Boston Inspiring Connections Outdoors
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Trip / March 20, 2010 – Hiking and Maple Sugaring with St. Peters
We took a group of girls from St Peters up to the Mass Audubon Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary for a maple sugaring tour and some nature hiking. We could not have asked for a more beautiful day, and although many of the trails were still flooded from last week's rain, the girls showed no fear of getting wet or muddy and showed great teamwork getting over/around many tricky spots on the trail (see pictures). The maple sugaring tour took about an hour and included an introduction to sugar maples, a demonstration of how the trees are tapped, a trip to the sugar house where the sap is boiled down, and a tasting of the final product. It was interesting, but a little long and not really geared for kids. After the tour we had a delicious picnic lunch provided by Laura, and then set off for a couple hours of hiking and nature watching on the trails. Highlights included a garter snake, several chickadees that took seeds from the girls' hands, beaver lodges and cuttings, canada geese, bluebirds, ladybeetles, a fallen bird's nest, and a muskrat.
A big thank you to Laura for setting up the trip and providing lunch, to Tara for the fun games, and to both for helping make the trip a success and a fun day for all.
-Anne
I am happy to report that our first trip of the summer was a wonderful success. We had eleven 8th grade girls from the Let's Get Movin Program at East Boston Neighborhood Health Center along with five of their Americorps leaders and two ICO leaders-in-training, Tara and Chris. For most of the girls, this was their first time ever camping, and they rose well to the challenge. We started out Friday night with a cookout, followed by a night hike and a fun game about night vision and color perception. As we have often found on these trips, getting the girls to quiet down at bedtime proved a difficult task, but we finally had success around midnight.
We awoke Saturday morning to a picture-perfect day, and after cleaning up breakfast and packing up gear we embarked on a 2-mile nature hike to Lake Dennison. Once at the Lake, we spent the next three hours swimming and enjoying a picnic lunch. During our closing circle the girls shared that they enjoyed the swimming and seeing a frog on the night hike.
I've attached a link below to some pictures from the trip. All in all it was a great trip.
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