So the YCL's went up on Monday, everyone else came up Tuesday. There was a massive hail, pouring rain storm on Monday. Later that night we watched Forever Strong. The theme was Treasure Island, where your heart lies there will your treasure lie also. All of the hand outs and what nots said KIA KAHA, which means forever strong is some language. It was fun. Meaghan flew in from CA. I had the best first years in the stake. My girls were...
Stonegate Girls
Charlotte Hume
Rose Downs
Auybn Goubert
Brinlee Alemieda
Auburn Hills Girls
Maddie Bashaw
Kirsten ______
Gabi ________
Elizabeth Girls
Sophie _______
Menley ______
I was too stupid to take pictures of all of them. I kept forgetting. Jami Downs was the leader in the group. She was great. I loved being a YCL. The girls were so fun. They made a great skit and were so sweet with one another. I got to lead a fire extinguishing game and a first aid game.
After the week at came came the fifth year high adventure. The 5th years all woke up at 4:45 and left the camp at 5:15. We didn't get breakfast because no one told the cooks we were leaving earlier than the rest of the girls. Before we left I just started crying for no reason what so ever, so Sister Williams and I went on a quick walk. I also couldn't take my stupid motion sickness medicine that morning. Nothing was working out too well.
So we finally left and made it to the rafting location after a 2 hour drive. Rafting was great. We did Browns Canyon, the same section I had done two years prior with school, but it was still fun.
Then on the way up to spelunking my car got lost. We were following the directions given to us as well as the GPS. At one point we missed a turn which took us to the top of a mountain on a 4-wheel drive road (we were NOT in a 4-wheel drive car). All the road names were the same where we were and there were still signs for the camp site we were looking for... Once we got to the top of this mountain we ran out of gas, we had gone about 60 miles out of our way. After coasting down, we found rangers who gave us gas, they also pointed us towards the correct campsite. About 30 minutes later we found the cars of the rest of the group, they were at the cave parking lot, not a campsite, we couldn't find one anywhere. By this point we were 3 hours late for the arrival time at the campsite, but still barley within the time frame for the actual caving. No one was there and all the cars were locked. So we walked over to a group of campers and asked if they knew where a group of 30 some girls were camping. The told us they saw them go right into the caves, and they didn't have any tents with them. So they had already gone into the cave. It was really disappointing, everyone in the car was looking forward to this, we had all been rafting before. We waited for about an hour at the parking lot before we realized they weren't sending anyone out to check for us. So we then wrote notes to leave on all the cars and headed back down to Bailey for dinner, we had missed the dinner they had for the girls. After eating at the only place in town that was still open at 11pm a car pulled into the parking lot as we were discussing what we were going to do. It was two girls who had gotten out of the caves earlier than the rest. They said there wasn't a campsite, they were all full, so they were just going to go home and leave us all up there with no contact. They also told us the rest of the girls were going to be in the caves for another hour or two. So we just headed home. We got dropped off around 3am.
A week or two later I met with President Woodbury and Sister Valentine because they wanted to hear about what had gone on and how I felt about it all. It was really nice, I hadn't really cared much about the whole fiasco, but everyone else in the vehicle was hurt, so I met with them to talk about the other girls. In the car we had a non-member, a girl new to the stake, and a mother and daughter who's ward was in charge of the activities, and then myself. I felt extremely bad for all of them. I got a lot more out of the meeting than I was expecting. Both Sister Valentine and President Woodbury had the impression that I would one day lead girls camp in some capacity...President Woodbury also gave me a blessing which was really cool. They told me that the day the girls were heading up both of them had the impression that something terrible was going to happen this year. They were afraid of a death, which really wasn't a far fetched concern because a bear did show up 3 nights in a row and needed to be shot (with rubber bullets) and our car was out of gas on a 4-wheel drive road with no sides, just steep drop offs. Luckily nothing that extreme happened. The most concerning issue was the 5th years missing a group of girls and leaving them. We discussed the flaws in the planning and things that need to be done in the future. After hearing Meaghan was a non-member who had come every year and may not return, they offered to fly her out from CA to come spelunking labor day weekend with the other four of us that got lost. They mentioned that there may have been a reason our carload didn't go into the caves, maybe something even worse may have occurred. We'll never know. I am happy with the way the whole thing played out though.
There is a ton more details about what everyone was thinking in our car and things other girls had told us after we got back in town. But that was the general gist of it.
I will one day add the few pictures I have and possibly steal some from Sister Anderson.
So then for fall break I went to Arizona as a birthday present. It was so much fun. I love visiting family. I got to see all the new babies and cousins and all that jazz. Fun fun.
They visit often, It's like they live at our house. Whatever, we got them all snuggies.