After learning how much trash we produced in just 10 days here at this camp (49.18 lbs) I know that our schools must generate thousands and thousands of pounds of trash over a 180 day school year. I want to reduce this. I intend to start talking to my school leaders to  set up a better recycling program for our campus. As of right now, we only recycle classroom paper materials, but I think that we can recycle plenty of other things. I'd like to see us set up a compost pile like the one shown here at the Los Reales Landfill in Tucson, Arizona (this one is made of waste from the local zoo). We always have people working on the landscaping around the school, and if we started a compost pile, we wouldn’t have to buy fertilizer because were making our own, and it would be good quality as well.

Besides the obvious things that we learned about here at this camp, like recycling, we also learned about other ways of conservation and preservation.When we had the opportunity to take showers (not very often!), we had to take conservational showers to save water. First we would get in, turn the water on and rinse our selves off. Then we would shut the water off and put shampoo or soap on, still with the water off. We would then turn the water back on and wash ourselves off. So, whenever we weren’t rinsing off, the water is off.  This is called a navy shower becasue sailors at sea have to really be conscious of wasting water. If everybody did this, we would save thousands of gallons of water everyday.

CAMP COOPER!

For the first two nights of the camp, we stayed at Camp Cooper. The cabins were small and stuffy and extremely hot, so nobody stayed in there. Instead, we all slept outside. It was a really great experience for me because I have never slept outside before while camping. This definitely wasn’t an uneventful night though. We had all sorts of stuff happening. There was one kid that was absolutely convinced that there was a man walking around the campsite sweeping, but we all thought he was crazy and just wanted to get some sleep! Then the same kid thought that we were about to get hit by a lightning storm. Everyone saw lightning, but we could all tell that it was many miles away and that it wasn’t going to hit us. He wasn’t so convinced. This caused even more raised tempers until we convinced everyone to go to sleep. Then we were OK for the night.

The next night we spent there was eventful on a different matter. Everything was going allright, until we started to have some fun. We were playing a fun variation of hide and seek. One team would hide along the path and then the other team would come and try to find them. One of my friends was hiding on the other team until a snake came by and brushed up against his leg. This obviously freaked him out and he came out of hiding pretty quick. Then in the morning we had some more animals when a big group of javelinas came up to some water and were drinking until we got there. Then the all started running away, but we got a couple great pictures.

After a night at the UA dorms, we headed up to Mount Lemmon for the night. We used the back road, which is an extra 3 or 4 hours. On the way up we transected(surveyed the life in a given area) every couple of miles. The road was extremely bumpy and very long. Everybody was happy to be on solid, flat land once we reached the top. Then we went on a mile long hike up to the fire lookout. This was very neat. You could see the whole valley below(as shown in the picture). We learned all about the guys job and his equipment. Sometimes he stays up there in his little house for a couple months at a time!
Then we settled into our campsite. That night was a night of games. We played the human ladder, the spider web game, and the raccoon circle game. Then it was the time for bed… and the pranks! The guys started the first wave of attacks. When we finally got the word from the counselor that we had permission to prank, we were told not to go out after 10 o’clock. We only had about a half an hour to plan a prank, so after a half hour of mixing ideas and yelling dissagreements, we decided to just get in close to their camp and bombard them with pinecones. So that didn’t work too well because we could barely find their camp, and then after only getting three throws in, they found us and we ran out back to our site. After being alert for a counter attack for about a half an hour, we decided to go to bed. Then in the morning we figured out that we probably should have stayed up a little bit longer. We woke up and found all of our shoes pad locked together!! We wanted to solve it ourselves, so after attempting to crack the code, a couple of the geniuses in our group decided we should smash the lock. So then after failing to crack the lock with the rock, we got in trouble, and then we used anyything and everything to break it since we already destroyed the lock.