This year I’ve been a part of two of three Adventure Day hikes with Mr. Rumney. The second Adventure Day trip began with a nearly one hour ride to get to the Blackjack Springs Wilderness. Jane Kubisiak, Jerry DuBois, Zach Cline, Alex Gaber, Cole Huffman and I went with Mr. Rumney.

The snow was really deep (so much for my hope of it not being as snowy on the first trip) so we wore snowshoes. I had never used them before, so I didn’t know what to expect. After I got mine on, I found out they were kind of wobbly to walk in. I was ahead a lot of the time near the start…

But things started to go bad once we went to cross a lake. I took the wrong way, so I had to get back to everyone else through the thick snow. When I was almost across the lake, I fell and got my pants and gloves soaked, so I switched to my thinner ones. After that, things got messy. I kept falling over and over, sometimes because of sticks and sometimes I was stepping on one snowshoe with the other one (the backs of them are way too long!) Because of that, I got really far behind.

Eventually, we came to the Deerskin River. It wasn’t frozen up, so we went all the way around it, and there was a ton of sticks pointing up, meaning I fell a lot again. We found some odd little trails; apparently the otters have been having fun around there. After we got around, we got to a bridge, and it wasn’t very wide either.

Shortly after that, we found an area that had some rocks and logs in good shape, so we had lunch. We made a campfire, but it was in the middle of a lot of snow, so I thought it might not work too well, but it turned out fine.

We eventually got to another lake. Mr. Rumney went on the ice first, then everyone else came along, I’m positive I was sinking after being on it for a little bit! So I hurried along to get off, my pants and both of my pairs of gloves were already turned into ice, so I didn’t need to get any more things of mine wet-the last thing I needed was to have to haul around a ton of ice!

Not too long after that, we got to an area we had been to before so the snow was already packed down at least. And it didn’t take too long before we were nearly done; at least I wasn’t falling as much.

I think Mr. Rumney takes us on these trips because 1) He likes being outside, 2) it’s good to get fresh air and exercise (we get P.E. hours for the hike), 3) We talk to each other quite a bit, so we get to know everyone better, 4) It helps us build up stamina and energy and 5) It might just be me, but I learned about making and putting out campfires.

Not long after that, we got back to the suburban so we took off our snowshoes and got ready to go. This time, I didn’t fall asleep for the whole ride. It was another fun Adventure Day trip. I’m sure that next time it won’t be so snowy!

I wonder where we’ll go next time, and who’ll be going?