July 12, 2013

Humbug Mountain State Park

We woke up to the sound of scratching.  Still being half asleep I didn’t immediately recognize the noise.  After listening for a couple of minutes I thought, Oh, no.  I’ve heard that kind of noise before.

At one time, when we still lived in a bricks and sticks house in Florida, we had a problem with rats getting into the attic.  What followed was a frustrating week long battle of setting traps and trying to find out where they were getting in to plug the access.

Monte figured out that the only way a rodent could get in is through the propane compartment.  All we could do for now was set some traps.  We also scattered moth balls we got from one of the other hosts who has dealt with this issue before, under the rig.

We drove around the camp looking for kids to invite to our program.  We only saw a few so I thought we were going to have a very small group for our program today on animal fur.  And when we started off at 10AM we did only have three kids but little by little they began to arrive and within 10 minutes we were up to 20 kids. 

I developed a game using the 14 animal pelts that I found in a kit.  After distributing a sheet that had a picture and the name of the animal I read facts about one of the animals on the sheet.  I instructed the kids to yell out the name of the animal I was giving them info on.  When someone yelled out the correct name Monte passed around that animal’s pelt.

The children really liked the game.  Afterward we took care of JR Ranger business by stamping their activity books and passports and handing out the awards for the level they achieved.

After lunch I spent a couple of hours preparing for our program on Saturday. 

In the evening we attended a program on Tide pools.  It was presented by Greg, our manager.  He introduced us to his parents who are visiting from Ohio and his two adorable little daughters.

We really like the weather here at Humbug Mountain State Park a lot better than the weather at Cape Blanco but I do miss our nightly walk down to the bluffs overlooking the ocean and the spectacular views.