippers! |
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| Enjoying the view & conversation. Don't worry, right below where they're sitting is this next photo... |
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| Lady Slipper! |
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| More Lady Slippers! |
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| Girls counted 140 Lady Slippers! |
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| Our mascot? | |
Back at base camp, some girls helped with setting up tents and all girls had some time to run around and explore our sites. Brownies had the option of working on a "Junior Ranger" booklet provided by the campground and also found/created sit spots.
Girls designed their own pieces of a Brownie flag that Jean will sew onto our main part of the flag (which we can also use in the 3rd of July parade)!
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| Some girls realized that the leaves they used made beautiful art pieces, themselves! |
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| A complete piece for the flag |
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| Some girls thought using their hands could make nice art |
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| Another hand painting |
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| Then the hand became the art! |
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| Completed flag pieces |
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| Brownies with their art |
Other activities included painting rocks girls collected along our hike and gathering sticks for the "God's eye" craft.
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| God's Eye craft displayed |
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| Rock excavation |
God's Eyes were then displayed on our base camp canopy, along with the flag. Brownies collected tinder for the fire and sticks for roasting marshmallows.
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| A toasted marshmallow. Yum! |
Brownies were divided into patrols (groups of 3-4 girls). Each patrol had a job to do for each mealtime. Dinner consisted of pasta, bread and veggies. All patrols had a chance to cook, serve and clean-up throughout our stay. It was wonderful seeing the girls work together! What a great job they all did contributing to the group!
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| Expert pancake flippers |
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| The Red People washing dishes |
Several songs were sung, s'mores were made and eaten, and come morning, we all enjoyed a delicious breakfast of pancakes, sausage, hot chocolate and oatmeal. (Not bad for camp food!) Brownie patrols all named their groups (we had "The Red People", "The Lions" and "The Blue Discoverers"). Each patrol had to present a song, or skit, or something they created, to the troop. The Lions had a great skit about lions arguing about who was going to eat most of the meal and they all agreed on each getting a third. The Blue Discoverers made up a Haiku about friends that they recited together in a circle with some hand claps. The Red People created a skit called "The Milkman".
Special thanks to all of the hard work from Rebecca & Jean in getting all of the pieces of this trip together; for Andrea B.'s contribution to meal planning and to the agenda; and to Naima, Andrea P., Tia, & Robin (friend of Jean's & Rebecca's) for being on the trip to help out. It was a successful, fun time!!
