To read part nineteen of day six, click here.

Patrick opened the cooler, and I stood on my tiptoes to see what was in it. Inside were a couple of ripe bananas, a beautiful red apple, and a carton of strawberries that were just past the perfect stage, but not so far that they were bad.

My mouth watered at the sight of the fruit. I could almost taste the strawberries. I hoped that was what we would get.

Patrick set the cooler down, lifted out the carton of strawberries and opened it. He held it out to me, Maggie, and Kayce.

“Each of you gets one. Don’t tell the other kids you got one – then they’ll want one, and we don’t have enough for that.”

When I heard that, I almost felt bad for them. But the strawberry was so delicious, I forgot about them and just enjoyed the treat. It looked like Kayce and Maggie were enjoying their strawberries too, and I grinned as I thanked Patrick. Kayce and Maggie echoed me, and after handing Patrick our strawberry tops, we headed back to the van.

We sat down for the drive. It was only a half an hour or so this time, but we enjoyed it anyway. The soft seats, the air conditioning, music playing, my crew laughing around me… It was perfect.

We arrived at our campsite, and we were all ready to get camp set up. It was going to be dark soon, and we wanted to have dinner cooking and the tarps set up as quickly as possible.

Jen and Katie called a crew meeting.

“Ok you guys, everyone come over here and get in a circle.”

We all circled up quickly, ready to get this meeting over with so we could get the tarp up.

“Because you guys did such a great job today, Katie and I have a treat for you.”

Everyone looked at Jen in anticipation. You could tell that she was doing this on purpose. She was looking at all of us like, “You’re just going to have to wait to find out what I’m talking about…”

Someone spoke up, tired of waiting. “Jen? What is the treat?”

“Katie and I are going to make dinner for you! You guys did so well today, and we wanted to do something nice for you.”

We all cheered, happy to have two extra people to put the tarps up. Jen told us we could go, and we all ran back up the trail to the sleeping area.

Putting up the tarps didn’t take long – what took a while was standing in line to go to the bathroom. There was a line three people deep for the pee spot, which was up past Jen and Katie’s tarp.

We grabbed our mats, bowls and water bottles and headed down to the dinner area. As we were walking we could smell the food – we were having pasta and red sauce, and it smelled amazing!

We sat down in our circle, several of us on each mat. I was sitting on the edge of my mat, next to Luke and Jordan. When I looked over at where Jen and Katie were, I was surprised to see that Katie wasn’t cooking the dinner with Jen. Instead, she was off behind Jen, cooking something over there. It looked like she was trying to hide it from us, so I didn’t ask.

Dinner was amazing. The sauce was delicious when you added spices from the spice kit, and there was plenty of noodles. I was stuffed to the brim – I love noodles. That was when Katie told us what she had been making. It was chocolate cake.

I couldn’t believe it. I had just stuffed myself, and there was chocolate cake?? I took a piece anyway – someone would eat what I didn’t.

It was slightly burnt, but it looked amazing. It smelled amazing too. I picked off some burnt spots, and ate two bites. It tasted amazing, but I was too full to eat anymore. I elbowed Luke.

“Hey dude – you want the rest of this?”

I showed him the cake in my bowl. His eyes grew wide and he mumbled something, but I couldn’t understand him through the cake in his mouth. I decided that he wanted it, and dumped it in his bowl. He chewed and swallowed, then said a quick thank you before shoving my cake into his mouth.

Once we were done cleaning up, Katie said that we were finally going to play Newlyweds! (Remember when we started it?) .

I don’t remember any of the questions asked. I just remember that Jen and I lost. Like, really badly. 😀

When we were done playing newlyweds, we all went marching back up the hill. It wasn’t long before everyone was in their sleeping bags, tired out from the long day.

Overall, it had been a pretty good day. That I was freaking out about things all day was not good. But the way my crew all tried to help me, made me realize that we were a crew, and we were going to take care of each other. Lunch was really yummy, and it was funny watching my crew react when they heard that we were going to be having PB and J on tortillas. But the best part about that day was the fact that I only flipped once, the whole day. And it was the planned flip! The rapids swim assessment wasn’t fun, and neither was hearing that one of our crewmates wouldn’t be with us the next day. But the dinner and cake were really good!

So yeah, it was a hard day. But it was also a good one. 🙂

As I fell asleep, I prayed that I wouldn’t flip on the rapids the next day. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out the way I wanted.

Click here to read the first part of Day Seven.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here. Thanks too NCOBS for letting me use their photos.*

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