The End of One Week and the Start of Another

Well.....
The good news is that the camp ranger Paul was able to run down and repair the leak in the water hose.
The bad news is that when he saw the size of the pile of wood, he told leadership that they had to make it smaller. I did not have a chance to download more pictures from various folks cameras, and I forgot the cable for mine at home. I will be returning tomorrow Sunday and hopefully I will be able to collect pictures from people and get them loaded to the website. There should be some interesting ones.
The campfire was as large as past years, but the wood must have been greener because it took quite a while to get going. They used a bottle of Tiki Torch Fluid and a can of Charcoal lighter fluid on it and it still was slow starting. In addition to Nick and Kurt, Taylor Scharf stopped down on his way to Ice Crackin and a quite a number of CITs and other staff stopped by too. There was quite a variety of skits and songs, followed by a flag retirement ceremony, and refreshments. The flag ceremony did not get started until about 11:30, and as a CIT, Kurt had to be back at Buckskin by midnight, so Kurt, Nick, and I headed up to Buckskin during the flag retirement. I fear that refreshments were a white sheet cake with chocolate frosting (more on that later) and vanilla ice cream. I got back just as they were breaking up from the campfire (after midnight). It was quite a late night for everyone.
In their excitement to have the campfire, leadership left out two bags of garbage, and did not latch the cooler that they were keeping their Arnie Palmers and other drink and treats in. The raccoons took advantage of the situation; they tore holes in the garbage bags, climbed into the cooler, helped themselves to whatever they could, and left a few presents behind. Armed with rubber gloves, the guys took a while to figure out who was going to clean out the cooler the next day. It has been throughly washed out and sterilized. {Anyone noticing a trend here? It ain't over yet}.
Friday morning came WAY too early for just about everyone. Breakfast was Egg & Sausage on an English Muffin. Not surprisingly we were late (again) to assembly. The usual three morning periods and back for lunch; Turkey sandwiches. From 1-4 they had troop activities.
They had some free time during this time, so leadership had the first and second year scouts cleaning up the trailer. We were really surprised that they seemed to be enjoying it. They were singing and having lots of fun. Later, when I was checking out the cleaning job, I think I discovered why. The leftover half of the sheet cake from Thursday night had been store in the trailer to protect it from the raccoons. There had been nearly half of a sheet cake, but when they got done, there were three pieces left. No wonder they were so happy and full of energy. I put the remaining pieces on a plate in a zip-lock bag and saved them for Scoutmaster Fischer (more on that later). The boys went off to Archery and more water polo until 4:00 and then headed off to fourth hour.
At 5:00, they came back to start our big dinner of the week: Pork chops, potatoes, and corn. We decided to add to that, and had Mr. Horst bring us up two dozen ears of corn on the cob to have in leadership instead of canned corn. Chef Ben and some of the other leadership Scouts did a great job frying up the pork chops and the potatoes. They cubed the potatoes, added chopped onions and spices and fried them up. They were terrific.
As a result of all the advancement going on all week, there were all sorts of young scouts lined up for Scoutmaster conferences and Board of Review. Before dinner and after, the adults were popping in and out of dinner to perform these interviews. We left the dishes for the leadership scouts to do, but they were busy getting their skit for the camp-wide closing campfire and many people were gone for free time after dinner.
9:30 came along and we headed off the camp-wide campfire (running a bit late). It was the usual loud fun. As Mr. Fischer and I were bringing up the rear, we could hear our troop engaging another troop in the usual "we've got the spirit" back and forth exchange. It was a fun and full campfire with skits by each troop (some actually good and new) and awards made for many week accomplishments (swimming, shooting, etc.) . Ben received recognition for being the only Eagle Scout (still under 18) who attended Many Point at Voyager with his troop that week. One award caught everyone by surprise: There is an award for any scout that completes the Bouldering wall down at the climbing wall. There was exactly one Scout in camp that completed the Bouldering Wall: Max H.! After the skits and songs and awards, the staff performed the Order of the Arrow call out and Troop 346 had the most scouts being called out for Order of the Arrow. We all climbed the hill back out of the fire ring and thanked each of the staff for a wonderful week.
When we got back, we discovered {can you guess?} that the dishes had been left out, the patrol boxes left open, and the corn on the cob left out. Guess who else figured that out also? There were little footprint ALL over the place.
The Scouts had an excellent TLC, where they discussed what they liked best about how this week worked and what they would like to do different in the future.
I'll  try to cover more on the pack-up this morning later. I'm currently at a Laundromat in Detroit Lakes using the free Wi-Fi while Nick does his Laundry. We will be leaving very shortly to meet the rest of the troop at Ice Crackin Lodge for our traditional Saturday switch-over dinner. Ice Crackin has expanded their building several times, so there is now plenty of room, and they have expanded their menu so there is more than just Thunderburgers. I'm looking forward to a steak. Mr. Hundwardsen arrived today and I will be returning with him tomorrow. Mr. Oas and Mr. Oas (Dirk) arrived today to handle medical and Mr. McGrath arrived last night to assume his rightful role of Advancement Chair. Mr. Furlich will arrive tomorrow to take over as acting Scoutmaster (Mr. Fischer went home on the bus with Mr. Wald and Mr. Gertjejansen) and Jon will be arriving to take over the reins of acting SPL from Trevor's capable hands for the week. This will allow Trevor to take a well deserved rest week two. Hopefully Josh will be taking over the blogging duties week 2 and keeping us all up to date. I unfortunately do not have enough vacation this year to stay two weeks. That's all for now from Many Point Scout Camp....Jon Yearous