Every year, my school takes a trip to Blue Mountain in Collingwood for the grade 8 class that graduates. Since I’m now a grade 8 student at the school that will be graduating in a few weeks, I was able to go with the rest of my classmates on the trip.
Before the trip even began, there was lots of talk about whether or not we would be able to stay overnight at the Blue Mountain Inn. Our school has a history of occasional stays overnight at Blue Mountain, but usually, they only take a day trip there. A lot of students were trying to convince the teachers to let us stay overnight because we’d be able to stay there longer and do more things. This was many months before the trip, so there was plenty of time for the teachers to decide, but they ended up letting us have the overnight stay.
The day before our departure, we were reminded of the different things to bring and when to arrive at the school to leave on the bus. On the day of, we all got onto a Coach Canada bus which was a lot different from our normal school buses. It had air conditioning, more comfortable seats, and more space. Most of the students, including me, were happy to not have to sit in the usual school bus seats since they weren’t exactly the most enjoyable to sit in for long periods of time. To get from our school to Collingwood took around two hours, so people were kind of just on their phones, listening to music, talking, or sleeping on the way there.
Once we arrived, we had to walk a little bit to get to the building where we’d keep all our stuff before we checked into the hotel. We were introduced to the Discovery Pass that the Blue Mountain Resort had for schools which included various activities. Our schedules were set so that there were two groups that did the same activities at different times. Not only did we have the Discovery Pass activities to do, but we also got a chance to do their Timber Challenge High Ropes course on the first day and trail biking on the second.
After they separated us into groups A and B we each started with our activities. Since I was in group B, we started with the Discovery Pass activities which include the Cascade Putting Course, Open-Air Gondola, Ridge Runner Mountain Coaster, Wind Rider Triple Zips, Apex Bag Jump, Village Scavenger Hunt, and Climbing Wall. Most of these activities are pretty self-explanatory, so what we were able to do was go around to any of these different activities and have fun as long as we arrived back at our group’s agreed meeting spot when it was our group’s turn to do the Timber Challenge. Most people started with the Ridge Runner Mountain Coaster which is pretty much a roller coaster up in the mountains. I found it pretty fun, but it’s nothing crazy that you’d find at Canada’s Wonderland. The Open-Air Gondola is just a gondola that takes you up inside of a cylinder that you can see out of in 360 degrees. I went with a few of my friends, but some of them were scared of heights so it was pretty funny to watch them; especially when how the gondola occasionally stops. With my friends, we did those two activities before we had to go do our Timber Challenge. The Timber Challenge is a ropes course up in the trees where you go through different obstacles to reach the end. There are things like zip lines, tight ropes, and rope walls that you have to do. We first got our harnesses put on, and went through the safety test to make sure we knew the rules and what to do. After that, we were free to run the course. I had done a ropes course in Costa Rica before, so it wasn’t too bad for me, but I know some people were really scared of doing the course.
When our time was up on the course, I did the Wind Rider Triple Zips with my friends which is a longer zip line than the ones in the ropes course. I think it was pretty fun except the arrival point at the end of the line was kind of rough. A few of us gathered together later to play as many holes of mini golf as we could before time was up. Eventually, we met back up with group A to collect our luggage back and go to our rooms. I was in a room with my friends so we didn’t really have any issues except our air conditioning unit was really loud and our washroom door didn’t lock properly. After we settled in we had dinner in the hotel restaurant buffet. The food was okay, but most of the meats were really dry and there were almost no vegetables.
After we all ate dinner, we went back to our rooms, and we were free to do whatever until 10:00 when we had to go back to our rooms to sleep. My roommates and I stayed in our room for a little bit doing our own thing until people started saying that they were going to walk around in the village that was also in the resort. We joined them, but almost all the stores there were closed so there wasn’t much to do. Everyone ended up going back after taking a few pictures, and people just started room hopping until it was 10:00. At 10:00, the teachers would take everyone’s phones and you were supposed to go to sleep, but my roommates and I ended up playing cards until around 12:00 when we decided to sleep. We ended up having to turn off the air conditioning because it was too loud, and some of us kept on talking, so it took a while before we all slept.
Overall, that’s the rundown of what I did on the first day of my graduation trip with the rest of my classmates. I had a lot of fun, and I have more to write about for the second day.