Monday, April 30, 2007

Made it back...

Sorry to disappoint, Josh, but we made it back alive from our campout. The boys seemed to have a pretty good time with the actual camping, and other than a monster sunburn for me (left the sunscreen and hat in the tent, d'oh), we made it back unscathed. The camporee activities seemed fairly unorganized, though- there was a lot of, "uh, what are we supposed to do" at several of the stations. The other problem was that the whole thing was set up as an orienteering course- good practice for young scouts (each patrol got a different starting point and path through the stations). The big problem was that the fire-building station had been moved (without notice) after the maps and directions were printed. That was our first station, so we blundered around the park for nearly an hour (with the adults questioning our own map-reading skills after awhile) before we saw the smoke. By this point, everything was jammed up, there were a whole pile of patrols waiting (with no evident sign-in or ordering system, so lots of boys milling around making trouble), and everybody was pretty well frustrated right out the gate.

I think we were actually pretty well prepared for the camping- mealtimes went quite well, and the patio firepit was a big hit for foil dinners and s'mores. Nice weather helped a lot... I'm glad I was able to borrow a friend's trailer to haul all the gear, but I'd like to work on getting the pile a little more compact next time.

Maybe I can do this... Might not matter- I think I'm going to have one scout in my 11-year-old patrol next year unless a bunch of 10 year olds move in between now and then.

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