A Day at Gardom Lake

What an incredible day. Gardom Lake is a Bible camp that is connected through our church. A camp that Ray once worked at, Mark attended last year and will again this year and that I have spent many retreats at. It has been our tradition for the last five years to participate in their fundraiser day of Walk, Run, Bike. Ray has done the 70km bike the last few years with his Dad (who beat his time by 2mins this year I head)but this year we decided to split up and Ray and Mark biked the 10km with his brother and cousin Kaden. They actually did 7 or 8 by accident by taking a different turn but it's not about the 10kms it's about the fun ! Kyla biked 5km and walked/ pushed with her. She did great just needs to use less breaks going UP hills!
The kids also had the chance to climb the wall, archery, and try the ropes course. We were so proud of Mark to over come his fear of heights and completed the ropes course with a small zip line....












the most amazing thing was standing up looking at people coming down the large zip line. I turned to my Mother-in-law and said -I'm scared to death but it would be a dream come true, want to try it together? OK, I can't remember exactly what I said first, but the conversation started something like that and somehow we were walking up the hill to the top...even at the top of the hill we were watching each person going down and talking ourselves out of it. Some how the harnesses were being checked and we were looking at each other wondering how we were going to do this. "It's 26 seconds of your life" someone said - it's not the zip line I was worried about, it was climbing the tree and getting off the platform...
Kids were going up no problem including our friends kids and one nephew, something about seeing them go should have made it easier but it didn't somehow...
I started to climb and the ladder alone I would have avoided in any other situation, never mind the rungs in the tree... I held onto the one rung while sitting on the platform not sure how I would let go "can't be a tree hugger up there" I heard someone yell... slowly, and I mean slowly, i moved myself to the edge...only one way down they said...Ryan (camp staff) couldn't/ wouldn't push me off so I managed to find a way...
it was actually fun...it was a 300ft zip line. when I bounced off the tire at the end and I wasn't expecting that but otherwise, it was fun!
The ladder up, getting off the platform and getting down off the ladder at the end when they had thrown me a rope at the landing platform were the most difficult parts of the whole experience.

Mark also went and so did the Simon being the youngest person the camp has ever let go on the zipline alone...I'm proud of you Simon, Kaden, Mark, Trudy, Sam and Cady and of course of myself!!
One more thing checked off my "bucket list"!!