We had a neat campout just after I was released as Scoutmaster in April. It was a small "Camporee" hosted by Doug Pruitt at Krupp Scout Hollow. There were only about 5 or so troops that came but that gave us the benefit of having a really quiet campsite. We set up camp and got our dinner going. As it has been awhile since the campout I don't remember what we ate but I'm sure it was cooked by a Scout and was good. We set up only a couple tents. Since it was going to be a very bright and clear night I didn't set up a tent and just slept on my pad out on the grass.
Those present were Kiowa, Gabren, Josh, Heber, Henry, Alex, myself, Andrew (now Scoutmaster) Aaron and Ryan who were helping out with the camporee. Ryan bunked with us as he was going to be helping the next morning with one of the stations. Notice that the pics at the beginning of this are actually of the next morning and the ones after are of the night before. The computer loaded the morning pictures first and the night before's last. Its just easier to tell you that than to have to go re-arrange all the photos.
For breakfast I cooked a southwest style eggs and sausage. I had told everybody we were eating oatmeal, but I wanted to cook them breakfast since I wasn't going to do much camping anymore. So I sneaked in eggs, sausage, salsa and sour cream. My kids at home love this dish and so I thought the scouts would like it. I'm not sure that anybody liked it at all and then I remembered it took awhile for the kids to like it. Its one of those things that you have to get accustomed to and then it grows on you. Maybe if I had cooked it a few times before they would be liking it by now.
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| Just was a pretty morning |
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| Kiowa, Gabren, Andrew and Aaron |
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| Kiowa napping. Must have gone too bed too late or gotten up too early. Funny thing is if somebody were to jump on the end of that bench it would launch him like a catapult. It was not attached. A couple times I sat on the end of it only to fall on the ground. |
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| Kiowa, Henry, Heber, Alex, Gabren standing behind Alex, Josh |
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| The morning begins. We start out with an A-frame structure tied with some ropes. The idea was to have somebody on the frame and then have the rest of the scouts, with the aid of long ropes tied to the frame "walk" that person across a river. If they fell off or didn't get across the alligators got them. They did pretty good, but it was hard. I thought it didn't look that hard but then when I was the person on the frame I don't think we moved at all. |
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| Ryan's station was orienteering. It was good. We had to hop around like rabbits with our eyes closed trying to see if we could tell what direction we were facing. At first I thought I was doing good but then I was one of the first to be eliminated. Aaron might have won that one if I remember right. |
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| Knives and safety. Its important to keep your knife sharp. |
Now back to the night before. It was such a bright moon that it almost seemed like daylight. I had brought along a nice camera and a tripod and so I started going crazy with night photos. It was very easy to get stars in focus and to see all the trees and even people.
Before we went to bed there was a campfire program and Honor Trail. The boys did good on their skit. It was the one where the doctor cures people's illnesses, but by doing it he has to acquire that illness and then at the end he gets the runs. Pretty funny if the doctor talks loud enough and Alex did a good job as the doctor. The boys really liked the Honor Trail as always, which is a reminder to live the Scout Oath and Law. After that they played night games and I took my camera and got some pictures of them running around in the dark.
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| Andrew, Aaron and Ryan |
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| Andrews Van pulling the Scout trailer. Amazing how well you can see the words on the trailer. It almost seemed like daytime |
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| Andrew, Aaron and Ryan |
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| The Fire Bowl or Amphitheater |
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| The trees were really neat looking this night |
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| I'm standing where the performers for the skits would be in front of the bleachers at the fire bowl. That is our campfire towards the back |
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| Andrew's tent |
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| Night Games. If you look close you can see some of the boys in the shadows. One is laying in the shadow on the left in the grass. See if you can find him |
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| This is the parade ground of Scout Hollow. In the distance is the Fort |
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| You can see the boy a little easier this time |
I really like the next set of photos. The flames lighting up the faces and the sparks from the fire with the moon make a nice effect. These are some great men and young men to work with. I actually had to put the camera on a tripod and make everybody hold still for about 15 seconds to get this photo. If they moved even a little it would be blurry. I had to make more than a few tries. They did really good, however, and you can barely tell there's blur on some of their faces.
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| Andrew, Me, Aaron and Ryan |
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| Heber, Andrew, Henry in front of me, Aaron, Ales, Ryan, Josh, Gabren and Kiowa |
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| Using sparks on a stick and again setting the camera on a tripod with a timer. The idea was to try to draw your name with the spark so it would show up on the camera. If you did it right your name would be readable but backwards. There were lots of practice shots and lots of screwed up names. The second to last photo is me with my name and you can kind of see it. The last photo is of Josh and again you can kind of see it. |
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| You can see Chad backward sort of |
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| Josh has almost got it |
This was a great campout and I hope that the boys will remember it and all the rest of them always. I have put the photos up on the blog because I don't have very many photos of my own personal scout campouts. I have lots of good memories but they fade over time and I hope the boys will appreciate this and I hope it will be something they can look back on and remember. I wish I had photos to look back on. My scout campouts were good times for me and I know that campouts aren't looked forward to these days as much as we did in my day. Electronics seem to have taken much of the interest of the outdoors away from boys. Its hard to get them to come to the campouts sometimes but I know those that do, will be more likely to succeed in life. Learning how to do hard things while you are young is important for things later in life.
I am not sure how much more photos I will do and how much more blogs I will post. Quinn is in Scouts now and I'll still be going on a few campouts so I may keep the blog going. I definitely will be posting this year's Scout Camp which was in July soon. I am sad that the majority of my Scouting career is fading but am happy that I got to do it and that I got to know all these boys.
