The Mountain Goats Meet Some Salmon

Taking full advantage of the little sunlight left after school on Thursday, the Mountain Goats managed to squeeze a lot of fun into only three hours.  After burning off a bit of after-school energy running around at the parking lot, we held our opening circle and got our heads in the game for how we were going to spend our time.

Checking out a waterfall along the way

From the North Chuckanut Mountain trailhead, we headed up the hill and over into Arroyo Park for some exploration time.  Our hope was to catch a glimpse of some chum salmon in Chuckanut Creek and we found them!  The boys scrambled all over around the creek trying to get close and sometimes even succeeded.  We saw quite a few salmon and, best of all, managed to keep everyone dry during that adventure.  This also provided us a chance to talk a little about the life-cycle of salmon and the importance of keeping our streams and rivers in good shape to allow spawning to happen.

Good times on the bridge

Staying high and dry

Meeting a salmon up close and personal

After our salmon-spotting, we crossed the big fallen log over to the south side of the creek and headed up the hill for some more games of "Hide".  The Explorers showed us that they’re clearly getting better at The Art of Camouflage!  That got us warmed up for a nail-biting game of "Spider’s Web" a bit further up the mountain.  Our spider had a pretty sharp eye, so everyone had to pull out their A-game to sneak past him.  Eventually, through an impressive bit of teamwork and acrobatic skills, the flies managed to work the food source (bandana) back to the web for the win!

Don't worry!  It's wider than it looks!

The "spider" strikes again!

Resting up a bit at closing circle, we had some good conversation about how well the group did that day.  A big win in terms of interpersonal skills (widely recognized among the group) was keeping our style of play a bit more under control.  Some of the more physical boundaries we worked through in the previous outing never even came up today.  We all walked away feeling great about a really fun outing together and definitely looking forward to the next one!

Be sure to check out the rest of the photos from our outing here!