Day 2: Scoutcamp. Recovering from the First Day

 Most of these photos are taken early morning on Tuesday, the second day of Scout Camp.  We actually accomplished a lot of things that day but I failed to record all of it. The sun came up and was very warming within a few minutes.  I was up way before everybody else and so I took the opportunity to take a few photos of the camp and how it was set up.  It was quite serene and peaceful seeing the kayaks pulled up on shore and the tents catching the glow of the first rays of light.  (It tends to be pretty quiet when all the boys are asleep.)

I first walked over to the very large tent farthest to the north and woke up Andrew S. who had brought along his trombone.  I had asked him a couple weeks before the campout if he would be willing to learn to play Taps and Reveille.  He said sure.  So that morning I woke him up and asked him if he was up for playing Reveille.  He had a little trouble getting his lips warmed up but after that he played it fairly well.  I'm sure he didn't realize how great it sounded with the timbre of the horn echoing across the lake.  I think he could really be a great player if he decides to be.  The next few days his lips would dry out and crack and so he wasn't able to do it the full week, unfortunately.  He got to play Taps a couple times as well before his lips couldn't take it.

The horn barely got a few of them moving, however as they were stiff and sore from the day before.  A lot of them had started to get some pretty good sunburns and were very stiffly putting on shirts.  The process of waking up was very slow with a couple of turtles coming from one direction and a few snails coming from the other direction.  Those who were assigned to cook slowly started to boil the water.  It was an easy meal of oatmeal so there wasn't a lot of cleanup

The white canopy is our main cooking area.  The brown canopy to the left was used for a classroom until the wind flipped the white one upside down on top of it smashing it to pieces.  Aaron and Josh slept in the orange and gray tent to the left.  Andrew and Heber slept in the blue tent.

Beautiful morning with the kayaks and the big tent.  Originally, Andrew, Tucker and Beau slept there but by the end of the trip more than half of them were sleeping in there.

My tent

The small tent where Gabren,  Zach and Chase stayed originally until they moved out into the big tent

The crosseyed Sushi Searcher

Aaron and Josh's tent

Notice the clothes line they built

Boys sleeping in front of Carson's tents.  Dalton,  Kiowa and Kaleb pretty much bunked there the entire time.

Ben and Kason spent the night

The northern most westerly tent.  

the clothesline.  at least they were trying to be organized

Andrew awakens and then comes out to play Reveille

Josh coming out

Chase starts to emerge

Gabren still in the  cocoon phase

Chase is painfully trying to change his shirt this morning.  He looks kind of tomatoey

Kaleb is alive!

Chase was able to get his shirt on

Gabren slowly but surely heading toward camp

The sunrise over Palisades that morning

Colorguard is assembling

Kaleb getting ready to call for the flag ceremony

Colorguard is assembled and waiting for orders

I had built a schedule that could be rigid or it could be flexible depending on what merit badges the boys wanted to do.  The previous night we were looking at the requirements for Motorboating which, for some reason, I had overlooked as something we could do.  We determined that we could get all of it done or at least the majority of it by the end of the week.  We decided to ditch the original plan for that morning.

The water sports begin after breakfast

After the flag ceremony, while Andrew and Aaron took Ben back I sat there and taught the boys motorboat safety, the different types of boats and taking care of them.  After everybody was back together we started teaching them how to start the boat,  steer, drive in a straight line, be courteous to other drivers, and to come up to the dock and tie it off.  We put all the boys in the two boats and went to the southwest corner of the lake to practice how to run a motor boat.  The southwest corner of the lake was tucked around some mountains and therefore did not have the wind that was in the rest of the lake.  Each boy got to take a turn driving the boat at least a half mile and then coasting into the dock to tie it up.  We let them practice it a few times.   Most did awesome even though sometimes it was a little scary.  We finished the merit badge other than trailering and putting the boat up for winter.  We decided when we pulled the boats out at the end of the week we  would show them that part.  And that is what we did.

Happy Beau and his minnow

A minnow that Beau caught

Coming back from the boating we ate lunch and started working on the afternoon merit badges which was photography, nature, wilderness survival and environmental science.  I also had them start working on building fires without matches by using steel wool, magnifying glass and bow and drill.  They worked on these off and on for a couple days and finally somebody did get a fire going with the steel wool.  I also explained the requirement for building a shelter and sleeping outside.  They started working on that but it ended up they never accomplished it.  We can always revisit it on other campouts.

Because they were bored and not paying attention to Photography principles they decided to color a rock with pencil lead and then  rub the pencil lead on Carson's back.   The recipe for this is you tear a pencil apart, rub the lead core on a stick or rock and then have somebody like Dalton paint your  back.

The "Secret Spot" did not stay secret for long.  Here I found it pretty easy.

Since the boys were bored being under the canopy they asked if we could do photography at the "secret spot".  I said sure why not.  It turns out that only two boys stuck with it, but they worked on it and got to a point where all they have to do to finish it is get their cyberchip and do a slideshow presentation.

After we got done at the secret spot we started walking back to camp and I noticed something funny.  The white canopy was upside down with its legs sticking up in the air like a dead donkey.  It was quite a tangle and so I had to call Aaron and Andrew off the water to get it put back together.  The brown canopy was under it and smashed like a daddy long-legs after getting stepped on.

View from under a cut bank where there was some shade

Carson, Kiowa and Dalton

Kaleb and Andrew working on their photography merit badge

Kaleb  took this picture and then adjusted it to fill a requirement in the Photography merit badge.

Another picture altered and adjusted by Andrew

As we started to walk back to camp we noticed something funny.  You can see the canopy upside down and the brown one is nowhere to be seen.  The brown one was smashed beyond recognition by the white one.  It looked like the white one went straight up into the air, spun around and did a flip landing upside down.  Amazing that the wind can blow so hard.  It was tied down really nice so there must have been some kind of microburst or whirlwind go right through it.  Nobody was in camp so it is a mystery how it happened.

Upside down

Heading back to fix the canopy

Ben came back that night with the Bishopric. The Bishopric brought us ice cream sandwiches.  It was a welcome treat after the really hot day.  Those that came were Bishop Todd Dustin, Ben Kearsley, Steve Craw, Scott Stanger and Brent Douglass.   Jeff Jeppeson, the Young Men Leader came as well.  Ben wanted them all to go out on the tubes but he couldn't talk them into it. He wanted to go out on the tube so he changed into some swim trunks.  Jeff came along for the ride.  We started out taking some easy tube rides but then Ben, Andrew and Tucker got on the tube.  That left only me to drive the boat, which I think in their eyes may have been a mistake.  I flung them around pretty hard.  My favorite thing to do is do a couple tight circles which makes the waves in the center get super choppy and about 3 feet high.  It looks like the peaks on a lemon meringue pie only they are jumping and bopping into each other.  Then you punch it through them and the tube will catch some crazy air.  Because of all the weight on the tube I was able to fling them around pretty good but not knock any off.  Ben was laughing really hard and later Andrew told me it was rough, but in a nice way.  Tucker was having a hard time not pooping his pants the whole time.  I think they liked it, however, at least in hind-sight.  It took awhile the next day to get the boys to ride on the tube and I promised I would only go as fast as they wanted me too.  I kept my promise and slowly but surely they started trusting me.  I honestly didn't think it was that bad, but growing up along the southern part of Idaho with the wide Snake River we did a lot of crazy things with boats and I was used to a lot worse rides.  The worst ride I ever had on a tube was a guy who drug me through a whole bunch of drift wood.  That left marks.

We ate ice cream and listened to the Bishop talk around the fire.  I did not hear much of it as I had received a phone call about a problem at work.  I am sure it was good though.  We all appreciated the ice cream.   We sat around the fire only a little while and then asked Andrew S. to play taps.  Again he did a fantastic job and the sound was good with the big lake in the background.  I think the Bishopric was impressed.  We said thanks to the Bishopric as they left.  Ben and Jeff spent the night as they had to go off early in the morning to head up to Salmon with the Young Men for their high adventure trip.  The sleeping bag felt good that night.

As I went to bed I started thinking about flag ceremony in the morning and decided to do Scoutmaster's Minute after each one.  We had also incorporated the Scout Oath and Law as well as the Pledge of Allegiance.  The next morning, that scoutmaster's minute prompted a very good discussion that I will talk about on day 3.  Thanks again to Wood Badge for giving me these ideas.  Scout camp in the past has been mostly to tell crazy stories and do crazy things without a lot of structure other than what the official scout camp did.  It was great timing to have gone through Wood Badge prior to this scout camp as I may have been too lackadaisical without it.