My first Boy Scout Camp-out!

Well, today I was thinking about an new breed of articles here at the Boy Scout Blogger. I got to thinking, when I first made this blog it was to cover the 2004 election process and get to know like minded people online. Well, now that the election is over, I think I will add some story's of my Trail to Eagle and General Boy Scout story's. I hope you will enjoy them!

Our First camp-out:

Our very first camp-out was at a local scout camp. There were 6 of us,(5 of whom now are Eagle) and we were all pretty new to camping. I had only been on 2 camp-outs before and they were not all that rigorous. Our first scout camp-out was different though, we had to set up our own tents, fix our own meals,(after learning how of course) and were responsible for bringing all our camping gear and food. If we didn't being our stuff, we had to "improvise", a fancy word for making it work without the forgotten item. I only forgot one little thing...My tent poles! :-D My dad and I were to be sleeping in that tent and I am so thankful it didn't start pouring rain! We ran cord through the tent until it stood in sort of a hunch-back type position, to where we could get in to it, however we could not get the rain fly on!
Well, after the tents where up we proceeded to cook our first Scout meal: Hobo dinners! They turned out very well. We had a great and filling first dinner. If you would like the recipe, just google "hobo dinner". They are a great meal for new scouts. After that we headed off to bed. My dad and I slept on an air mattress that we had brought and slept very well. (Air mattress' are great for car camping but really aren't practical for backpacking as will be talked about, Lord willing, in a later article) The next morning we scouts had to fix breakfast, so we packed up our gear, and headed to another camp site to cook. It took us somewhere from 3-4 hours to get it all done! :-D We really had a lot to learn about cooking and fire building. One of our mistakes was that we wanted to light the fires before we had enough wood. So scouts, remember to have a good bit of wood handy before you start your fires. It really helps. We also got to try out our new hatchets that day. Boy, that was interesting. We learned the safety procedures and were careful to not be very close to each other as we chopped. Looking back, it was a great camp-out for us young scouts and really helped us out later in our camping experiences. One thing I would like to mention is that my dad was heavily involved with my scout experiences, he did not miss one camp-out, he was there every time. The scout troop was run by the dads of the boys and the scoutmaster.(Who was a respected member of our church and a Eagle Scout) We wanted to be careful as to what went on in our scouting adventures. Our parents didn't mind fun, but wanted to make sure that we were well supervised and protected. My dad and I had a great time, in scouting and learned a lot in the process. So I would really encourage parental participation as much as possible, in scouting and really any other activity.

God Bless,
In Christ,
The Blogging Boy Scout,
Travis

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