Another amazing day here at Camp Geiger has come and gone. The weather today was much better than yesterday's, the high was only ninety-six degrees versus the ninety-nine degrees high of yesterday. The temperature also dropped roughly twenty degrees during supper tonight because of the storm front that rolled in, from all signs it appeared to be a pretty bad storm but it did what most storms do when they get near Camp, they split and go to the North and South and then converge once they have made it on the other side. Hopefully the cool down continues into tomorrow as we all prepare for Family Night.
There are two main ways that a camper will spend the majority of his day at Camp, either taking a merit badge class or going to an activity. The different activities around Camp such as Mountain Boarding, Buckskin Games, COPE, and Action Archery are there to provide a place for campers to have fun doing something that isn't a class but yet they are still able to learn something. One of the most popular activities year in and year out is the COPE Course. COPE is an acronym for Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience and it is an activity that challenges those that take it both mentally and physically in addition to developing teamwork and leadership abilities. The way the course is set up is that there are several different events on both a low course and a high course. Today was the day that they were on the low course and they began with an activity that requires them to remove a tire from a ten foot pole and then place the tire back on the pole. Like all other COPE games, before the group started they were told a story about what they were doing in the task and also they are given information that makes the game more challenging. For instance when they were trying to make it to the other side of the wall in another game, in which the premise was that they were Smurfs rescuing Smurfette, they were told that only two people could be on top of the wall pulling people over at a time, they could not go around the wall, and after a person had come down from the top they were not allowed to help except to spot. I have failed to mention that COPE is also an exercise in listening and thinking outside of the box because once the team had gotten all of the members over the wall the instructor informed them that an easier way to have completed the game was to get just one person over the wall but because they hadn't carefully listened or asked the right questions they did not realize this. Another game they played today is called the Dangle Duo, in this game two people have to walk across two separate wires suspended a few feet off the ground, these wires are in the shape of a V with the starting point being at the wide end. The point of the game is for both people to make it down the V using ropes and then back using each other for balance, for even more of a challenge there is another version of this game on the high course that is suspended sixty-five feet off the ground.I again would like to encourage all of you who currently follow the Camp Geiger Blog to continue to check back frequently and to point any one that would like to keep up with what's going on here at Camp Geiger to the blog.
