Thursday, June 19th - by Jane Lee

Today we left for Vacation Bible School in Penasco like usual. First, the kids at VBS drew and stamped papers and as soon as they were done they listened to Pastor Jim tell the story of the day. Then they went to crafts and made and decorated paper drums. After crafts, they went to story telling. Then they went to games and played with the parachute.

After VBS, we left for Ghost Ranch outside of Abiquiu. While traveling to Abiquiu, the sights were very interesting and amazing. We saw sides of cliffs that have been eroded by wind over the years. The erosion revealed different layers of a variety of colors: reds, yellows, purples and oranges. As soon as we arrived at Ghost Ranch we headed out to hike to Chimney Rock. Many parts of the hike up were steep but luckily there were also some level parts to help us catch our breath. When we got to the top of Chimney Rock we were able to see for miles and miles. We even saw people hiking below us that looked as though they were the size of ants. Cameron and Josh attempted to fly a spider-man kite but failed miserably. There were few high moments for the kite flyers but most of them were low moments. While the majority of the group hiked down to Ghost Ranch a few of us stayed longer to take more pictures.

Eventually we hiked down and the hike down seemed more difficult then the hike up. The steepness of the trail caused many to slip. Our fingers swelled to size of sausages and we were unable to take our rings off. The swelling finally went away about 2 hours later. We ate dinner then left for home. As we approached a gas station we noticed that the gas was only $3.99! We were quite excited and pulled in to fill up and clean our windows.

To end the night we did our nightly devotions with the adults then walked toward the Plaza for a yummy snack of Gelato.