Environmental Center

 Thursday, Feb 28th, the sixth graders went up to the Environmental Center.  I went up with Kanyon and spent the night.  It brought back a lot of old memories of when dad would take us up there and we would clean and spend the night.  The main building hasn't changed much, but they have added a few other building to the complex.  They have some solar arrays now and also a huge generator.

Thursday night, after a day of snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, digging snow caves and just having a great day, they had dinner and then a DJ came in and they had a dance.  No slow songs.  It was fun to see the kids all have fun together.  After the dance they watched "Iron Will" and then at 11 0'clock they put the kids to bed.  Unfortunately they didn't go to sleep and the teachers all slept out in the main hall.  I finally dug out earplugs at 6 am and slept until 6:50.

Kanyon took his Elvis glasses and wore them during the dance.  He's such a ham!

We took up some playing cards and "Spot IT" so during the short amount of down time the kids had we could play cards and have fun.

Kanyon was the speediest in his class on the cross-country course.  It was funny to see the kids who alpine ski, thinking they are the cats meow, eat snow on the cross country course.  Everyone crashed, especially on the hills.  I turfed it only once and i was in a flat area when I waved at some of Kanyon's friends.

It was a gorgeous day.  It was nice to spend some quality time with Kanyon.

Snowshoeing was awesome!  We hiked for over an hour and a half.  We hiked up the mountain for about 50 minutes and then the guide turned us loose down the hill.  There was no trail so several of the kids just went pell-mell down the hill and others went super slow.  I nearly killed a girl.  I was hoofing it down the hill when she decided to stop cut over and stop right in front of me.  I had to bail out and leap to the side to avoid her.  I ended up buried in powder up to my neck and had to dig myself out.  It was sweet!

Kanyon was a natural.  He lead the pack the entire time.

There were some awesome snow caves up there.  Some of them went on for 50' or more and others were big enough to fit several people.

I'm pretty sure these are the same beds we slept on 30 years ago when we went up as a family.  I slept on the bottom bunk so Kanyon could have the top.

They had racks of boots for cross-country skiing.

They had the kids set up tables for al the meals and then wipe them off and put them away.  This is Kanyon, Cameron Gross and David White, with the hat-stash.