Today’s warm, sunny weather gave us a great start to our day. The campers all eagerly loaded into the van, anxious to go up and see beautiful Eldorado Canyon, just south of Boulder. The ride up to the canyon can get to be a bit lengthy at times, but AO Camp Director Tommy joined us for the ride up, and was well prepared with many fun camp songs that all the kids got really into. This made the ride up go really fast, and before we knew it we were deep into the canyon.
Once we arrived, we picked out a nice picnic table by the raging South Boulder Creek, and set up shop for the day. As always, we started the day with a sunscreen party and an all-camp game. From there, we departed on the trek down to the cave, which was something each camper was eagerly looking forward to. The hike down was pretty easy, and all downhill. Along the way we were able to witness some expert rock climbers climbing up the Bastille, the world-famous rock climbing face in Eldorado Canyon. Staring up at the climbers dangling by a fingertip hundreds of feet above our heads gave us all a sense of vertigo.
When we arrived at the cave, everybody climbed in and explored what the cave had to offer. Tired and hungry, we promptly settled down for lunch, and quietly observed the climbers around us while we ate. After lunch, we had playtime, and all the kids played together as a pack of wolves inhabiting the cave. They seemed to all really enjoy this free time, so we spent some extra time here just enjoying ourselves.
After the play time had died down, we packed everything back up and began the ascent back to our van. This was the most grueling part of the day, as well as the hottest. After taking easily twice as long to get back as it had taken us to get down, we stumbled back to our picnic table.
Being extremely exhausted from the hike, we began to work on some more low-key activities. Half of the group went off to go panning for gold, while the other half worked on an art and crafts project called Tumble Bugs. After about a half-hour at each station, we switched the groups up.
Panning for gold was a rousing success, and many of the campers were able to find some good ‘gold’ in the creek, however the cold water did make it hard to get in. The Tumble Bugs project was started successfully, and will be completed tomorrow at the pool.
To conclude the day, we had our snack, packed up all of our stuff from the day, and drove off. It was a great day up in the canyon, and everyone is now looking forward to a fun day at the pool tomorrow!