STRONG -- There's treasure on the Sandy River, according to youngsters hunched over their gold pans.

A dozen children lined both sides of a small section of the river in Strong recently, peering intently at the minerals swirling in the bottom of shallow pans.

"Hey, I think that's a piece of gold," Jake Davenport exclaimed, pointing at a tiny speck glittering at the bottom of the pan. His friends gathered around to check his discovery.

"Oh, that's not gold," one scoffed. "That's just a piece of mica."

Camp director Sue Ellsworth said she hadn't a complaint all week that "there's nothing to do."

"We've been trying lots of other interesting things," she said. "We're going to rappel from a tree this afternoon, and we'll have mud football on Friday."

For the 45 children at the summer day camp at Lance Corporal Scott Paul Memorial Park, the transition from their high-tech multitasking days in elementary school wasn't too much of a stretch.

Their Tuesday scavenger hunt required familiarity with computers and the Internet. Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunt with handheld global positioning system (GPS) devices to find caches that have been hidden by other geocachers.

For more sophisticated treasure hunters, the caches' GPS coordinates are posted on Web sites designed around themes.

"We found stuff hidden in different places," Riley Romanoski said. "People leave little trinkets or messages, and you can leave things for other people to find."

An afternoon tug-of-war required friendly teamwork, and the stronger and more persistent of the two groups pulled the challengers through a mud puddle. A talent show produced several earnest renditions of Taylor Swift's popular "Our Song," with each performer receiving a wholehearted round of applause from other campers.

"We had animals visit us at the park one day," Ellsworth said. "People brought a great Dane, a turtle, a pony, and other animals that kids learned about, including how to take care of them."

The camp, in its second year, brought children from several towns around Strong, Ellsworth said. She planned the five days with a combination of new adventures. The parents and counselors are all volunteers, and any profits are contributed to maintaining and improving the park.