I left off at Monday night, it is Wednesday evening now. The raccoons were very active Monday evening, finding any trash that the scouts left out. Then about 3:00 in the morning the thunderstorms started and did not stop until about 6:00 Tuesday evening. The thunder was very loud and some claimed it shook them out of their cots. We had one tent go down in the third year area, but the boys adjusted well and made room for the displaced scouts in other tents. Several dining flys were knocked down as well; several times in some cases. The wind was heavy off the lake; 10-25 mph. Also the tarps tend to fill with water and sag under the weight. More than one ridge pole broke. During the day, the rain let up several time (teasing us) and we were able to work on the tarps.
There was short sunny window where some sailing got done, but otherwise all aquatic activities had to be cancelled. The staff is great about having alternate activities when it is raining, and there are numerous tarps in the program areas that work equally well for shade or rain cover.
We stumbled out of our tents a little late at about 6:45 and got breakfast going; french toast, sausage, and juice. The morning classes pretty much went as planned. They came back for lunch; breaded chicken patties on bun, carrots, and pretzels.
There were two hours of troop activities in the afternoon: One group of boys headed north to the Frisbee Golf range and the other group went to the beach for volleyball and water polo. I think they squeezed both activities in during a temporary lull in the storm. I stayed back at camp to try and reinforce the various dining flys that kept falling down. At 3:00 they went to their fourth hour classes. At 4:00, they had the Ironman competition which normally consist of canoeing, swimming, and running. However, due to thunder in the area, they could not go into the water. The staff did a great job of coming up with alternate activities to substitute for the canoeing and swimming. After Ironman, the scouts came back to camp for dinner: tacos!
Fortunately, about dinner time, the rain and thunder and lightning stopped and the boys were able to head off for free time.
One popular free time activity to reemerge has been the crazy haircuts. Someone brought up a set of barber shears and various scouts have been getting Mohawks and other "creative" haircuts. I hope to get some pictures up soon.
At 9:00 they all came back to camp. A lot of the boys gathered under the leadership tarp for some very active card playing: poker, 500, hearts, etc. They were up pretty late having a lot of fun. Jason was up late with them too, doing some dutch oven baking (some sort of apple dish). It must have been a good time, they were pretty tired last night.
As for me, I hit the hay about 11:00 and I was out. The raccoons were up. We saw paw prints everywhere, and they seemed to be very happy that Junior Leadership had left their garbage out instead of taking it to the dumpster. In the morning, the Junior Leadership garbage was spread far and wide; it looked like a garbage bomb had gone off.
As we do every year we have slowly been trying to work on the boys about keeping a clean campsite.
This morning, they were a little slow on the uptake; perhaps another sign of the fun last night. Breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs and sausage with juice. Then off to morning classes, and back for lunch; hoagie ham sandwiches. Leadership got creative and made some cheese burgers out of the leftover hamburger from tacos last night. The rest of leadership made warm chuckwagon sandwiches out of the ham and buns. They can be culinary creative when they try.
This afternoon they had a Supertoop project, and filled in some of the hole on the horrible road down to our campsite. Some scouts did Orienteering and another activity I've forgotten.
At 4:00 they had an hour of in site troop time, and they started collecting firewood for our traditional troop campfire on Thursday night. They talked Mr. Lindberg into using his pick-up to go down and collect piece of a tree that had fallen near the camp entrance (it was about 10" in diameter and was cut into 4 foot lengths). Later when they were collecting another log off of our camp road, just as they were putting it into the truck, a swarm of bees came out and several were stung. Fortunately, none were allergic and were treated by Ms. Roberts (Chris and Jackson's mom) who is handling medical for us. We'll have to see how much Poison Ivy was picked up during wood collect. We have sent a number of scouts to the showers already to wash down, in addition to the showers we have been "encouraging" some scouts to take.
At 5:00, the first year Scouts headed off with the Voyager staff and Mr. Wald for a five mile hike to family camp, where they will rest and have dinner. This fulfills one of their requirements. Most of the scouts went to their fourth hour classes and then to the beach for a beach bash (tacos in a bag and fun activities), with the Voyager staff and Mr. Beck. The rest of the adults; Mr. Fischer, me, Ms. Roberts, Mr. Lindberg, Mrs. Coleman, Mr. Isham, Kris Scott, and Milo Gertjejansen; headed to the Buckskin dining hall at the north end of camp for the adult leader appreciation dinner: sliced Pork loin, new potatoes, broccoli & carrots, Granny bread, cole slaw, and a chocolate pudding dessert that is heavenly (but I had a banana instead).
After the dinner I came over here to update the blog while the other adults headed back to camp so the boys could go to free time activities.
When it was raining ALL DAY yesterday, I think you might have had a LOT of volunteers to come home, but like that old song, Camp Granada, any thoughts of escaping dried up when the sun came out. Today it has been sunny with temperatures in the 70's and the rest of the week is suppose to be the same.
A big thanks to all the parents and young adults that have been volunteering their time: Besides the one mentioned above, Mr. Horst came up with us Sunday and will be back at the end of the week, Mr. Dutton and Mr. Bothun just left today, to be replaced by Mr. Lindberg, Mr. Beck, and Mr. Wald. Mr. Fricke is due soon, Mr. McGrath has been popping in with his family from Family Camp, and we're expecting visits from Mr. Rutkowski, the Oas' and other adults that will be here for the weekend and week 2.
I will try to update at least one more time this week, so keep checking back. For now, that's all from Many Point Scout Camp....Jon Yearous
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment