There is also the world’s largest Beaver Dam here. It’s over 2000 feet long and 14 feet high! Pinky and Tomo did an imitation of two beavers building a dam. One was doing all the work and the other was telling him what to do. It was so funny I almost went to the bathroom in my pants.

That day we also got to see waterfalls and the shortest river in the Country. Outside a town called Great Falls, there are big waterfalls. There are also these springs, where almost 200 MILLION gallons of water spill out of the Earth every day. All that water runs 200 feet to the Missouri River—and makes a little river called the Roe.

Weird stuff like that is cool.

All this sightseeing and hanging out was such a change. I have to admit it was decent not feeling like the outsider anymore. But all that chumming around didn’t last long. We each had to do our solo that night, so Mike kept us moving along. We were each going to be dropped off inside the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, somewhere along the Upper Missouri River.

Mike dropped me off first. I knew that somewhere, not so far away, Tomo and Pinky and Seth would each be doing their solos, too.

And I knew that the counselors had to know exactly where I was.

But, the idea was that you had to spend the night by yourself, and you really didn’t know exactly where anyone else was. Now it would just be me, my camping gear, a bunch of dried food and my fishing pole.

In the morning I was supposed to hike along the river to a designated spot where they would pick me up again in the middle of the day.

Mike gave me a radio to call him in case of emergency only. He stressed the word emergency.