Together is a great place to be: Angel Island, the "Ellis Island" of the west

It's always a great experience to be able to attend a field trip and
share experiences and memories with my kids.
I had never been to Angel Island (some interesting history here)
and LOVE the Bay area so I was really excited!
After a nice (very plush van with movie screens) two hour bus ride, we loaded the
ferry in Tiburon and took off for Angel Island.
Andrew enjoyed the trip, especially being out of school and with friends.

The kids each had to carry their own pack, including their own sleeping bag, lunch and clothing.

They hiked as squads about a mile to where we would be sleeping at Camp Reynolds.

Yah, we made it!

I lucked out and they let me just carry my big camera bag (ha ha!) and send my pack in the van.

When we arrived we set up bed rolls (we slept in the bottom floor of this building) and had lunch.

I loved the surprise note Andrew had put in my lunch sack, it made my day!

After lunch, we began rotating the kids through stations including a compass hike

(with gorgeous views of Alcatraz and the San Francisco city scape),

morris code

(although I have many, many photos of all these activities for the class,

I'm just posting ones here of Andrew),

kitchen help,

militia training and marching,

and bake house (where I was).

Here, each of the groups took part in making our dinner bread, butter, and breakfast cinnamon rolls.

Andrew's group got to make the cinnamon rolls.

After our stations we had dinner which was actually quite good. We had made 20 small loaves of bread in the bake house and the kitchen crew had made a huge salad and two variations of stew. Either it was quite good or we were really hungry! The dishes took quite a while (imagine thirty 5th graders with five water barrels, using a whole bottle of soap but not a lot of scrubbing in the dark), but after we got a system in place we were able to enjoy a delicious apple crisp.

My favorite activity of the field trip was the night hike. We hiked up and over a hill to the most fantastic view of the city. I didn't have my camera, but could have sat for an hour and just enjoyed the view. We also enjoyed seeing the location where this huge gun battery sat, prepared to shoot into the bay. The kids loved hiking through a great horned owl habitat and seeing the deer so close to the camp.

After we got back to camp, I think the kids were exhausted (or highly motivated knowing they were each getting up for a 90 minute night watch) because they fell asleep quite quickly.

Sleeping in one big room wasn't the best night sleep, but not the worst either :)
In Andrew's words, here is his night watch experience, "My squadron's night watch
was from 12-1:30 in the morning. We had to walk around our building with very heavy muskets to "guard the camp". I had a great time ditching my friend when we saw an angry raccoon. After that, we started messing with it, shining our flashlights at it and teasing it. After we were done watching for enemy ships we got hot chocolate and popcorn but sadly had to
face the consequences of using dishes and clean them."

My squadron had their night watch at 4-5:30 a.m. which meant we were up for the day at 4 a.m.

At 5:00 Andrew's teacher and I began making bacon over a wood burning stove. We spent two hours cooking up 12 pounds, it was quite slow. We also had scrambled eggs, orange juice and cinnamon rolls.

The rest of the morning was spent cleaning up the camp for the 9:00 check from the major. The kids did a fantastic job pitching in. We took a group photo when we were finished.

Because it was so clean they got to help fire off the canon into the bay.

They loved it!

Afterward, we hiked back out to catch our ferry, waved as the other (cheerful, clean, and well-rested) fifth grade class headed to have their Angel Island experience, and enjoyed a beautiful boat ride back to our bus.