The Mojave Desert at its finest

After Apple Valley, our next adventure was to work at Camp Ironwood in the Mojave Desert. We had a great time helping the camp get caught up on work projects. My group spent most of the week painting a playground set for the school there. We began by scraping off as much of the old paint chips as we could...that was quite the job. Then we primered the whole set white (which the kids weren't too thrilled about), and then we painted it blue with some red highlites. When the kids came out and saw that part of the paint job they were ecstatic. They loved it. It was alot of fun, even if the paint dried as soon as your brush hit the pole and you had to glop it on as best as you could. I don't think paint was made to be used in the desert sun. :) The hottest day there was 113 degrees or 6 above as the grounds crew called it. I guess 107 is their "0 degrees" so anything higher than that is above 0.

We worked from 5am to 3pm each day. You might think that is crazy, but really 5am is the best time to work. From about 5-7 it is still cool (relatively cool anyway) and you definately get the best work done.

In the evenings the kids were assigned to a cabin and they ate dinner with their cabin, went to chapel with their cabin, and then went to devotions at night with their cabin. They were each assigned a prayer partner as well, so they got to get to know that person throughout the week. It was a great time for them. The speaker for chapel was Sam Brock (Walt Brock's son for those of you who know the Brocks). He did an excellent job.

We also got to do some fun stuff during the week such as hike soldier mountain, run down the sand dune behind soldier mountain, ride horses, go swimming, go down the huge water slide, and go to the shooting range. Unfortunately, I can't get the pictures from these activities or from our work groups to load onto my blog right now, so you'll just have to imagine it. :)