This year was my very first year of youth conference (woohoo!), and it was also Trek. Go big or go home, right? Normally when you think of trek you think of things like hot, sweaty people who haven't showered in 3 days and unfortunate bathrooms. But this year, the stake youth committee planned youth conference, so it was a bit different. Instead of trekking all three days, the first day, we met our families, and built the city of Nauvoo. Each family got to decorate a little cardboard building, (my family's was the best,obviously) , we built our handcarts, and we even built a temple. It probably wasn't the sturdiest structure, and the angel Moroni was nearly as big as the temple itself, but it was still really awesome. It was really hot that day though, and we all kept on saying that we wouldn't mind a little rain. Keep that in mind. That night, we had a dance in the center of "town", and my family and I went star tipping, which was a regular party. Ma and Pa didn't come, but that was probably a good decision on their part. Star tipping is when you look at a star and spin around in circles really fast. Then, someone shines a flashlight and you try to run towards the light, with hilarious results. After the stake leaders came ad told us to go to bed, I had a very long discussion about why raccoons were demon spawn and all the horrible things they'd done with my "sisters". Needless to say, I was a little paranoid that night. Some of the other tents around us were a little miffed at us because right in the middle of our raccoon horror stories, we heard a scratching on our tent and some of us may have shrieked...but then we realized it was a person attempting to knock on the door of our tent. Oops.
The next morning, we all woke up and were feeling kind of sluggish. We all were trying to take our own sweet time waking up. Bad idea. I was in the middle of pulling my skirt on over my basket ball shorts when we heard gunshots and people screaming, "YOU HAVE TO LEAVE NAUVOO!" and "WE'RE NOT WELCOME HERE!! WE NEED TO LEAVE!" My sisters and I just looked at each other for a second then started yelling indiscernible things which must've sounded like "ohmyheckidontevenhavepantsonwhenamigonnabrushmyteethhasanyoneseenmyshirtALADYNEEDTIMETOPACKHERTHINGSYOUSTUPIDMOBSTERSwherethecrapismydeoderantimgonnakillandrewreid!" Fabulous way to wake up, no? But then some one yelled that we had one hour, so it was all better. We packed up all of our thing and led the company out of camp, and right as we were leaving, we had a perfect view of the temple going up in flames.
We trekked for about an hour before we stopped to listen to some pioneer stories on the Trail of Hope. Right in the middle of Parley Pratt's presentation, we heard a huge crack of thunder and it started to downpour . When i say downpour, I mean something more along the lines of tropical storm. The drops were huge and heavy and it was cold and we were all soaking wet. We hiked for for 6 more mile like that, so I'd say we had a pretty true pioneer experience. the best part was, no one ever complained. We all just stayed optimistic and didn't say anything about how miserable, and alot of the leadres were really impressed and touched by this. At one point, we were trying to push teh handcart up a reallly steep hill, and we nearly dropped it, but my "brothers" and Pa saved us, because they were totally the bomb. We were all thrilled to be back at the campsite for lunch, and our family had the brilliant idea to sit under the rain fly for one of the tents and eat. We had some downtime, so I went to talk to some friends, but then it started pouring again. We all grabbed the rain fly and sat underneath it and talked, and it was pretty cozy because there were about 7 of us underneath it. Not a good smell. My friend Heidi suggested we move and sit under her dad's trailer, but no one wanted to move because we thought we looked inconspicuous underneath the tarp and if we got up, people would want us to come out because no one else was genius enough to get a tarp. We finally decided to just pick it up and run for it, but when we poked our heads outside of the tens, no one was there! The entire camp had decided to move to the cars and here we were thinking we were so smart for sitting under a tarp.Darn. That night was probably my favorite, because we all played games and I learned a hilarious new game called Choompa.
This is where the real roughing it starts. At around 2:30 am, I woke up and it was storming. I didn't think much of it until I moved my feet and felt a puddle. I sat up, and there was about a four foot puddle by my feet, so I curled up into a ball and went back to sleep. Half an hour later, I woke up again and my pillow and my face was wet. It was raining inside the tent! Thank you, rain tarp. I woke up my sister Rebecca because her stuff was dangerously close to the edge of the tent and the small waterfall that was cascading down the side. My other sisters, Theresa and Laura, were already awake so they popped up and we assessed the damage. There was a puddle around the edge of the tent that went all the way around, pretty much trapping us. At first we just sat there like "What do we do now?", but then someone, I cant remember who, said "Just start laughing! We have to stay positive!" So we started laughing, and it was just a weak laugh at first, but then we started cracking up. Again, staying optimistic. We realized that there was no way we would be able to sleep in our tent, so we made a plan. Rebecca would go sleep with her parents, because they were Ma and Pa for another family, and the rest of us would go to Laura's twin sister's tent. As soon as we got outside, Laura and Rebecca sprinted off into the night, and we couldn't see where they had gone. Plus, the zipper was stuck so Theresa and i got soaked trying to fix it. We ended up running into Sarah's tent, but there was no room in the inn. They had all been denying the fact that they were flooding until we got there. Theresa and I ran to my parents tent and banged on the side of their tent and said, "We need the car keys!" They didn't eve ask who it was, they just grabbed the keys and ran with us to the Suburban. WE slept in the car for about 30 minutes before Sarah and all the girls in her family came and took refuge with us. We were all so tired we just fell asleep sitting straight up, or curled into a ver tight ball in my case. At 6 in the morning, all the boys in mom and dad's family came and jumped in the trunk. That car has never smelled worse. I seriously think wet people is a worse smell than wet dog. Finally, the stake president called on the walkie talkie and said we would pack up everything and call it off early, after a quick breakfast and testimony meeting at the nearest church building. We walked back to our tent to pack up and when we got there we found 2 inches of standing water covering the whole tent. It. Was. Ridiculous. Our brothers came over to see how we were (they were such sweethearts), and we found out from them that our brother Evin had slept on an air mattress and barely gotten wet, and that two boys slept outside under a tarp and were completely dry. So we cursed them, and their cows, and their whole family. (Mulan) Trek was definitely a new and different experience, but its one of my favorite things that I've done this year,and I will NEVER forget it.
