This weekend was spent at Wakefest, a youth event put on by my church. This is the seventh year running of the trip, and my second year. Around four o`clock my sister and I were driven to our meeting spot. We jammed our things into cars, and around 17 kids and 5 adults piled into the vehicles. After a 4 hour drive, we got to the lakeside cottage in Quebec we were staying at. The boys set up their tents, while the girls laid out their things in the house`s screened in porch. Once everything was set up, nearly everyone went swimming off of the floating wharf. The lake water was pretty cold, and I don`t think I would have gone swimming if not for some encouragement and the threat of being thrown in anyway. It wasn't to bad once you had already been in, though. The rest of the evening was spent roasting marshmallows by the fire pit, hanging out, exploring, and (on the girls part at least) trying to brainstorm how to prank the other people. Lights out was planned to be around 11:30, but they weren`t out until 12 and no one was asleep until much later. It wasn`t too cold outside thankfully, but cold enough to sleep in sweaters and snuggle deeply into our sleeping bags.
The next morning, I was jolted awake by a bugle impression from one of our leaders. After stumbling out of my sleeping bag, I joined the other youth (that were awake) for breakfast. When all the kids had been woken up (which included one adult taking a pot and spoon over to one tent) and eaten, we were told the rules of the day; don`t run on the wharf, bring life jackets when your on the paddleboat, listen to what the boat driver tells you. All the usual things. Then we learned that this year, there was a catch to getting our Wakefest shirts - we had to each individually thank the owners of the cottage for letting us come and, in return, they would give us a key word. When we got all three words, it would make a phrase which allowed us to get the shirts.
Then the wake/knee boarding boat left with the first bunch, and the pontoon boat left with the second group. I was left with my load, along with the last team. We hung out, played crokinole and cards, took the paddleboat out, and swam as we waited for the pontoon. Then it came back, dropping off the first group, who were all super excited and telling us how well they did, and laughing at some of the wipe outs they had seen. My bunch climbed into the pontoon and drive to the wake/knee boarding boat. We watched the people currently on the boat do their best at boarding while sitting and swimming. When our turn came my friends all chose wake boarding, and each person got up for at least ten seconds or more before crashing. I went knee boarding instead and wiped out twice. One of those times I lost my watch, because I couldn't find it anywhere afterwards.
After we got back to the cottage, we ate a good lunch of hot dogs and veggies. We waited a bit, then the wake boarding boat was converted into a tubing boat. We used a 3 seater tube - there was lots of room for you, but enough closeness that you could jam your feet in to the front and not fall out. We had almost the same groups for the tubing as the wake boarding - one or two of the groups split up so that the adults could come and ride the tube as well. In my group of three only one person fell out. Apart from when we flipped, anyway. You can't really hold on after that.
Then we had supper; yummy hamburgers (which I thought were very good for store-bought) chips, potato salad, and coleslaw. During this time, i got the full phrase for my shirt; Jesus loves treefrogs. After we were done supper, we had a small lesson from a youth pastor about not having a kids understanding of the Bible. We hung out after that, did a bit of swimming, played with a frisbee, sat around the fire some more, and packed up all of our things. Around 8 we left for home, and I was home in my bed at quarter after 12. I'm tired, sunburned, and sore, but this Wakefest was heaps of fun.
