#12

Family Outdoor Adventure

One of these days I’ll get to do something on the weekend for myself but until then; more scouts.  This time it was Bear Cub requirement number 12, Family Outdoor Adventure. 

We went to Powder Valley Nature Center

And hiked.

We let Jacob plan the day – specifically by picking the picnic lunch menu.

Dill Pickles, Strawberries, and PB&J sandwiches.

Cowhand

So, the last time I was on a horse was when I was five.  Why so long you ask?  Getting thrown would have been one thing.  Getting your foot caught in the stirrup and dangling upside down while your horse runs in circles is another thing all together.  “Thankfully” I was too short to drag on the ground.  Had we shown up, gotten on the horse and gone for a trail ride I would have been fine, but that’s not the way it happened.  We got there, and they assigned us horses, we had is brush them, get their saddles on (the professionals did the bits), and get helmets.  I was ready to crap my pants by the time we actually got on them, but I digress.  This is really about camping with boy scouts!

So we pulled into our camp sit at dusk on Friday, and we didn’t get our Quesadilla dinner until after dark.  No big deal, the moon was spectacularly bright.

We couldn’t really have had better weather; lows in the mid 50s, and highs in the low 80s.  The only thing missing was my jacket.  The following morning started at sunup (630am) because the boys wanted Bacon, Eggs, and Pancakes for breakfast.  We had to be at the stable at 9am for horseback riding.  We were only five minutes late. 

As an aside; I hate it when the boys want pancakes.  They are nothing but slow, messy carbohydrates.

The trail ride was as expected.

I think my horse, Cowhand, was pissed off about having to carry the fat guy.  Repeatedly I got rubbed against trees, and taken through the tall grass.  I love Chiggers, really; especially when they’re all over my legs.  The ride lasted a little over and hour and everyone survived.

Lunch was sandwiches, and we set up dinner to cook in the sun.

We had two solar cookers.  The professionally built one got up to 350 degrees and had three pounds of ground beef, diced onions, and chili seasoning in it.  The other one was made by the scouts at a previous troop meeting out of cardboard, duct tape, and tinfoil.  I don’t know how hot it got, but it did do an adequate job of warming up the beans.  We heated the beans up in a black tin that came with another solar cooker the Scoutmaster didn’t bring along on this trip, but he did tell me that the manufacturer claimed that; “Food cooked with photons tastes better!”

While dinner was cooking we took a hike down the creek and let the boys, be boys.

All told we spent until dinner, about 4 hours, playing in the creek.  The total walk was between two and three miles. 

SNAKE!

I asked the boys what kind it was.  They didn’t know, but wanted to pick it up anyway.  So after I said no, several times, we talked about the fact the baby poisonous snakes can be more dangerous than the adults because they don’t withhold any venom.  I have no idea if its true, but I didn’t want them to pick it up, and one lie was as good as another at that point.

Dinner was quick and easy.  Chili and the leftover cheese from the quesadillas; since we used the solar cookers there was no cooking fire to deal with.  Dinner took about 30 minutes from start to finish.  Breakfast must have taken 2 full hours.  Yeah for solar cookers!

So at seven o’clock I was ready to pass out.  I actually went into my tent and laid down for 15-20 minutes before the bonfire.

That night based on the Scoutmaster’s suggestion the bonfire was lit at the top, instead of the bottom.  What I fabulous idea!  I do that all the time when I use my smoker at home, why it never crossed my mind to do for a bonfire escapes me.  Anyway our bonfire lasted a good hour and a half.  It wasn’t as big as a typical bonfire, but it gave us a steadier amount of heat and light.  It also burned virtually smoke free.  I assume because the wood got dried out properly as the fire burned its way down.

So at nine that night a strange thing happened.  Two of the boys got up, and decided that it was time to go to bed.  They were so tired they were falling asleep sitting up watching the bonfire.  30 minutes later we put the remains of the bonfire out, and all went to bed. 

The boys all slept until 730 on Sunday morning.

Fat Raccoons

Last weekend I got to go camping with the cub scouts!  I once called camping with the boy scouts total chaos.  If that’s true then camping with the cub scouts is ultimate chaos.  The amount of uncontrolled energy is staggering. 

I honestly don’t know how the cub scout den leaders do it.  I really don’t.  Just one night with a large group of sugar fueled, up past bedtime, out in the woods kids make me want to run away to some quiet place and practice Buddhist meditation. 

I let Jacob run while I set up the tent.  He got to play, I got to work.  Part of me wants to make it hard for him so he doesn’t want to go on to boy scouts, but I’m not that selfish.  Yet.  Dinner was hot dogs that were amazingly un-burnt. Chips, chips, cookies, and watermelon.

I’ve always had a hard time keeping track of Jacob after it gets dark.  I know I should trust him more, but it’s hard sometimes.  In any case I got him glow sticks, and that made it easy to keep tabs on him, so that is going to get added to the list standard equipment when I’m camping with him.  He finally ran out of energy at 1030. 

Did I mention that it was cold?  I checked the weather on my cell phone, at bedtime it was 39 degrees.  Once I got him into his sleeping bag and he warmed up he was out like a light.  I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night, with Jacob partially laying on me.  Ugh.

The morning plan was to get up pack and leave.  Breakfast was on your own.  The Raccoons that visit cub world in the night at Beaumont must be the best fed animals in the world.  Cub scouts seem to drop as much food as they eat.  In the morning I checked out the picnic table we had used for dinner the night before, and there was food still just sitting out.  None of it appeared to have been disturbed; so either it was too cold to the raccoons to come out, or they were so full that they just weren’t hungry.

In either case us people were hungry, so we stopped at IHOP on the way home… 

Art

I like art.  I especially like art that’s profane.  I just want something that elicits strong feelings.

So here are some of the things I’ve found that, well, fit the bill.

So, is everyone offended now?

Breakfast

Jacob’s milk, hash browns, and scrambled eggs - $1.50

My milk, hash browns, and scrambled eggs - $1.50

Sitting at the kids table in the cafeteria to eat - Free

Jacob’s excitement over buying me breakfast - Priceless. 

Irrational Wolf Spiders

Why yes, we went camping; again.  This time it was just going to be the Alpacas, the older boys were off with the Scoutmaster doing an Order of the Arrow thing. 

So, in planning, the other assistant scoutmaster and I decided to up the food budget from $1.25 per person per meal from the Braised Boy Scout trip to $2.00!  We figured we would eat like kings!  So, thanks to email firewalls, enough food was bought for all six of us.  Why am I thanking an email firewall?  Well that would be because the other guy never got the email that confirmed that there would in fact be nine of us there, not six. Which turned out to be $1.33 per person per meal, well at least it was cooler even if we didn’t get to eat like kings. 

Also this time we didn’t need tents as we rented a shelter at one the county parks.  I had been led to believe from the descriptions that it was a shelter that had multiple walls and would be semi-bug proof.  Reality was a little different.

But that was OK, I had my tent, just in case, and our bug-a-phobe had one too.  As it turned out though the one he brought had a broken poll, so I got mine out instead.

During our gourmet lunch of creamy peanut butter and squeezable grape jelly on white bread (and chips) we had visitors.

It was a wonderful tradeoff, we made sure their lunch fire went out, and the boys got to interact with the horses.  They were told how to approach a horse and the proper way to act around them, and what was ok when touching them.

Little did I know at the time that in October the plan includes Horseback riding, but I get ahead of myself.

After lunch we went for a hike and started working on some of their requirements. Many plants and animals (or signs of animals, aka horse poo) were seen, and many fun things were done.

Yes that’s my hand, and yes I put it there intentionally.  The skyline was bright enough that it was messing up the picture.  Hey, what do you expect?  It’s a 1.3 Megapixel camera on my cell phone.

As we were walking back to our “campsite” I got to have an interesting conversation with a couple of the boys about what we choose to remember.  Since it was almost 9/11 remembering was on my mind anyway.  I was talking with them about what I remembered from when I was in college.  No, not about the class work specifically, but about the most vivid memories.  I pointed out to them that I had a good time in college, but the specific instances that I remembered most were the bad ones.  Like when one of my professors called me a “stupid American peasant.”  I pointed out to the boys that they get to choose how and what they remember.  The two that were listening are the only two in the group that would actually hear what I was saying.  They honestly looked thoughtful instead of just rolling their eyes the way mine would have.

Nazrat (Tarzan spelled backwards – Something my dad always said: why THAT stuck, I’ll never know), would have been proud.

After the walk we had 7-11 year olds, out enjoying nature, with nothing to do.  Nothing bad could even come of that. Right? The post walk, pre-dinner down time was memorable too.

So first, one of the boys made an absolutely absurd claim which the other boys couldn’t leave alone.  The ensuing argument probably lasted 30 minutes, all of which were painful, but we’re supposed to let them work that stuff out.  I did think during the argument, that instead of calling them the Spitting Alpacas, that Braying Jackasses might be more appropriate.

The other was more typical.  One of the boys was standing there talking, turned to run, caught his foot on a picnic table, and belly flopped on the concrete.  Our troop has several adults that are trained medical personnel in real life.  Luckily none of them were there.  Dr. Steve to the rescue!  The Belly Flopper has a skinned knee, and a sore arm.  I got a couple of the boys to do the first aid on the knee while I checked out his arm (it landed under his body when he fell).  He had full range of motion in the arm, and forearm without any pain, and I squeezed lightly near the elbow and it didn’t hurt.  I told his parents what happened and suggested that they may want to call their pediatrician to make sure.

Dinner was Beef Stew, French bread, and monkey bread; all right from the good nasty at the top of the food pyramid.  What else did you expect for what we spent?

So, as the sun set and we enjoyed our campfire the bugs started to come out.  Specifically Walking Sticks and Wolf Spiders.  At first it wasn’t so bad, but once it was fully dark, then the fun began.  I let our resident bug-a-phobe use my tent.  So my sleeping bag, and air mattress where laying one the ground, in the open.  After I had caught the Walking Stick, on my face I decided that I ought to check my bed.  Low and behold there was a gigantic wolf spider, on my pillow.

One of the boys tried to kill it, and missed.

At which time the bug-a-phobe completely lost it.  I’m not going to get into details of the next couple of hours other than to say we ended up having someone come and get him.  He never would have fallen asleep.  Once we told him he was going home he calmed down immediately, so at least I know we made the right choice for him. 

In the Boy Scouts’ adult leader training they said: “Boy Scouts is FUN, with U in the middle”, and he wasn’t having fun at that point.  From what I was told the next day all he talked about on the way home was how much fun he had that day. 

Ultimately I think the bug-a-phobe’s "moment" is going to be a good learning experience for everyone involved.  For him in knowing that he can trust us to help him, for the Boys in compassion (there wasn't any "grow-up" or "shut-up" or other mean spirited stuff), and for the Troop as it seems to me that the way we've been doing things is "because that's the way we've always done it."  The bug-a-phobe’ isn't going to fit into the standard "box" that the Troop is used to; he is a good kid and I would hate to lose him over camping. I think that we can accommodate him and all be better for it.

I got to thinking: What exactly are the camping requirements of boy scouts?

I've been looking in the Boy Scout book, and as far as I can it is only 20 nights camping, he has managed four nights already.  20 nights is needed for the Camping Merit Badge which an Eagle requirement.  I think if we choose his campouts carefully, we can get him there.

What do I mean by "choose his campouts carefully" - again, I've looked, and camping doesn't have to be like it was at the shelter.  It can include "cabin camping" which might work; also we could make him the King of Cold Weather.  Maybe he could do the cold weather stuff when the bugs aren't out.  Doesn't mean he won't fixate on something else, but it's worth a try.

On Sunday, while the pancakes were lollygagging on the griddle we talked shortly about "irrational fears", and that sometimes things get in your head and you just can't keep them out. We were running a little late getting home, but it was a good time.

Randomness, Part III