Camping with the Boy Scouts

The men folk in our McLaughlin tribe joined with some other Webelos Cub Scouts in our pack to go to the Boy Scout camporee over the weekend here in Vermont. Lots of cool stories, and you can view the pics at our May 2010 Camporee album.

First, an important note about Mother's Day: We got permission from Mom before going camping on Mother's Day weekend, and we got home in time to treat Laura to some great adoration and abject "we're not worthy" praise.

From May 2010 Camporee

Stories about the Camporee:

1. Our boys served as color guard on Saturday morning.
   We had offered to help the big Boy Scouts raise the flag sometime, but none of them volunteered, so we had to show them how it's done. In the album, you can see a pic of our four Webelos surrounded by the hulking teenagers. Reminds me of the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. The boys did a great job.
2. Lots of fun activities: Our guys especially seemed to like geocaching (using a hand-held GPS to find treasure) and the 10-mile bike ride (never knew they could do that before!). They weren't old enough to throw tomahawks (roped off range with large targets), but they enjoyed watching it. Next year, they'll cross over and officially qualify for this.
3. Team building: The Cub Scouts at camp had some Cubs only activities, and our guys did one of them: The "bridge building" activity. The idea was that a section of grass was a "raging river" that you had to cross using only the stones in the river (grass) and two planks of wood. You started out with ten points, but lost points if your plank dipped into the "water" or if someone lost their balance and "fell in." Turns out, our guys have a lot to learn about teamwork and accepting ownership for the parts they can help with. Laura and I were discussing this later, and she brought up an interesting point. The four boys were essentially two sets of twins. Laura and I found ourselves wondering how that dynamic with all its sibling rivalries might have prevented them from selecting and following team leadership ... which was one of the problems that led to other problems.
4. Adverse weather: This would've qualified as "winter camping" if the temperature had been a few degrees cooler. With the wet grass, we might have actually been warmer overall if it had been February. Still, we had the pleasure that comes from overcoming an obstacle like this. Saturday night turned into a major wind storm. We knew it was coming and prepared, but it was more intense than predicted. At bed time as our tent was billowing around us, James said that now he knows what it's like to be inside a lung. By morning, he was saying that he felt like the tent was digesting us. The wind would just about lay our tent flat on top of us. I was waking up all night as the tent would do this, but it never blew over! The big problem came when I heard a crashing outside and just knew that our own little 12x12' portable shelter had finally blown over. It sounded something like a piano being dropped from a third-story window, then rolling across the field. Turns out, that the little Cub Scouts' shelter withstood the wind. Instead, a Boy Scout shelter across the lane had come loose and blown through our camp. It demolished our shelter along the way before getting pinned to some trees. We are very grateful that no one was hurt!

Next camporee is in October!

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