Tuesday! Another full and fun day. More photos of camper act are below: Dining room action, prizes, nocturnal critters, impermanent art, stream side beauties, GPS training and much, much, more.
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Alumni Counselor Steve Rice welcomes the hungry hoards.
Todays members of the "Clean Plate Club."
Nurse Lois always has lots of Nature contests for the campers. This drawing was for the camper who correctly identified a photo of a baby bird.
The winner - Madeline Madison!
Blake Humphrey was another lucky prize winner
Here, Program Director Natasha Diamond goes over the day's busy schedule.
Naturalist Dave Sapienza's challenges each of his groups to make a paper aircraft and then see how far they can launch it. Then it's inside to for a show and tell about Nocturnal Critters.
This goes to show a lot of effort is not always the most efficient method of movement.
Dave has a number of interesting "touchables" for his class. This is a Great Horned Owl wing.
"You lookin' at me?"
Nola and Red Fox pelt.
Hunter shows the results of Owl pellet dissection.
Brenna inspects a Southern Flying squirrel pelt.
While some campers learn about "things that go bump in the night", others are taking Jon's class on Impermanent Art and are busy collecting materials for their art creations.
Once they get their materials collected the camper start on their art projects.
After leaving the temporary artists colony I went in search of the Stream Studies class. Along the way I found some nice clumps of Bouncing Bet growing along the stream bank.
This plant is also known as "Soapwort" because one can rub the leaves together briskly and produce a soapy, cleansing lather.
Although I never did find the Stream study group I did find this Wild Bergamont. Beautiful!
During camp the staff meets at regular intervals to make sure everything is running smoothly.
For Tuesdays afternoon session the camp learned about the basics of GPS.
Here Brad Blaine of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection explains the how to set up and use GPS units.
Once the campers had their units set up it was off on a predetermined route.
Although it looks like everyone is wandering aimlessly that is not the case. Each group is letting the GPS unit guide them to specific set of coordinates.
Eventually, most of the campers ended up at the right place. This exercise in land navigation give the campers a good idea of how satellite and land base receivers cam be used for mapping, way finding and GeoCacheing.
Meanwhile, up at the Winterized Lodge, James Tiu is busy working on an article for the Bird's Eye, the camp newsletter. James attended Oglebay Junior Nature Camp in the late 1970's, and returned in the early 2000's as an adult volunteer.
During supper we had out first birthday cake dessert, thanks to Natalie Gainer who just turned ?? Happy Birthday Natalie!
As Briella Talyor looks on, Dave gives the "Thumbs Down!" to this mess, which will have to be scraped at the end of the meal into the scrap bowl. Last year Dave started a new camp tradition at his table. Take what you want, eat what you take. This means no waste and No Scraping. Unfortunately this backfire on this particular occasion. Dave's table had already refused a scrape bowl, then the mess occurred. What to do??!!
Well, the kind and accommodating table next to Dave's agreed to take all the plates and scrape them so no one would have to go for a scrape bowl and thus put the number of no scrape days back to zero. Poor Brenna!
As you can see from the smile here, it's really not as bad as it looks. That's one of the great things about JNC - anything can be turned into fun.
Willa, our youngest camper, always has fun.
Naturalist Greg Park teaches botany by having a Mystery Plant contest. Here Maddie Pyles reads the winner's name after drawing it from answer can.
And the winner? Isaac Jones who correctly identified the Hayscented Fern.