Peter's Field Trip

Today was Peter's class field trip to Spooner Lake.  It was actually the entire first grade (minus some kids that got themselves into too much trouble at school).  I think there were 73 kids, plus teachers, parents and some siblings.

Grady went to preschool like normal and then Boris picked him up and spent the afternoon with him.  Peter's field trip was scheduled to last the whole school day and I didn't think Grady would be up for walking all the way around the lake (about 2.5+ miles).

We got situated up in the parking lot around 10am.  Peter and Colby were my two charges.  In general, I think they were supposed to stick next to me but there was a lot of running involved so mostly they just stuck where I could see them.

The trail is mostly single-file or maybe two people wide.  The boys were running all the time and kept passing people so I kept having to maneuver around people to keep up.  A couple times they tried to pass a teacher and the teacher told them to stop and wait for their adult.

The whole group of kids climbed lots of rocks, ran through the trails and had lots of very fast adventures.  I really expected that we'd go slower, stop and look at all the nature placards that talk about the local wildlife and vegetation, but there was none of that.  It was "let's get around this thing as fast as we can because we want to eat".

The weather was pretty perfect for it.  Down in the valley it was really windy and cold feeling but once we got up to the high altitude it was still very cool but not at all windy.  From what I heard from other parents, there's been years that there's still snow on the ground and years that everyone's been boiling hot, so this worked out really well.

Lunch was chaotic and noisy, but everyone was present and accounted for eventually.  The kids were back on the bus by about 12:30pm and on their way back to school.  Peter said they got to watch a movie when they got back.

He said his favorite part was riding the bus and eating lunch.  Later he also said that he almost fell asleep on the bus (he said while driving up to the lake, but he might have meant on the way back to school).