June 18, 2005 - Day 6

Our last day on the river!! We traveled the last eight miles and finished 100 miles of the Deschutes River in Oregon!! We started the day in our usual routine except we got to sleep in!! We began by scouting a class 3 rapid and we did awesome! We had two other class 3 rapids to come but we only had to scout if we were captioning, the rest of us played on the water and tried to tan where our life jackets were… didn’t work to well. Then we stopped for lunch since we were going really slow.

Finally we arrived at base! REAL CIVILIZATION!! There were normal families just having a normal weekend. WOAH!! Did we smell bad! Well we got different groups of people. There was the boat crew, gear crew, and dinner crew. I went on the gear crew and we had a lot to do. We had to wash, dry and put away everything we used on the trip. It took a few hours but it was ok. While dinner was cooking (we used a Dutch oven and I got to teach them how to use it) we took a river bath. We used biodegradable soap and it felt good to be clean!! Katie H, Alexis S and I played in the water because even though it was cold it felt good to just mess around.

We ate dinner and afterwards, we had to put on a skit for all the adults. Chelsea was the narrator. We had six scenes. The first was, us singing our sunshine song. The second one was, us getting stuck on a rock. The third was our “Chase a Bear” circle. Jo was being Jen and had us all sit down. She said “close your eyes and by a show of hands, who has chased a bear today?” No one raised her hand. Scene 4 was when we first saw the Phoenix 2000, we all raced to it. Scene five was the “Chase the bear” circle again only this time everyone raised their hands! The last scene was, us in our human knot. We pretended that it began to rain so we all went into lighting positions, even though we were supposed to stay in the knot.

After a game we went away from the other people and had a little farewell ceremony. Jen put the Outward Bound pins in a hat in the middle of the circle and said “Take one and give it to someone and say why you’re giving it to them.” I gave one to Caitlin and said, “It was because she made everyone laugh and she helped me be able to go on the class 4, the Escalator rapids.” Jenny gave one to me for going on the class 4 and making sure no one was ever left out. We all got one. Then Jen read my poem. Everyone loved it and I was embarrassed. I love writing but don’t like other people reading what I wrote out loud when I am there. Afterwards we all just said thanks for stuff like teaching us something, not giving up, being nice, etc… We fell asleep slowly that night.