3- Canoeing at Swan Lake

Today's canoe trip was AMAZING! Mr. E said the boys in my class said it was the best field trip they'd ever been on.  Woo!

...it wasn't even my idea! One of my students' parents works for the DNR and he set the whole thing up.  We got to Swan Lake shortly after 10:00 where Scott (the DNR guy/leader for this excursion) was waiting.  I thought we'd get right into the water, but he gave us a whole spiel about the Swan Lake area.  Did you know it covers over 10,000 acres? It's the largest wetland area in Minnesota.  And people can get lost in it... he covered that fact about ten times before we went out.  Stay in sight of the group; don't get separated or go off by yourself because you could get lost and we wouldn't be able to find you.  Apparently that happened to him when he took a group of high schoolers out... one canoe got lost!  Not so good for my peace of mind...

Thankfully no one got lost while we were out.  Scott gave us expert canoeing instructions and had us very orderly get into our canoes one at a time.  Then we struck out.  The sky was blue and clear, it was sunny, the birds were chirping... God couldn't have given us a better day.  No one wanted to come back in!  We paddled through reeds for a while until we reached the open part of the lake.  We saw/heard tons of birds and also saw a ton of muskrat houses.  After making it back to shore, we put all our canoeing equipment away. The kids were disappointed we didn't get to eat our sack lunches at Swan Lake (I didn't think there'd be a good place to eat, plus I didn't want us to litter).

There was a little trail that lead to an overlook of Swan Lake, so we followed it... and halfway through, we found out it was heavy with ticks.  Gross!  That is one thing that makes me squeamish... ticks!  After getting back to the parking lot, I flicked three ticks off my jeans.  I'm pretty sure 90% of the class found at least one (if not more) crawling on them.  Yuck!!!  Thankfully, ticks don't bite right away.  They crawl around for about 10 hours or so, so there's time to pick them off before they bite and transmit disease.

I think I'm losing my voice.  I could talk this morning, but as the day went on, it's gotten worse.  I'm still hacking up gunk when I cough, so I think my cold is not actually a cold... probably bronchitis or something.  So in to the doctor I go.  My usual doctor is full-up this week, so I'm doing the walk-in clinic thing.  Hopefully they can get me in quick since I have bible study tonight!

Tomorrow's balloon activity: play whatever game you want for word work or work on writing.