Lake Wenatchee

It's a hot summer afternoon and what better place to spend it but at a lake? The Camp Director hired a local school bus, complete with driver, and brought all of the campers and counselors to the State Park at Lake Wenatchee. I'm sitting at a table in the shade under a pine tree overlooking the beach.

We've got a nice group of kids -- there were eight boys (one was so homesick his mother came and got him this noon) and seven girls with three counselors and two counselors in training. The campers are all fourth and fifth and six graders.

What happens when you have four boys in a cabin when their counselor steps out to go to a meeting? And if said boys have a can of bear (pepper) spray -- brought in case they run into a bear while hiking? The boys do need to check it out, of course! One inhaled a good mouthful while the other three mainly escaped without ill effects. So my first crisis was a frantic boy coming to the lodge with his mouth burning. I put him to work rinsing his mouth out with water over and over -- while warning him NOT to swallow. When the can of bear spray was confiscated it turned out thankfully that rinsing was the recommended -- and only remedy...

Later that evening, Grandson Varick came in complaining that he'd gotten in to some stinging nettles on the palm of his hand. While he's rinsing the hand off and I'm looking for StingEze, he started saying the back of his hand was now burning. We found a 1 1/4 inch black and yellow caterpillar stuck to the side of his shirt that he had brushed his hand against. He had some nasty welts from it that were fortunately gone this morning. After I got the caterpillar unstuck from his shirt with a paper towel, I flicked it into the toilet. I wish now that I had saved it so that we could figure out what kind it was!

Since then I've had one girl with a couple of small slivers -- I hope that is the extent of it, or it could be a L-O-N-G week!