Posts Tagged camping

King of Cold

Whenever there’s a cold snap around St. Louis, blame me. It means I went camping with the Boy Scouts, and this past weekend was no different. New Horizons had a Webelos camporee, which meant a lot of men and boys (and a few women and girls) slept a couple of nights in a nicely shaded field and shot guns on Saturday. Shotguns, rifles, and blackpowder guns. Nobody got hurt, although I did hear some poor kid throw up for a long time in the middle of the night.

My son was grubmaster, which meant he was responsible for providing the food for his patrol. When we went shopping, he was concerned that we bought enough, because the quickest way to get on the bad side of your patrol mates is for them to go hungry on a campout. We bought for nine, but only six showed up, so there was plenty of food to go around. And come home. So his stint as grubmaster was a success.

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Aft Gang Agley

It took me awhile to recover from the weekend, but I have returned to blogging. I was hit with a double whammy. First, we had our Cub Pack family campout at Castlewood State Park. We’ve had outstanding weather all year, but on this particular Saturday, we had rain. The forecasters told us Friday night that it would rain overnight, with scattered showers in the morning and no rain after noon. Well, they were wrong. The rain didn’t start until 9:15 AM. I know the exact time because I was in the middle of a field trying to get my tent up before the rain started when it started. Fortunately, we had numerous awnings to keep the rain off; unfortunately, we quickly churned the ground underneath them into slippery yet clinging mud.

We went ahead with our raingutter regatta and nature talk from the park ranger (who was outstanding); but we were forced to cancel the tug of war. We went ahead with the hike to the bluffs overlooking the river, but a lot of den activities couldn’t be carried out as planned. We canceled the pack meeting, so no Indian was summoned out of the night to light our bonfire and award bobcat badges and pin, but we did light the bonfire ourselves and enjoys skits, jokes, and even a story told by yours truly.

Many of the families who had planned on camping slept in their own beds; my son and I stayed until the second time he threw up. He didn’t want to leave, but as he kept on hurling even when there wasn’t anything left to hurl, I think I made the right choice. And that’s the great thing about kids – not too many of them noticed or cared about the weather; it was only we parents who were worried about clean and dry clothes or being cold and miserable. The kids had fun running around in the rain, skipping stones in the river, playing soccer or volleyball, and cooking over open flames.

It was also my birthday, so while I enjoyed the medal proclaiming that I was “officially” older than dirt, and the nice trophy from Den 6, and being sung happy birthday twice, it also means that I got a few toys, which needless to say I’ve been playing with ever since. Not only have I been too busy to blog, I’ve been too busy to even download the new 1.10 Diablo II patch. Now that’s busy.

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