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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (July 20, 2016)
Sports B1 Appeal Tribune, www.silvertonappeal.com Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Student joins Hall of Fame STATESMAN JOURNAL Lindsay Harksen, formerly of Sublimity, will be inducted into the Linfield College athletics hall of fame in the category of ath- lete. She will be honored at the induction banquet to be held Nov. 12 in the Ted Wilson Gymnasium in McMinnville, following Linfield’s Hall of Fame Football Game against Pacific Lutheran University. Athletic inductees will be introduced and presented with awards at halftime. A reception and banquet will follow in the Dur- ham Foyer. Harksen played volleyball as a right-side hitter during her four years at Linfield. In her senior year, She headed the 2005 ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Women’s Volleyball Team, as se- lected by the College Sports Information Directors of America. Harksen, who helped lead her team to a 21-5 record and an NCAA Division III tournament bid, was an All-West Region selec- tion by the American Volleyball Coaches Association. She also earned a third straight first-team All-Northwest Con- ference award. She led her team in kills (354) and hitting percent- age (.294) and set the Linfield career record for blocks. Harksen graduated from Linfield in 2006 as valedictorian of her class and currently works for adidas in Portland. KOBBI R. BLAIR / STATESMAN JOURNAL Lindsay Harksen dominated the volleyball court at Stayton High. She also set Linfield College’s career record for blocks. Adventure camping offers exciting activities Camp Dakota HEATHER RAYHORN STATESMAN JOURNAL I heard about it on Facebook: a camp- ground with not just tent and RV sites but yurts, tepees and cabin tents sur- rounded with zip lines, rope courses, paintball, a rock wall and other activ- ities. All less than an hour from Salem. As someone who loves a little adven- ture, I made reservations. Camp Dakota, on the outskirts of Scotts Mills near Silverton, has been around for 19 years. It has 45 acres, most- ly forested, though I was glad we were in a yurt in the back portion, which is more private than sites 1 to 19 in the front. Our yurt was one of the smaller ones, sleep- ing six with two bunk beds that feature a queen bed on the bottom and a twin on top. Visitors bring their own bedding. Our yurt had a table, wood stove and a barbecue on the deck. It also had elec- tricity, which I took advantage of to cook breakfast on my griddle. Outside was a fire pit and picnic table. We had reserved two nights — a Thursday and Friday — because the yurts were mostly full on weekends. Sur- prisingly, the camp was pretty empty un- til Friday evening. Camp Dakota has plenty of packages to choose from. Ours got us two nights in the yurt for $225. If that sounds expen- sive, it did come with an activity package that included a plethora of activities we could do for free (rock wall, disc golf, tomahawk throwing and paintball, though you had to buy paintballs) and discounts for other adventures (zip lines and ropes course), plus $60 to use toward Season: Open year round, with weekends mostly booked for overnight stays this summer but lots of openings mid week and some spots still open for Labor Day weekend Information and reservations: campdakota.com or 503-873-7432 SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN JOURNAL Yurts at Camp Dakota in Scotts Mills feature bunk beds, a wood stove and a gas grill. activities. Let’s just say even with the discounts, you could spend a lot; we end- ed up racking up $200 to do the five ele- ments on the middle ropes course and the six-line zip line course for four, plus enough paintballs to keep two 12-year- old boys shooting for four hours. Of course the more expensive stuff were the boys’ favorites. The zip lines, ropes course and paintball made both of their top three. But the free stuff was fun too. The 18-hole disc golf was a nice course looping around the outside perimeter of the camp. Curving through the trees and bushes, across a pond that housed some REACH US: Cliff Kirkpatrick, ckirkpatr@Salem.gannett.com noisy frogs and up and down hills and around corners, you could rarely see the end target at the beginning of each hole. The course also made a good nearly 2- mile walk for the dog each morning. While walking around camp, I had spotted a volleyball net next to a horse- shoe game. Luckily I had brought bad- minton rackets and a birdie, giving us an- other free activity. We saved paintball until our last day. Even after you check out, you can still participate in activities. In fact, it seemed many people had only come up Saturday to play paintball. There were around 50 people playing, from ad- vanced adults in ghillie suits to preteens out there for the first time. (Lesson my son learned: Don’t wear a bright blue sweatshirt paintballing.) We had previously done a ropes course at Tree to Tree near Forest Grove, which gives you a set number of hours to play vs. just going through the course once like Camp Dakota allows. I like the idea of a set time better. I wish I’d been able to do Camp Dakota’s course over and over to try to better my time or do tricks the second time through. But I wasn’t willing to pay up for a do over. Camp Dakota’s course also is smaller than Tree to Tree, but Dakota’s advanced course does have some cool stuff: Ride a wheelbarrow across a tightwire and scale netting to get to the end, and the only way back to the ground on the ad- vanced level is a bungee jump. After three days, we were pooped, but it had been constant fun. It took those three days to experience everything. It wasn’t as cheap as your usual camping, but we did a lot of firsts from paintball to tomahawks. I think if we came again, we’d skip the more expensive zip lines and ropes course and stick to paintball.