Leader/Daughter Retreat

This weekend was my girl scout service unit's Leader/Daughter retreat. It was held at Camp Trefoil, which is up Provo Canyon. Usually, when I go on long drives, I try to take our little Honda Civic, since it gets almost 50 miles to the gallon. However, there was supposed to be some snow this weekend, so I decided to take the safer route and bring along my Expedition. This turned out to be a very good thing.

We got to camp on Friday night. The lodge was absolutely beautiful, and we were amazed by how much snow was on the ground- there was at least 2-3 feet of snow.

The first evening, there was a murder/mystery performance put on by Hunt Mysteries. A cast of 7-8 people come, all dressed in costume. They mingled with the group, in character, and you talked to them a bit. They then had people sit down, and they had dialogue. After a bit of this, a murder occurs. The "guests" have approximately 10-15 to talk to the characters individually to determine HOW the murder occurred, WHO did it, and the MOTIVE. You then filled out a paper with your guess and turned it in. Once those were collected, they revealed all. It was pretty funny because one of the characters showed up at the same time as my daughters and I, and we had chatted quite a bit and really hit it off. We bantered a bit once she was in character. As it turned out, I decided she had committed the murder.

S was really taken with all of the characters, especially the bride. She begged to have her picture taken with her.

Once the murderer was revealed, they did a drawing of all the people who had the correct answers. I was one of the winners!! The murderer said to me, "How could you accu

se me of murder?! I thought we were friends!". I retorted, "Just because I think you're a killer doesn't mean I don't love you!" I thought it was hilarious, but maybe you had to be there. The performance was a LOT of fun, and I would recommend it to anyone.

For sleeping arrangements, there were three options: Party Lodge, with no curfew, then a different building with a midnight curfew, and then the bunkhouse, with a 10:30 lights out time. We decided to go with the funsucker area, and boy am I glad we did!! The other two places were huge, communal sleeping areas with dozens of people in the room. The bunkhouse had individual dormstyle rooms, so the girls and I got our own room. Once we were in there, it was silent. Beautiful silence.

The next day, they had some guys come in to do a dutch oven cooking demonstration. They were very friendly, personable and knowledgeable. Once I find out their names/website, I'll link that here as well; they were also top notch. They showed us how to make dutch oven lasagna, and then served it for lunch. It was A-MAZ-ING. I'm anxious to try it out at home.

After lunch, the girls and I went outside. I shoveled walks while they went sledding (it had been snowing lightly all day). Then, we went snow shoeing.

S did amazingly well considering the snowshoes were all the same size, and almost half her body length.

Then, we went to go cross country skiing. Unfortunately, they didn't have boots/skiis small enough for her, so she played in the lodge while K and I took a spin. It was a lot of fun, and I would've liked to have gone longer, but it was about to get dark.

This morning, we get up to find that it had been snowing hard all night long. I had to dig my car out of the snow; there was probably at least 18" of snow on it.

We finally got out to the main canyon, and found that highway patrol had closed it due to treacherous conditions. After about a 45 minute wait, they opened up the canyon again, and our drive home was uneventful.