Oregon Trail

I wrote this while laying in bed last month in the middle of my Oregon Trail Experience. This was the day after I had been tortured by my book group about going out in the rain to have, what I expected, would be a trying time.
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I am not a pioneer. I am a bit more of a princess if you want the truth. I have been given the privilege, yes Becky, the privilege of going with my daughter on her 4th grade over night to learn about the Oregon Trail.

I am here because I love my daughter and she wanted me to go. I am certainly not here because I love camping, being cold and being rained on. It is April and it snowed this morning. Seriously, there was snow here.

As the time drew near for this trip I found myself wanting to go less and less. Sophia, on the other hand, was growing increasingly excited. She kept on asking me if I was excited. I would respond, "Hell no!". OK I am not that mean I, of course, would say that I too was excited. One of the biggest problems was the weather. It started raining on October 1st and it hasn't stopped.....or at least that's what it seems like. In all seriousness there has been measurable rain 38 of the past 40 days and I believe it has rained EVERY day. I was not looking forward to standing and hiking in the rain for hours.

With this "oh so high" expectation how could I be disappointed? I couldn't. I am usually a "Glass half full" kinda gal but in this instance I had a totally empty glass attitude. The beauty of this attitude is if my expectation is met then there you have it. If it doesn't suck then it's a success. If I actually have fun then it's a wild success. I figure I can't go wrong.

The bus trip here took about an hour. During that trip the weather started out cloudy and as we progressed it started to pour. Crap, I was right.

Upon arrival the rain ceased. We went through about 2 hours of instructions, set up and getting situated. It was a bit excessive.

Time to get started, we went to stations to learn about life on the trail. We moved from station to station through lots of mud BUT there was no rain. And at one point we saw the ball of fire in the sky! We learned about building cabins, cutting and splitting wood, candle making, grinding grain, map making, fur trapping and what the pioneers needed to take with them for their trip. If you were ill prepared, you died, PERIOD. We learned that there were approximately 14 grave markers for each mile of the Oregon Trail. That is 28,000 deaths! Yikes!

After our stations we cooked our hamburgers for dinner on hobo stoves. The kids loved that.

Our late evening was spent in a ho down in the gym. The kids all learned the Virginia Reel. Sophia was going to be my partner but then changed her mind at the last minute. I didn't have a partner so I didn't get to dance. Oh well. They had a blast. I know I sound like an old biddy but, why can't we have dances like that any more? The kids had so much fun, it's social and there's no pressure. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the kids having fun.

The last event of the day was the campfire which, in this case, was inside. It was too cold out. There were some camp song and each of the 3 schools performed a little skit or song. Being prejudiced like I am (and right) our's was best....by far.

We finally got the kids in bed at 10. They were tired but all stayed up talking until 10:30. I finally said "enough" and the party was over.

Tomorrow we have a few more stations and then we're headed home. So far it's been fun and a pleasure to be a chaperon. See, now I'm "Winning!" I expected nothing and it's better than that. I say you can't go wrong when you assume it will suck and then it doesn't.