Camp Day

Before I go any farther with this post I want to acknowledge and thank Bruce Doll for the generous use of his photos.  Bruce is Lowell's unofficial official photographer and not much happens around here without him recording it.  His photos are always perfect, published on his FB page and I think everyone secretly hopes he will catch themselves in the act. And he probably has because he is everywhere.  I didn't get the chance to tell him yesterday to warn me first so I could suck in my stomach, so of course there are no photos of me in here.  I was busy cooking so couldn't take my own photos so thank you, Bruce.

OK.

Yesterday the museum held its day camp and this year's theme was the lumbering era here.  Each camp is very well researched, conducted by the education director for the museum and her husband and sister and it's always a fun day for the kids I think because it's so hands on.  Being a museum sponsored day you might expect to hear, "don't touch" but that never happens.  

The day began with the explanation of marking logs because when you see photos of a log run in a river, well, when those logs end up at a mill the lumber company wants its money so the ends of the logs are marked with a brand that identifies the lumber company.   Here they are shown a branding hammer

                                                                    How it's used  and 

                    then it's given to the tiniest peanut of the day and she tries her hand at it. 

Their activity was to design their own brand and mark a cut off

Aren't they just the toughest looking bunch of lumberjacks you ever saw?

Last year the theme was the Civil War and it was a huge hit with the kids so these soldiers were asked back to give the kids another lesson.

Again, no one said "don't touch" as they examine a typical soldier's kit

And speaking of kit, look who made themselves right at home!  This young kitten/cat found the camp because I think it smelled the bacon cooking.  The kids played and played with it and as you know cats will do, they stop, drop and sleep just about anywhere, the more inconvenient the better..

I was camp cook and lunch was pancakes, bacon, donuts, cheese cubes, apples, watermelon.  I was a cooking fool, let me tell you.  That's why I had to rely on Bruce's photos because it took a long time to cook bacon and then pancakes for this group.  I cooked four packages of bacon and two boxes of pancake mix.

And I surely made a mess doing it.   One of the things that surprised photographer Bruce Doll was that I was cooking the pancakes in bacon grease.  He had never seen that before.  I told him it's how you get the crispy edges. Everybody likes crispy edges on their pancakes, don't they?   

               In the afternoon there were activities, some crafty and some soldiering

At the end of the day it looks like kitty was either settling in or hiding from the kids, probably just as tired as the kids were!