Teen Escape

I just returned from Teen Escape at Camp Wind in the Pines.  Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts offers this program twice a year for teen girl scouts to blitz through a ton of exciting scouting activities in one weekend, and meet a lot of other teen Girl Scouts from across the council.  If you are a GE attendee who wishes that your troop had the chance of attending a program like GE, this is it!
(Some leaders and staffers at TE wished there were a program for them - so I told them about GE!)

Girls had a choice of 5 individual activities from a list of 8, including archery, high ropes, kayaking, matchless fire starting, campfire cooking, pumpkin carving, and making luminarias and flower crowns.

Saturday Schedule

The food was great, with options for vegetarians, gluten free and 'I just don't like it!"  Those who opted for campfire cooking feasted on apple and pumpkin pies.  The seeds from all the pumpkins carved were roasted and offered as a snack on Sunday!

Although it rained all weekend, nothing was cancelled and no one was daunted.

There are 11 kayakers in the picture above, but the mist descended so quickly and heavily that you can't find them!

Pumpkin with rain gear!

Bottomless coffee and tea for leaders and hot chocolate for girls helped keep everyone warm.  Night time activities included a glow in the dark hunt through the woods on Friday and a campfire, singing and smores on Saturday. It was a dark and stormy night, but the doughty GSEM staffers, including Hollywood, Binx, Crunch, Grace, Alex, Goosey, Moosey, Giggles, Sparks, JoJo and many, many more had no trouble getting the party (and fire) started and keeping it going all weekend long.  (These guys are some of the unsung heroes of our GSEMA council.  Thanks, all you camp counselors and outdoor facilatators, past and present!)

All the pumpkins the girls carved were lined up on the basketball court and lit up during the campfire - which added a lot to the atmosphere!

Learning to paddle

These are the same kayakers who are obscured by the mist in the photo above.

I'd love to add some photos of the ropes course and archery to this, so if you have some, let me know!

An owl carved into a pumpkin!

Someone had a big dinner in our unit, and here are the remains!  Can we count this as part of our wildlife badge requirements?