raisinemright

BadenP,

My favorites were the Apollo Mission glasses. I think it was from Marathon Oil. I had a couple and bought the rest at a garage sale. Back when space travel was a really big thing. It stilll is. My son earned his Robotics Merit Badge and entered the contest to win a badge flown on the Shuttle. He won one and it just arrived this week. Really cool stuff.

There was a Mobil gas station in Clinton Township, MI. They had not changed the sign since the 60's and it was in perfect condition. BP made them change and destroy a unique bit of history. Sad, but understandable at the same time.

I've taught this important skill to plenty of scouts. I first ask all the mom's to leave the room so we can have a guy's only discussion.

All women reading, please exit the post.

Step 1 Find a good location

Step 2 Using your handy orange shovel, dig a 6" cathole

Step 3 (this is the important one. Urinate first, makes the rest real easy

Step 4 Squat down and do your business-I favor taking some rope and looping it around a tree for added support.

Step 5 Use your handy orange shovel to fill the hole

Step 6 Put a stick in the hole for easy identification by future hikers who thought they found just the right area.

Coule years ago, I'm doing my business somewhere in the Smokey Mountains. I look to my left and see a HUGE pile of bear poop. I look to my right and see a HUGE pile of bear poop. Same to the left and right behind me. THat was good motivation to move a little faster.

Orange shovels are only a coule bucks. Perhaps a gift can be made at the next COH for anyone who needed to use one on the last hike.

OK, so I have a current CDL with passenger and air brake endorsements. I regularly drive Greyhound size coaches with 45 passengers and have thousands of safe miles in buses and 15 passenger vans. Will they make me take an elemtary driving course too?

I actually agree with that one though for most people. To be honest, I've had times with a fully loaded 15 passenger van that I was pretty nervouse driving. High wind blows those things all over the road.

After dipping the bread in the eggs, drop it in another tin filled with finely crushed Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries. You'll surrender to the taste of Capn' Crunch French Toast.

That's funny Beaver. My boys both have new, good looking uniforms, while their Scoutmaster has an old rumpled hand-me-down. Too busy paying for their's I guess.

224,

I'm sorry sir, but I beg to differ with you. As you read my post in its entirety, you will have no choice but to not only agree with me, but to run out and get the main ingredient and light up a fire in your back yard just to try it.

Forget those pesky little marshmallows, go right to the gold standard.

Here it comes.

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Roast Peeps.

For best results, planning in advance is necessary. Take a package of Peeps and cut a slit in the plastic. Place peeps in a cool dry environment for 3-6 weeks until they are aged to perfection.

On a hot bed of coals, gently impale the aged Peep on a stick. (a fork is a little better, especially on non-aged Peeps)

Hold near coals turning almost constantly until a hard caramelized shell is visible on all sides. Note: Outer skin will turn dark brown or black.

Here's the important part. Allow to cool for at least two minutes or your scouts will be able to practice treating 2nd degree burns to the lips-don't ask how I know that.

What follows will be the best, most addictive camp treat ever.

Hey, don't run to the store yet, wait till I'm done typing.

OK, I'm done, you can go now.

For several years, I was a den leader and Asst. Cubmaster. For two years, I was also an Asst. Scoutmaster. I was dual registered as ACM and ASM.

Now, I'm just a SM, but it's a new unit so I'm busy training and overseeing everyone.

Thanks Tampa,

I was commended by a couple co-workers today for my actions in getting the building evacuated. I'm also going to be asked to be on the emergency prep team because the plan really didn't work in a real evac. Better yet, my scouts are almost all first year. They all earned First Aid MB last week. Two brothers were swimming at a friend's house when the quake hit. Their friend's mom sustained a minor cut and one of my scouts whipped out his personal first aid kit and bandaged her up.

Yep, I'm just a little proud.

I just fired off an e-mail to our troop about that.

We caught the quake pretty good in Baltimore. Our 100 year old office building rumbled hard, stopped and rumbled again. Everyone was just looking at each other. By the second shock, small chunks of concrete were dropping and I dove for the door, then remembered my training, came back and yelled to get out of the building. I tripped the fire alarm and nothing happened. I did a quick walk through then left.

I'm a little upset that the alarm didn't sound and let the office manager know that 1. I tripped it and 2. it failed to work.

OK, so we just returned home after the camp. I gotta tell you guys, it went great.

We had 11 boys plus one who had a previously scheduled thing during the days. He came for some of the evening activities.

We set up camp in a large area with great separation between patrols. The only two experienced socuts were SPL and ASPL who couldn't get out of football practice (but that's another story) He left for a few hours each day.

We had three dads plus myself. They put the food ingredients together for the boys to cook at their patrol areas. Since it's all new boys, they needed a little more encouragement and advice on how to prepare what we made. Cleanup went way slow the first couple meals but withing a couple days, they were doing well.

Our state Senator was invited out to discuss duties as a citizen with the boys. She stayed nearly three hours and was even brave enough to eat a scout made lunch.

Our main goal was to work on as much T-1 Stuff as possible. We spent a couple afternoons in the pool and spent a lot of time on swim test and water rescue. Plus there was a canoe at the pool area, so we did some basic canoe techniques too. THe Camp Ranger came by a few times as a MBC for First Aid. He's a 30 year EMT and did a great job with the boys.

Yesterday, we did a very challenging 5 mile hike on a rally rough course. The SPL led the hike and the boys used map and compass on that as well as an orienteering course. One of the boys got a little overheated so they got to use their newly acquired first aid skills.

As the Scoutmaster, I'm exhausted. I not only had to work with the boys along with my SPL, I had to train the adults too. But, it was a blast. THe boys jelled well and had a great time. They really learned the skills cause we had time to go over them over and over.

Thanks for all your advice. If any of you get the cahnce to do a weeklong troop camp, go for it.

Oh, and we did it under budget. We charged $100 per scout and we have some money left over.

Our brand new troop of mostly first year scouts is going camping for the week starting Tuesday. My Scoutmaster Minute tomorrow is going to be reading Jared's story to the scouts and a discussion of what he did right and wrong. We're using it for a lesson.

Boomer-Thanks for the hint. I thought about rain a while back and promptly forgot. I'll have them bring some games and stuff. The campsite has a large overhang. The scouts all earned Totin and Fireman at our first campout in February.

Seattle-We're charging $100 per scout. Majority of cost is for food plus camp and pool rental. The camp is very reasonable at under $100 for the week. I'm going to have about $100 in my pocket for any incidentals. Program cost is almost zero. Pool, some topo maps of the camp trails and I still need to get a few hundred feet of manila rope for lashings. The rest should be no real cost.

OK, so it's crunch time.

Our troop is ready for our troop run summer camp next week. We got hooked in with the local scout camp who will be able to accomodate us. THe cost is very reasonable and they are excited that we're coming. One of the camp staff is a First aid MBC. We've got everything scheduled out for a 5 mile hike, orienteering and all the water stuff. Our State Senator who is also the Senate Minority Leader will be joining us for a discussion on the boys duties as citizens.

We've got the meals planned. Logistics would be way to difficult to have the boys plan and get the food mainly because we need to have a couple deliveries for the perishables so me and the SPL made up most of the menu and a couple of the mom's are buying the food for us. We'll do it quartermaster style where the boys get a box of ingredients and get to cook their food by patrol. They are ordering pizza on Friday though.

Night time will be working on the MB and playing games, maybe with a night hike too.

Our troop hasn't had our own tents so we're using some personal ones but we just came up with some money and ordered two new ALPS Taurus 4's. Scoutdirect.com is awesome. I told them that I was hoping to get the tents delivered by next Monday and they rush packed them for me. Just arrived at my house. Give them your gear business. Excellent quality and incredible service and prices.

My biggest fear is downtime. I'm not sure I planned enough or too much. We can always find more stuff to do so it should be OK.

I'll report back when we get done with the results.

Moosetracker,

Can you cite chapter and verse on the three month rule between completing project and having board of review?

I know a scout who sort of got waylaid and didn't have his board of review till nearly 3 years afoter completing his project...at 17 years, 364 days.

The menu looks real similar to my normal stuff. For lunch sometinmes us adults will do tortilla and tuna but we'll also take an avocado and add that for flavor and lots of good energy. For dinners, the scouts will sometimes take dried chili called Darn Good Chili. (I think it's from Bear Creek) They'll add some noodles, some dried beef and spices, then cut up some cheddar on top. Mmmm. Darn good!

Here's a trick. Cook the noodles at home, then dehydrate them. They re-cook in just a couple minutes in boiling water. Uses less water and less fuel

Irsap,

I was in exactly your position in January. My family had to move several states away so I could break the grip of becoming a victim of the Obama economy. In other words, I got a new job. Another family from our troop back home moved to the same town as us when he got transferred.

We were looking for a home school troop but the nearest one was 45 miles away. (they have become good friends) So, we started one. Our three boys were Life, 1st and 2nd class.

We started with nine scouts and are at 14 now. We appointed a SPL and let him have pretty free reign. (my son) We stuck with one patrol until we hit 12 kids. We went from 9 to 12 in about 2 weeks so it kind of took us by surprise.

Our SPL runs the meetings completely and keeps the boys busy. The first few weeks were full of basic skills, starting witht he square knot. Within a few minutes, many boys were teaching others. Our first campout was a cabin trip. They concentrated on Totin and Fireman, including cooking all their meals on the coals. We spent time setting up the tent and dining fly and working on plenty of rank advancement. Several meetings included the Tenderfoot physical fitness stuff.

I think if you let your two older boys know that they will be the key teachers and have the great responsibility of teaching life skills to the younger guys, they will be willing to put aside some of their activities for a while. Keep your eyes open for high adventure opportunities for them to tag along with other troops too.

If you want to talk mere, PM me your phone number.

This is a great thread. I've been a Scouter for many years but am a rookie SM with a new troop. Except for three scouts, the rest are still working on Tenderfoot. So I'm spending a lot of time trying to train scouts and dad's.

Baden Powell was quoted as saying the job of a scoutmaster is to do as little as possible. I try to repeat that line often and let the boys figure stuff out for themselves. So far they are doing admirably. Our SPL and ASPL are pretty good though. My son is SPL and is great at teaching skills. His meeting planning could be better but he's awesome in the field.

That was my son. He was actually scared to get his head wet. We worked on him for years. He got through Tenderfoot rathere quickly but was hung up on 2C. We sat him down and explained that he would never advance and we also spoke of the hazards of not knowing how to swim.

Finally, he steeled his nerve and told me to throw him in. It helped that our neighbor had an in ground pool. He finally got over his fear and started jumoing in deep water. He swam the pool and I called another troop leader to my house. I wanted to get it witnessed and signed off before he lost his guts. The next day, he jumped off the diving board.

He's now a Life Scout and SPL. He swims well but doesn't really enjoy it. But he doesn't have to like it.

Persevere. A couple summers ago, aa family reuinion in Mississippi went tragic when a riverbank collapsed and a whole bunch of kids fell in. Not one person at the picnic knew how to swim. The kids all died. How would he feel if he was in a situation and he was powerless to help?

My scouts asked about sheath knives. I told them they are not banned but are frowned upon. I told them I think the reason is that probably 50-100 scouts lose a knife every year at every scout camp. Losing a closed pocketknife is no big deal, but losing a sharp open blade could be a safety problem and cause a hazard.

That said, my son (SPL) and I regularly carry a Cold Steel K2 neck knife that is honed for food prep. (in addition to a normal pocketknife and sometimes a multitool)

I did draw the line this week at butterfly knives.

I've bought lots of tents form them to outfit a troop. Great quality and service. We also have a 0F bag, mummy style that is my son's. Again, high quality. He's been to -5 with it and was comfortable.

Guys,

Thanks for the great input. Some of the stuff you suggested I had already considered and there are many other great ideas.

I decided last night that I'm going to call a special committee meeting and include the PLC to begin deep program planning for camp.

This is really going to be fun. I planned on 1st aid MB and really like th eidea of pioneering too.

We are hoping to use the local council camp. It's only 20 miles away, so I'm going to recruit a couple mom's to bring food each day so we can just keep it refrigerated.

Thanks again.

OK folks, here's the scenario.

We have a new troop. 11 of the 14 are first year scouts and haven't been to summer camp. Due to a bunch of various reasons, there is no week during the normal summer camp schedule that even a simple majority of the boys can go to camp. Me and my ASM are experienced, our SPL and ASPL are both very experienced.

Our plan is to take a week in late August and go camping. We want to do sort of a first year program with the boys and concentrate of T-1st skills. We'd also like to have the boyus work on at least one merit badge.

Concerning the first year program, I'm asking for all my fellow scouters to chime in with some ideas for us to consider.

Thanks.

On our first outing as a new troop, we took the boys on a hike and tried to introduce them to geocaching. One that we picked out was unreacheable to to high water levels, another one we couldn't find, neither could another cacher out on the hunt. We did find one, logged it in but for some reason it was not listed on geocaching.com.

Geocaching is a great scouting activity though.

Certain countries unfurl the flag. I've seen Canadian flags done like that. The flag is tied in a certain way at the top of the pole and when the rope is pulled, it opens. Looks kind of cool on a windy day.

Scoutfish is correct though, the US flag is to be raised, not unfurled