The 4-H camp I went to was at Camp Rotary in the Little Belt mountains. When I got there registration was first. After that, I got to settle in at my cabin. Then I got to look around and find where everything was, such as the bathrooms, dining hall and the pavilion. The camp had boundaries such as we couldn’t go past the creek, cabins or cattle guard. After thirty minutes of unpacking and exploring it was time for dinner. Dinner was at 6:00, breakfast at 8:00, and lunch at 12:30. The whole camp was space themed so the cabins had planet names. My cabin was named Earth. The team names were also space themed and were called the Milky Way, Orion, Ursa Major and the Big Dipper. There were classes to sign up for about different subjects like weed science, entomology and survival skills . There was free time to play games or sports like volleyball, football, gaga ball, dart frog, hide and seek, tag and lots of other games. One night we had a campfire and sang songs and roasted marshmallows for s’mores. One night there was a group game where all the kids played capture the flag. On the last night there was a dance in the pavilion. For kids who didn’t want to dance there was crafts and snacks. At the end of camp there was a slideshow with all the pictures from the four days we were there.
There were kids from Judith Basin county, Broadwater county, Musselshell County and Chouteau County. My favorite part of camp was meeting new friends and learning to forage for weeds I could eat.
On June 1 our 4-H group, Sunshine Snippers, attended a very fun field trip. We went to Havre Underground and Fort Assiniboine. At Havre Underground we got to tour the kitchen, blacksmith shop, butcher shop, pharmacy, bakery, bar, saddlery, barbershop, Chinese laundry room, hotel and office. My favorite room of Havre Underground was the restaurant. It showed kitchen utensils and types of food that they ate back then. I thought it was funny that they made wax paper straws and used them for making spitballs to blow at the ceiling for fun. Our tour guide explained that people stayed up until midnight gambling and drinking at the bar. Another room was the butcher shop. We learned how different tools were used in the butcher shop to process meat. The blacksmith shop had lots of tools for making supplies out of metal. The saddlery was neat because it showed how they made saddles and fitted them to horses and people. The pharmacy had medicines that were used in those days. Some medicines were so toxic they had to be under lock and key. The bakery was very interesting because it had an oven that would fit 30 loaves of bread in it at one time! There was an old time cash register at the bakery. The Chinese sleeping and laundry room were separate from the hotel because the Chinese were disliked at that time. Our entire tour was about 1 hour long and was very informational.
We arrived at Fort Assiniboine around 1 pm. We ate lunch of pulled pork sandwiches, chips and BBQ beans. After lunch we talked with a military person, mounted on a horse, who was dressed in the original uniform. He told us about the stirrups, bits and other tack they used back then. There was another military man dressed in uniform that told us about the weapons, like muzzleloaders, cannons, swords and daggers and also the equipment used to make the weapons like bullet molds and powder horns. We got to watch them set off a cannon! We got to ride a tractor pulled wagon and tour the whole fort including the ice house, laundry house, hospital, stables and courthouse. The courthouse was where prisoners were kept in jail cells. We were also allowed to see an old apartment where one of the women stayed. She was the sergeant’s wife and one of the few women or maybe the only woman in the fort at that time. I’m glad I got to see Fort Assiniboine and learn more about Montana history.
