No. More. Rocks.

Unfortunately I just finished day one of the weekend spanning archeology field trip to the gorge verdon. Initially, I was angry because although it’s gorgeous, I had already visited the gorge and felt like I was wasting time. Upon arriving at our destination I was surprised at the lack of stark cliffs, blue/green waters and heavily treed forests. We were in the middle of a field near a lake that my friend Kaitlin aptly compared to a summer camp in Pennsylvania. On the agenda that day was a trip through the museum of prehistory, a lunch by the lake and a visit to a reconstruction of a prehistoric hut village. We entered the museum and were excited to see life size stuffed mammoths and saber tooth tigers and an entire exhibit dedicated to the mythical yeti. Unfortunately that was all downstairs and we breezed right by it to go look at case after case of arrowheads.

It was like driving past Disney World to go to a match factory.

With our hopes of wooly mammoth photo shoots and caveman reenactments crushed, we moved on and listened to our professor lecture on and on about the evolution of prehistoric arrowheads for an hour and a half. We walked from display case to display case yawning over rocks that honestly looked no different than the ones we had stumbled over in the parking lot, which makes me question the validity of the museum as a whole. For all we know the employees could spend their evenings looking for pointy rocks to trick tourists into believing were ancient arrowheads. If I had to spend all my time in that museum, I think I would stoop to such acts. By the sixth display case the entire class was finding creative ways to sit or lean against things so they could relax while feigning interest. At this point I snapped an entire series of ‘(name)…is bored’ photos, capturing some candid gems of yawns and ‘are you serious’ faces.

We finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel and were allowed an hour and a half for lunch, which we eagerly took advantage of. With lunches in tow we booked it to the lake where in a few weeks they’ll undoubtedly start kayaking and canoeing up a storm, but as of now it was just us…and the swans. One of few things I learned from this field trip is that swans are major d-bags. A male and a female swan came swimming up to us at a speed that made me nervous. My nervousness heightened when the man arched his wings to create a more intimidating form. They continued their charge and eventually ended up at the edge of the dock we were sitting at, flapping their feet in the water, looking angry and mean. Thankfully we held strong and they went off to harass a weaker target, a lone student sitting on the opposite dock. I looked over a minute later and a swan was literally biting his shoe. He ended up ok and only lost one toe to the whole experience. Moral of the story, don’t mess with swans.

The sun was beautiful and we basked for the rest of the lunch, which is wonderful but incredibly tiring. All worn out and suffering from mild sunstroke we had to sit through an hour long lecture about six different types of prehistoric dwellings. We entertained ourselves as much as we could…but you can only take so many pictures pretending to live in a prehistoric hut. It was honestly the most pointless day trip I’ve ever been on, and what’s even worse is that we have to return tomorrow, at 7:45 AM. I’m hoping that although the hour is blasphemous to everything I believe in, the day turns out to be more successful than the first. Day two includes a three-hour hike to a prehistoric cave, lessons on making fire from flint and an instructional course on spear throwing. I’m secretly hoping they have life size replicas of wooly mammoths as targets so we can pretend to be cave people on the hunt and not just be boring old javelin throwers. Either way, it’s supposed to be beautiful and I can’t believe I won’t be at the beach.