Katie's Outdoor Adventures: Spring Break 2015: Day 4

I woke up at 6:50am, and was the first to get up. As such, I started water boiling and hash-browns browning. The breakfast was really good, and the proportions were spot on (4 people/ bag plus 4 people/sausage). Hash browns and sausage really is becoming one of my favorite camping meals.

We arrived at Best Friends Animal Society at 9am as scheduled. We were greeted, and then we watched two orientation videos: one overall and one on volunteering in Dog Town (the dog area). After the orientation, we drove over to the Wild Friends area and took tours of both the Wild Friends area and the Birds area. In both areas, the animals had spacious, well thought-out enclosures and the tours were led by people who work directly with the animals and are hence very familiar with them. Wild Friends contained the animals that come to Best Friends but do not fit into any other area - some examples were ducks, chicken, and birds of prey. The Birds area contained everything from parrots to owls. I learned that parrots are actually really smart, but I also learned about how parrot mills (like dog mills) are really resulting in many homeless animals. All of these animals were at Best Friends because either (1) they could not thrive in the wild or (2) it would be illegal to release them into the wild.

Best Friends Animal Society is really huge, but also nicely ran. They seem to be doing great work, although I do wonder if they are spending too much time/resources on sick animals when this money could perhaps be better spend to help more adoptable animals. Their motto is "save them all", but maybe it should actually be "save as many as possible" or "home as many as possible".

Best Friends does not allow staff or guests to eat meat products on site, so we quickly and secretly ate our deli sandwiches at some picnic tables near the visitor center. We had lots of leftover meat, cheese, and bread and not enough avocado. But this did make me wonder why it is okay for the animals at Best Friends to eat meat, but not the humans? It seems like a really strange double standard.

After lunch we went to an event with the other four schools volunteering at Best Friends. They were all staying for more days than us (most 5 days, it seemed). We had an intro with candy, social with the other schools, snack time, information about intern-ships, and then a presentation from a vet about the harms of puppy mills. It was all nicely done, and you could tell they were trying to make sure we had a good experience. We finished around 3:30pm, went to the grocery store to get ice, and then arrived back at camp by 4:45pm.

I took off on a hike near camp as soon as we got back. I headed back towards the main road and then into the sand dunes. I did not go too far, but it was really pretty and peaceful. And very close to camp! The sand was very fine-grained, and the dunes and surrounding mountains and plateaus were awesome. I even had cell service on the top of one dune and got to call JT. It was great to get away from the group for a bit and have some alone time.

I headed back to camp around 6pm as we were supposed to be starting dinner around 6:15pm. However, for some reason we did not actually start dinner until 7:45pm. Dinner consisted of grilled fajita beef, quinoa, and grilled veggies. We were originally going to also cook fajita chicken, but Emily and Tommy decided it would take too long. This was sad for me, since the chicken was really the only part of the meal I was planning on eating (since I do not like quinoa or beef, and the vegetables went really quick). I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and ate a granola bar.

A couple set up at the camp site next to us tonight, and the camp seemed full. A group of three cars painted with 'just married' was the last to arrive. Our group did seem to enjoy just chilling at camp, as they slack-lined, played Frisbee, danced, and did yoga before dinner and we played three games of Resistance after dinner.