Clearlake Travel Journal Part 3

Now that we've all had some time to recover and catch up on sleep, I'm back with the last blog post about our first school overnight and bus adventure. Our final full day on the lake was mostly spent in or near the lake! We couldn't get enough. 

We found a mama duck and her ducklings, and we also caught a frog!   

We all needed a bit of alone time, so we found our own spots to do some nature sketches. We experimented with sketching the same thing once without looking at our paper, then again while looking. Meditation on the object, the style. 

When we joined back as a group, everyone was eager to share their work.  

On this our last day, we had quite a bit of work to accomplish on our mural. We got right to painting the background early on, which we then fell in love with. Greer was surprised by how realistic our water looked. She decided to change the design to look like the view of the lake we see rather than the underwater scene we had sketched. 

John continued to record footage and take notes about his shots... 

While some of us took breaks between shifts of painting to play team building games... 

Or play mafia... 

Or swim more!  

As the sun began to set and most of our detail work was complete, we called a mural meeting to get serious about finishing before dark and adding the poems that Soleil and Hanna wrote. 

After dinner, a dance party in the boat house, and oven s'mores, we watched The Empire Strikes Back in preparation for May the Fourth (Be With You).

We were able to take a few group photos before heading home the next morning! 

And in our last moments together before departing for home, we thought about our favorite memory from the trip while finding a skipping stone. We then shared our favorite memories in a circle before throwing our rocks in the lake and loading up the bus. 

And here is our finished mural in the best light I could manage!! What a huge success all around.