The last night at Rod's camp, Mike, Jenn and Walter stayed up all night by the campfire (except walter slept the whole time so he didnt really stay up). So at about 4-5 am (I have no idea) Mike and Jenn were talking and Walter was sleeping. Walter woke up, looked at the tree, blinked, paused, not really knowing what was going on, and then all of a sudden he bursts "HOLY S*** THE TREES ON FIRE!!!" Our very huge rip roaring fire had lit a nearby tree on fire. Walter and Mike leaped up and dumped water on it. Good thing we noticed it other wise we'd have burnt down a forest!
Clam Harbour
H'ok so. We were on our annual trip to Clam Harbour which is one of Bruces' many cottage/cabins. Every year we have many great and/or bad experiences. We won't quite get into last year, we'll just say that it involved "that girl and something and that other thing", as said by Mike Stewart. This year, as in fall 2006, was on the other hand one of our good experiences... that is it is good now that we look back on it. It pretty much really hurt at the time. H'ok, so, here's the earth... alright fine we won't get into that. So, we're on our jolly way to the Devil's Cauldron since Bruce instructed us to do so...yes we are all terribly afraid of Bruce the great. It is quite the long walk to the so-called Devil's Cauldron but we trudged on and on...oh yeah, and on. Once we painstakingly arrived, we watched in awe as the mucho grande waves crashed into the cauldron. The waves were massive that day and silly, silly Bradley decides to go stand on the other side of the cauldron. We were all like oh no! because as soon as Brad makes it to the other side he gets absolutly soaked and we all laughed very very hard (by the way EVERY SINGLE WAVE was hitting that side of the cauldron so we have no sympathy for stupid Brad). Anyways it has taken me a very long time to get to the point so before i break out the funny I must remind you that it was October and it had been raining and it was OCTOBER... h’ok so, on our way back we were walking along the trail and it starts... are you ready... it starts HAILING... hail. Like I mean like hail. The biggest freaking hail you’ve ever seen. Ok so whats like wrong with that? Hail...is what’s wrong with it. Yup, we got plummeted with huge golf ball sized hail (actually pea sized, without exaggeration, but massive none the less). It actually hurt like a lot, so we ran like mad to the nearest tree and dove underneath it, literally dove. We soon saw Brandon running like mad down the trail with his shirt over his head, trying to get to our tree, which was the only cover in the area. It stung like herpes. That’s the story about clam Harbour and it was grand. Hope you enjoyed.
-Nicole (assisted by Mike)
Newfoundland
Our last summer trip with the scouts was to Gros Morne National Park although we didn’t really do many activities with the scouts, because of the Four day hike we went on. There is a hardcore hike in that park called The Long Range Traverse. We started at Western Brook Pond and hiked for four days back to Gros Morne Mountain. The key to this hike was that there were no trails. We had to take a map, compass and GPS and just pretty much blindly make our way through the mountains. Before even leaving we had to go somewhere and pass a test deciding whether or not we could manage this hike.
Anyways, so we saw a lot of animals on this adventure. One experience was we were hiking through some trees and this hawk of some sort is soaring around like it’s going to swoop down and peck our eyes out. It was quite nerve racking but we eventually figured out that it must have had a nest around in the cliff beside us somewhere and it was nervous about us toying with it. Another experience…well this one was just me…on our last night of sleep I woke up in the middle of the night…(oh by the way, the ones of us who did this crazy hike was, Me (Nicole), Steven, Ryan, Walter, Mike Brown and Bruce Harvey. Therefore I was the only girl so I was sleeping in my own tent.) Ok, so I wake up in the night to some sort of noise. It sounds like chomping. I get kind of worried because there are moose around there and I was like oh god, what if they like step on my tent, it was a really, really little tent. Anyways so I just turn over and try to go back to sleep because I really didn’t want to open up the door and be like face to face with one. Eeeek! Anyways, so the next morning mike calls us all to get up because our goal was to get to the end that day! Finally, we were all exhausted. So I start to climb out of my tent and put on my well used hiking boots and wabam! There is white caribou fur ALL over my boots. So we figured out that there was defiantly caribou out the night before chomping on my boots a little bit, which would explain the noise…sure am glad I didn’t open the door!
-Nicole (assisted by Mike)