March+2,+2010

Fossil Land

Today, we went on a joint field trip to Fossil Land. It was about a 30-45 minutes drive to Fossil Land, and I had no idea what to expect. As we pulled in, we were greeted by a giant chicken. Well, a person in a big chicken costume. We were taught a chicken dance, but not the one we all know. (The American one!) Soon, we were attacked by a “superhero” wielding a Super Soaker watergun. He was spraying everyone who didn’t answer the questions he was asking fast enough. When he asked us to say a thing we will do to save the planet, it was chaos. Some people stuttered and were slow to answer, so they got sprayed in the face. I was near the end of the line, so I thought of something. But when he came to me, I stuttered and blanked out. There’s nothing like getting shot in the face to bring your mind back to earth, and I yelled out my answer. The “superhero” dropped us off with to guides to lead us on our adventure. One of them was American, and I was glad to have a person with an American accent to talk to. It was a “sound for sore ears.” The other guide spoke only broken English, so it was a fun challenge to try and communicate with her. A Costa Rican exchange student stepped in and helped translate. They led us up a stream, and we were jumping from rock to rock. When we got to the top of the stream, they asked for a “sacrifice.” Curious, I raised my hand. They had me lie down in the stream while everyone splashed me with water. Now I know that you don’t volunteer for something that you don’t know what the terms are! We hiked up some more stream until we came to a dirt wall with a rope. We climbed up the rope and reached the top. At the top, there were two ropes to climb up. We split up into teams and had a race. My team won, and the losing team had to be “sacrifices.” It was my turn to laugh as the other team got the splash treatment! We hiked up a trail and reached the paintballing station. We got jumpsuits, guns, and masks. The game was capture the flag. The battle was long and tiring, with MANY paintballs fired. The battle ended in a stalemate because we ran over our time limit. We turned in all our gear to the station. Then, we received trash bags to put on, rubber sleeves, gloves, and an inner-tube. We were about to do the ¼ mile long waterslide! We hiked to the top, going on a bridge through the canopy to cross a valley. When we reached the top, we split into groups of three. To go down, you made a 3-man train. My group went third, and we FLEW down that slide! After that, we put on dry clothes and were heading back to Blue Valley School. That was an amazing field trip to start of an awesome “school trip,” (vacation,) and I’ve got a feeling that this will be an awesome experience!!! By David Kraynik

media type="custom" key="5506057" Fossil Land was amazing! My favorite parts were the waterslide and paintball. I hit two people in paintball. The waterslide was my favorite attraction. The only negative part was a creepy guy that ran around and squirted all of us with squirt guns. When we arrived, a guy (the creepy one) made us all do the chicken dance and then got us all wet. Then we went on a hike to paintball and the same guy made me lie down in a river. It wasn’t as bad as I’m describing, I’m overreacting and I haven’t even gotten to the good part. When we arrived at paintball, we got all of our gear on and played. The adrenaline was pumping for everyone and then pow pow two people down because of my extreme accuracy. After paintball, we went on Central America’s longest waterslide. The wind was flowing through my hair. Fossil Land is truly a once in a lifetime experience.

By Locke Heberton

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