The A Team

Note from Alex:  I know several people were wondering what happened to Alex.  Did she have a more serious run-in with a bear?  Did all the kids drive her crazy and she ran farther into the wild to escape being around children?  No, none of these things happened.  My reason for not posting in a while is much less exciting: I had limited internet time since there were several days the internet was turned off completely so I used the time I did have access to work on my online class.  However, now that I have returned to the Lower 48 safe and sound and internet access abounds I will share more about my experience.

 The A Team hit camp this week like a whirlwind- a cleaning force to be dealt with.  The A team was comprised of those in Group A on work staff this week and we took it upon ourselves to battle all dirt, grime, and messiness at camp-- and had a good time doing it.  We raced to clean bathhouses, tackled mountains of pots and pans, jammed out to tunes while painting bunks - that's right, more painting for me this week, and joked around while sweeping, mopping, and hauling firewood to stock cabins.  I feel like I have almost lived in the kitchen this week- so maybe not but considering how much I love being in kitchens I have hung out quite a bit in one this week.  For each meal there are dishes for 150 people and all the pots and pans needed to feed them.  I'm pretty sure that in one day I washed more dishes than I do in an entire year for myself.  Of course when I go back to my apartment in KC I'm going to miss the industrial size dishwasher .  One night we had ice cream sandwich cookies for dessert.  One of the other counselors and I decided to split the last one and clean out the melted ice cream in the bottom of the pan just using our faces.  It was a great time and we did such a good job that it almost didn't even need to be washed.

This month during camp the kids have gotten breakfast in bed the day after playing Mission Impossible so they get a chance to sleep in.  On Saturday The A Team decided to make breakfast in bed for all of the staff.  We got up early to make a killer pumpkin cream cheese coffeecake and bran muffins.  Yes, I even helped cook and bake and nothing went wrong.  We had a few hitches when we couldn't figure out how to get the food processor to work or where to find the bran for the muffins (a slightly major ingredient) but all in all I thought it went well for my first attempts in making a recipe that feeds 50 people.  We then loaded everything up in the back of a golf cart- coffeecake, yogurt, buckets of fruit, thank you cards, and coffee- and drvoe all over camp delivering trays of breakfast.

As for entertainment this weekend it was decided to have a barn party.  Everyone found a flannel shirt (these are pretty easy to come by at camp) and a cowboy hat (also not rare on a ranch) and we had a party.  There are several barns at camp but we decided to go to The Loft which is the counselors' hangout.  We turned up the country music and played a few games of Texas Hold 'Em using the left over silver treasure coins from pirate month as poker chips.  Saturday afternoon the counselors loaded up in the Blondina and headed an hour away to Antler River for kind of an end of the summer bash.  There is an awesome sandy beach (real sand and not rock or gravel) so we all relished taking off our boots and frolicking in the sand.  We played Ultimate Frisbee on the beach until the tide came in and flooded one of the end zones.  Before we started we took a moment  to just marvel at the location we were playing in- a beach in the Alaskan wilderness with mountains towering all around us and ocean waves rolling in.  For dinner we had brats (as in bratwurst not brats like whining kids- we had some of those too this summer, just not for dinner) on  a camp fire and had a picnic on the beach.  Afterwards we went on a "bear hunt".  With 15 people tromping through the woods seeing a bear is pretty unlikely but we were well armed with bear spray, knives, and guns.  There are also moose that live near Antler River which is what we were all hoping to see even though it was very unlikely.  We ended up seeing lots of bear and moose poop (I guess scat is the appropriate terminology) plus 2 porcupines.  Our boat ride back to camp was right at sunset so we sat on the edge of the boat talking or singing as we enjoyed a glorious Alaskan sunset cruise Echo Ranch style.