7/7/2019

 Jessica stared to wake the others up at around 7 and then Monet got breakfast started. I wanted to help but I wasn’t in the cooking group that time so I was only allowed to boil the water. While we waited for the food I was told that that night there were two loud bangs that people thought were either shots being fired or some kind of tree dropping, they were loud and startled more than a few people. I was assigned to dishes after breakfast and as we finished dumping the water at the road we came across another camp ground near ours that had branches nailed across different trees that we think hunters used them to hang their kill. This was very interesting to me as I didn’t think that they did that, I would assume that they packed up their kill to go home. My family has killed pigs before for special occasions but that was at home, even when catching fish it was brought home before it was eaten, it was not eaten at the site. We then got our gear together to set up our motion censored trail cameras. My group was led by Monet and had Alex, Juan, Sloane, Graysen, and Don in it. We set up our cameras by the river as Graysen had seen animal tracks near it. We went farther down the river to set up our second camera, there was lots of rocks that Don said was where the river used to flow so it was a difficult path to walk as the rocks were not embedded into the earth and constantly moved as we walked on them, I didn’t like walking on the rocks and even Don slipped once on the sand. We set up our third camera near our camp next to a little stream that looked well isolated, and as we had seen at breakfast there are chipmunks near our camp so hopefully we will see small mammals in the recordings. We are now currently at camp Chaparral writing our blogs, we will be volunteering at two to show our appreciation for allowing us to use their camp grounds.  

We waited around for a half hour but the camp director Ida was not here at the time so we went back to our camp because we didn’t know what they wanted us to do. I don’t know how I feel about the camp as it felt creepy to be at a facility and not have anybody there, it’s like being in an empty school it just feels wrong. About two hour later we went back to the camp after Ida came and got us and then divided us into groups to help clean up. I was with Brandon, Noah, Sloane, and Eric putting the piles of pine needles in to the bed of the truck to take down to a dump for them. I didn’t have a rake so I used my gloves to grab the pine needles, I was really glad that I had the gloves in my bag as they were sharp and dug into my hands without them. The other group then finished their task of moving the school supplies and then joined to help us. All the hustle and bustle made the camp feel more alive and it no longer bothered me. It was then five O’clock and the cooking team left to make dinner, though they kept having to drive back because of the coolers that were in our van. We were not able to finish all the piles of needles but we tried to get the biggest piles before we headed back to eat dinner. Dinner was fun as Maria accidentally burnt the bottom of the rice pot but the food was still good. To end the night we all sat around the camp fire and ate s’mores, I loved this as I had fallen asleep early the day before and didn’t get to eat any. Monet had us do an activity that Brandon told her about call the pit and the peach. It’s where the pit is one thing you didn’t like about the day, and the peach is what you liked about the day. My pit was having to walk the river bed of rocks because none of the rocks were stable so my group kept sliding, my peach was being able to get pictures of the flowers in the riparian zone there were so many different types and being by the river made them look even fresher.