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| Kiowa, Gabren and Josh |
A couple months ago I purchased some really nice, heavy wall tents. I got them from the Wall Tent Store in Moscow, Idaho, if by chance, you are interested in a good wall tent.
The first one is 12x14' which will be the main one that the boys use. It is quite large and heavy. The second one I purchased for my own use but will use it as a leader tent. It is 10x12'. My old wall tent was just starting to leak a little too much this past year and so its time to retire it. I figured after 35 years it has probably done its time. My new one is a tad bit smaller but it is higher. Both of them have a front and a back zippered door with and overflap and buckles to keep out the wind. Both have a chimney spot. These tents are strong, well thought out, warm and just downright good.
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| My tent the 10x12. This is set up at my house after we finished the poles. Note the buckled flaps covering the zipper on the doors. |
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| Very frosty. I left this tent up around 3-4 weeks and it handled wind and blizzards well. |
We took a few Tuesday night activities in December and January and built the frames and the stakes. The frame was made out of 1 inch inside diameter stainless steel conduit pipe and the stakes were made out of 3/8 inch rebar. I ordered a frame kit that would use 4 joints instead of 3 for extra strength in case we get dumped on in the winter.
Our first campout with these tents was on Friday the 27 of January, 2017. Those present were: Chase, Carson, Kaleb, Dalton, Zach, Kiowa, Andrew, Josh, Gabren, and Carson invited a friend named Gage. We showed up about 6 behind Aaron's house, owned by his friendly new neighbor who is allowing us to use his property. As Chase is the senior patrol leader he got with Dalton, the Tasmanian Devil patrol leader and Zach, the Napolean Dynamite patrol leader and planned the menu. They had good intentions but all that we ate for dinner was fried potatoes and potato chips with some donut holes for desert. Carson was scheduled to cook the chicken but he didn't get the word that he was to bring it too. Fortunately, the leaders were assigned breakfast and we had a big nice bunch of eggs and sausage and tortilla shells.
Incidentally, Kaleb, has now redeemed himself. At scoutcamp he had burned the potatoes pretty badly. At this campout they were cooked to perfection. Chase had brought all caffeinated soda pops to drink. Might have contributed to them being up and talking until the wee hours.
Aaron's neighbor had also graciously allowed us to use his shop which was nice and warm and had room to eat and play as well as set up to watch the movie.
I had planned to talk about conflict resolution and to watch the movie "Remember the Titans". I was worried that everybody had already seen it a bunch of times and they would be bored. That is exactly what happened. Only a couple of them seemed interested. The sound and picture were not that good anyway, as I had to use my phone for a hotspot to play the movie with my laptop and projector. Plus I had not brought a high speed cable and so the projector was delayed from the picture on the laptop, resulting in a choppy picture.
Fortunately, we did have a good discussion about the conflicts in our particular troop and how to resolve them and how to make everybody feel included. I hope they remember that as well as the lesson that was taught in the movie.
After watching Remember the Titans, we let them watch Tarzan. I didn't feel so bad when they didn't pay much attention to Tarzan either. At least they were enjoying each other's company.
It was -4 degrees setting up the tents. When we woke up it was +10. This might be the coldest we have done with this group. Each Klondike Derby for the last couple years have been relatively warm. In the boy's tent we set up my wood stove with a pile of wood and Chase volunteered to keep it burning all night. Smart move, that way he could sleep by the fire. As usual they chattered until about 3 or 4 in the morning anyway. Aaron had locked the shop so that nobody could sneak out of the tent and show up in there.
In the leader's tent I set up my "Little Buddy" propane stove. I turned it on while we got ready for bed then turned it off as I didn't want to suck propane fumes all night. About 6:30 am I rolled over and turned it on again and waited about 10 minutes before getting dressed. It was quite warm by then.
They were slow to get up and their fire had gone out so rather than restart the wood stove only to put it out an hour later, I brought in my propane heater and warmed up the tent until everybody was out. We then ate breakfast cooked by Kiowa and Josh? I think. We had plenty of eggs and sausage. Before we started eating I ran home and got a gallon of milk since we didn't really have anything to drink.
It was a little hard getting the big tent down as we had set it up the week before and it was quite frozen. I hope this was a good experience even though camping in the Winter can be a little tougher.
Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of great photos. I had wanted to get one of the tents and the frost but I completely forgot. Here are a few while we were eating inside the shop.
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| Carson is a blur walking by. Gage in the back with Dalton and Andrew to the right |
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| Kaleb, Gage and Dalton |
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| Kiowa, Gabren, Josh, Andrew L. and Andrew S. |
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| Carson saying something smartalecky and Aaron |
