Ohio Outdoor Water Woman

This is my third year attending an Ohio Outdoor Woman weekend and I've loved every time! This year the Ohio Outdoor woman weekend was sponsored by the ODNR Division of Watercraft. So it focused mostly on water sports and boating and had no hunting or guns. I love the water and really loved this!

Action shot of me driving the boat

 This year the outdoor adventure weekend was held at Burr Oak Lodge. This was by far, I mean by light years far better than the other places we went. Rather than a huge room with tons of bunk beds for 50+ women, we had a room equivalent to a hotel room that walked out onto a patio for just the four of us. Previous years the food was rubbery hot dots and soggy buns (yummy!) and this year we had fantastic food like barbecued chicken and pasta with meat sauce. And we always got dessert! The accommodations and food far exceeded my expectations.

Susan and I in our orienteering class. Where am I??

 I went with Susan, Nicole, and Virginia. We missed Michelle since she was busy the weekend before at GenCon. I made lots of friends and got to be outdoors and enjoy the beautiful weather with other outdoorsy women.

Me on the power boat

Barbara, Me, and Jen - a watercraft selfie

 On Friday afternoon all four of us did archery. I pretty much always pick archery because I love it. There were several different bows to try and I picked one with more tension. It was easier for me to control since I have tons and tons of upper body strength. After shooting for awhile and practicing we had an archery contest. The bulls eye was 5 points, the red ring around was 4 points and so on. Guess who won?? Yours truly! I had the highest score of all the 10 participants with 23. Right after that I shot even better with 4 out of 5 arrows in the bulls eye. I heard the instructor behind me say "wow". Go Gina..it's your birthday (picture me doing the cabbage patch dance....on second thought...)

Virginia and Nicole in kayaks

 Friday evening we went canoeing until about 10pm. It was a beautiful canoe ride. I was in the canoe with Nicole paddling along just fine until we realized we were backwards. So we gracefully turned around without tipping the boat. It was too dark to get pictures, we even had flashlights on our canoe trip.

Me in a kayak

 Saturday and Sunday mornings they offered yoga at 6am. Normally I do not get up at 6am and normally I do not do yoga, but this was a weekend for new things.  Saturday morning I took a power boating course. So I had an opportunity to drive a boat and dock it as well as learning some knots. This was a lot of fun and made me realize how little I know about boating rules. Before renting a boat I want to take an OBEC course.

This is the view from my kayak

 Saturday afternoon I went kayaking. This was relaxing with beautiful scenery. I learned the proper technique to paddle a kayak by using your core not your shoulders. After two hours of kayaking my shoulders didn't feel tired at all. Apparently I was using my core properly however last I checked I didn't have a six pack. Maybe next time.

Saturday evening a professor from Ohio University came with his telescope to talk a little about astronomy. I got to see Saturn (rings and all!) and he pointed out several constellations. That was very interesting.

Virginia, Nicole, me and Susan doing archery

Susan and Virginia did pretty well

Archery champion!

Even better!

 Sunday morning Susan and I were hoping to take geocaching but they had orienteering instead. This also looked like fun and I'm glad I did this. While I am poor with intuitive directions, I'm good at math and angles so I was able to figure out the direction we should go and orient myself that way. I thought this was very interesting.

The rooms were amazing!

Overall this weekend was fantastic. I loved getting away and trying new things. I'm hoping to do this every year.