Hydraulic Robot Battle Finale! (aka science class)

Our resident science guy, Brian, had his classes build hydraulic popsicle stick robots in class last week. On Friday after lunch we had the final battles, pitting the winners of each class against each other. There were hard hits, there were knockouts, and there was a brother vs. sister finale for the ages...

And after all the hot glueing, the practice, the design, the painting... we ended up with two teams, Rose Bots and On Guard, finishing in a tie.

Third weekend: Boating at Vallecito

Our second weekend activity at DMC was a bit different this year -- usually we go boating at Vallecito Reservoir for the afternoon, and then camp out on Saturday night. With so many of our campers sick this past week, we cancelled the camping trip (don't want to put a bunch of campers in tents together and maybe spread this flu) but we had a great afternoon of pontoon boating!

We spent four hours on the lake, racing the boats around, paddle boarding, swimming... the day started out pretty chilly and a bit rainy, but the clouds burned off and we had a beautiful sunny afternoon. Tyler was the first one in the water, before it'd even stopped raining, but after lunch everybody got in the water -- willing or not!

We ended the day back at camp with a bonfire and s'mores by the river. Zane played guitar, campers played "Telephone" and everybody went to bed smelling like smoke. Lovely day.

Poems from writing class

One of the writing tasks from the first weeks of camp was to write a poem called "Where I'm From". The campers wrote their own poems, and then inscribed them into their particular type of fingerprint. Here are some of the poems!

Durango Mountain Camp 2019 -- a late start to the blog, sorry!

Hello from DMC! Camp has been in full swing for two weeks... campers have settled in, and then unsettled right back out, as we've been hit by a pesky bout of the flu. Even though we're temporarily down a few campers, we're still having a great time here in Durango!

Last night was the 4th of July so after playing some games here at camp, we drove up to Silverton for the fireworks show. A cold night, but the kids bundled up in sleeping bags and everybody stayed (pretty) warm. Wrapping up the second week of tutoring, writing, art and science class this morning, the campers have been kept busy learning and playing all day long.