northernlights

Proud Eagle, having never actually attended a council camp (although my troop has camped at the council summer camp facility off-season), I am not in a position to comment on the merits of council run camps. I can say that my group likes the control and flexibility in running our own program, especially in terms of trying to maintain a boy led program and promoting the patrol method. At a council camp, the camp director is in charge, not your troop's senior patrol leader and Scoutmaster. You lose a valuable form of bonding and interaction when its someone else's staff running the progra

EagleInKY, thus far we have not had a problem with the council. As far as I know we don't have any camp positions filled by anyone who has been through any national training, although our leaders have been through the youth protection training and we have a few EMT's and other individuals who are Red Cross certified in CPR present. Its scary to hear some troops have had problems, because it doesn't seem much of a stretch to me for them to then try and apply the same logic to a weekend campout at a lake. Being the cynic that I am when it comes to central governing bodies, it looks to me

Dan, in response to your statement "The only thing that I would change, is that I would not have any adults camping with the patrols.": To clarify, the adults do not camp with the patrols, they sleep in a seperate area about 100 feet away from the closest patrol. Adults are present while meals are being cooked. The nice thing about having run the program for so many years is the organization is mostly already done, its really reduced just to execution. Commissary and physical transport to camp are about the two largest logistical challenges. Comissary is complicated a bit by the l

John-in-KC, thank you for your critique of the program, I anticipated I might have it picked apart and truthfully I wanted to see where we need improvement. I agree with and would like to thank "Scoutldr" for his responses as they reflect the way things are done and how they comply. I do find John's "parsing" of what I said is quite interesting in the sense that while he manages to find ways of infering perceived infractions based on a brief accounting of what we do, he don't have much in the way of constructive suggestions or positive things to say. This reflects the sort of "mommy kno

SeattlePioneer, thank you for your kind words. The wooden stove cooking is probably the biggest daily hassle we face. Judging from the dry summers when there is a fireban, using propane stoves would save 15-30 minutes per meal, but I think there's a certain amount of satisfaction from cooking over a real wood fire. We use half barrel stoves on freestanding legs. The boys always seem to underestimate the amount of wood it actually takes to cook and clean up a meal on those things. If left entirely to their own devices, the boys usually seem to let the fire die about 10 minutes after

I would strongly advise that anyone in a position to do so finish their Eagle badge before high school. My friend and I both finished our Eagle service projects and received our badges the summer before our Freshmen year of high school. Once high school starts Scouting gets some intense competition in the form of clubs, sports, and social activities, and it will become harder and harder to find time to finish. If a boy is going to get the badge, it seems he either has it by 15 or ends up getting it at 17.9 Maybe it is the program I was in, but I never felt like I was rushing or hurryin

I wanted to share some experiences regarding the weeklong summer camp program my troop has put on for the past 20 summers (this is independent from any council camp). We typically take between 50 and 75 people to a state owned group campsite on a lake in the upper Midwest. The last few years we have run a program for about 45 scouts and 20 leaders (only about a dozen can make the whole week, the others will typically come for the beginning or end due to work comittments). We break the group down into 4-6 patrols consisting of 8-12 people (patrol size typically shrinks after the first