When PE teacher Michelle Myers was five years old, she spent her first summer at an equestrian camp, Copper Creek Ranch in Quincy, Calif.
“I was learning to jump a horse at five!” Myers said. “Are you kidding? I was so there. I stayed the whole summer and I loved it!”
Now, Myers will be revisiting her past this fall as a chaperone on the new sophomore trip.
For years sophomores have been spending their trip rafting on the American River.
Due to a lack of water, however, the trip has been changed to four days at the Greenhorn Creek Guest Ranch in Quincy.
Because of the low snow level last winter, power companies have limited water releases and can guarantee only enough water to raft on weekends during October.
Since the upperclassman Ashland trip is in October and all the high school trips must take place during
the same time, there was no way for the rafting trip to remain a possibility.
Before deciding on Greenhorn, Brooke Wells, trip coordinator of the trip, considered a trip to the Tahoe area or Sugar Bowl.
The class will spend the days “horseback riding, swimming, frog racing (yes, frog racing), dancing, singing, and generally having a good ole Western time of things,” Wells said in a letter.
This trip will be much more structured than rafting with two to three activities planned each day, and the students will sleep in cabins with two or three people instead of camping out in tents.
Many sophomores are looking forward to the trip. “I love riding and I get to go with my friends,” sophomore Erin Reddy said.
Wells, who helped create the rafting trip and goes rafting in his free time, may offer a voluntary rafting trip in the spring.
So what lies in store for the sophomore trip next year?
“It depends on how this trip goes,” Nellis said. “The rafting trip was new a few years ago. Students ( used to kayak) in Tomales Bay for many years so we don’t mind changing if a new trip needs to happen.”
