Day One Hundred and Twenty: camp camp camp camp camp camp!

It’s camp time and as usual I’m in my element. After packing up a few cars to get all 9 Scouts, 3 leaders and gear to the camp we finally left just before 6ish. The drive was about an hour and a half and I was in Marilyn’s car (Reid’s mum) for the journey. It was an interesting ride, we saw several animals and lotsa nature on that journey. We arrived at the site at 7.30pm and were the first lot from our troop there. So we parked up and wandered down to see the field. It was beautiful, and had amazing views of Kent Lake.

 

Unfortunately I received no signal up there so it was the first weekend that I was completely out of contact with those back home, but that was ok, I had plenty going on around me to keep me busy. When the others arrived we chose a spot and then set up the camp as it was getting dark. There were three Scout tents, each with three Scouts in, then Stuart had a tent and I shared with Tiina.

At 9.30pm we went to the entrance of the camp and met with the other four troops who were there this weekend (around 40 Scouts). Here we had a mug up (for those of you who do not know this term, it is just a hot drink to warm you before bed). Mug up was hot cider and it was tasty, definitely warmed me through. We stood by a fire while drinking this and taking amongst each other until the leaders were gathered together for a short meeting to brief us on the camp.

During this meeting I met a few leaders who I had previously met at Klondike, so it was nice to see the again. Afterwards we all went back to our troops to find havoc had broken out … one troop, we don’t know who, had been throwing wet toilet paper around the field … lovely. So we calmed our guys down and got them to bed. Quiet time was from 11pm, but who is ever quiet at quiet time on camp?

I slept pretty roughly that night; I was warm (apart from my nose and toes) but just couldn’t get comfortable. I’m sure I saw most hours go by, interspersed with the odd nap. By the time my alarm cock wet off at 7 the next morning I was bored of lying in bed, so got up straight away. We had until 9.45 to get breakfast and get them ready for the opening horseshoe … but they still weren’t. We missed the opening and the four Scouts who were doing the washing up did such a bad job that they missed the first activity of pioneering because they had to do the dishes again … and again, until they got it right.

Stuart and I took the rest of the Scouts to the first activity and watched them build an A frame from logs lashed together and then walk this frame around … it was interesting to watch, but as usual the Scouts were just not listening to each other, so their walking did not look much like walking.

 

Next activity was called Forest Management where the Scouts were given roles to come to a decision about an area of land. Should they harvest the forest, conserve it or make it into a recreational area. I must say they came up with some pretty interesting ideas … some Scouts from another group managed to change it so that they would kidnap Obama and another suggestion from them to solve the problem was to genetically mutate everyone into sea turtles … interesting indeed.

The last of the three morning rotations was Forestry Maintenance. This is what they were looking forward to … thinning the pine plantation, by cutting them down. Where they were so close together this wasn’t too bad, as they didn’t fall over completely and needed to be pulled from the thick of leaves above, making it safer for the Scouts.

 

Lunch started at 12.15pm and the Scouts had pizza cooked on the embers of Stuart’s fire (he was so proud of himself for making that) and us leader’s had tuna sandwiches and a home made Caesar salad. It was tasty! Then at 2pm the next lot of activities started.

This time there were four rotations of half hour and they included the pitoun toss and plant a log, log rolling and a pillow fight, two-Scout sawing, and finally lumberjack games such as arm wrestling, leg wrestling, high kick and tug of war. Tiina, Stuart and I ran the lumberjack games over by our site and the Scouts seemed to really enjoy them, we set up small competitions to find a winner of arm and then leg wrestling, then we used a long log and held it up to set up a limbo like high kick tournament. Those Scouts were Kung-Fu throwing themselves at that log to kick it down … and didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned that there was no crash mat to land on. Brave!

 

One of the leaders, Scouter Mike came over to see how the activity was going and mentioned his book, “Working Effectively with Youth and with Youth with Disabilities”, it sounded interesting from what he was saying and should be a very useful resource, so both Tina and I bought a copy to read.

By 4pm Troop time started so that the Scouts could rest a little bit and then start making dinner. They had burgers, while us leaders had Venison Stew. I’ve never had Venison before, but it was very nice. We had a bit of a flour disaster when we tried to thicken it up, but all was saved and it ended up being very successful, for camp food anyways.

After dinner the Scouts had a pancake flipping relay race … this was funny! Each group had to bring down a stove, pan and flipper. The Scouts had used up all their weekend matched by now, just playing about and wasting them, so in order to get some more ,they all had to sing I’m a Little Teapot, with actions in the field. They had to do it three times as one Scout claimed he didn’t know it. After giving them the matches, each of us leaders reminded them to grab the matches to take to the race, but did they? Nope. Once they arrived down there they all looked at each other and asked who had them. So one had to go back and collect them.

The race went well, unfortunately one of our Scouts has a sever gluten allergy so couldn’t run the race. He got a bit upset by this but managed to get through it. At 8pm we all had a campfire where each troop performed skits, songs and cheers. They were new songs to me, so I found that rather interesting. To close the campfire we sung Koom-by-ya before walking over to the mug up while humming the last verse. It was lovely. Mug up this evening was hot chocolate, and tasty hot chocolate at that.

After the hot chocolate, Scouter Mike gathered us all by the fire for stories. His first story wasn’t scary, it wasn’t happy, it had a moral to it. It was pretty sad too, about a boy who through peer pressure did something that in the end meant the doctor couldn’t get to his dying father in time. To make the solemn mood a bit happier, he told another story, perfectly punctuated y the little dog on site who barked in all the right places. This story was about a young boy who was looking after an old mans monster, he had to give the monster steak with salt and pepper on for three days, but the monster escaped on the final day when the boy was getting a bit lapse on his work. The boy was chased all through town by the monster until he caught up with the boy, who was very scared at this point, tapped him on the shoulder and said he forgot to put the pepper on the steak. Stuart said he had heard a similar story before called the It Monster).

Quiet time was again at 11pm, and until then Tiina, Stuart and I were stood outside looking up at the stars. The clouds were bowing aside quite quickly to reveal a beautiful night sky. One of our Scout’s sleeping bags had broken, as the zip came off, so to keep them warm Stuart offered to switch bags for the night as he had clothes that could keep him warm inside the broken bag, where as the Scout didn’t. I lent Stuart my camp blanket as an extra layer in return for some thicker socks to keep my toes warm tonight. Sharing works when you both have something the other could use. So off to bed we all went and hopefully we would sleep better and not feel the cold so much tonight. Night!