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Any CT scout groups participate in museum trips for their programs? We participated in a program at the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford and it was completely awful. We were embarrassed for our scouts. The person who coordinates them is very rude and unprofessional over email and in person.

 

While I highly recommend you stay away from their programs - does anyone have any better places for museum visits or additions to their programs?

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@@Kevin P welcome to the forum and thanks for pointing out this issue.

 

Wherever my boys go on any activity, I always have a Plan B option in my hip pocket.  A few years back my troop wanted to do a white-water canoe trip on the Bois du Burle river in Northern Wisconsin.  It's a 5 hour trip up to the river.  We get up there and the weather is "ify" on Friday night and T-storms heading our way on Saturday.  That pretty much ended the canoe trip right then and there.  So what's Plan B?  It can't really be something similar to Plan A.  What is up there?  Well, there's the Bong Museum with a full scale P-38 to see plus movies and other artifacts including Bong's Congressional Medal of Honor.....  There's the ship yards in Duluth and there's always ships to be toured there.  Done the military destroyers and nuclear cargo ships and a whole bunch of really neat stuff to see there, etc.  Tossed out the alternatives to going home to the boys and they all decide the Bong Museum was the right thing to do.  Off we went.  They had a great time.  I don't think they would ever be interested in doing museums as Plan A's, but Plan B's make excellent museum opportunities.

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The Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson Kansas offers several merit badge progams such as rocketry and astronomy and such and they can sleep inside the museum. There is also a salt mine museum where they can get their geology MB plus sleep underground. 

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Years ago we were to stop in the wisconsin Dells at a water park on our return from the Boundary Waters.  Unfotrunately the day dawned in the 40's and rainy.  Plan B - A trip to "House on the Rock", in Spring Green, WI, a Frank Lloyd Wright home and Museum.  The museum collects everything!

Full size carousels, miniatures, faberge eggs, automobiles, model ships, pipe organs....etc.  The kids lovd it

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@@Kevin P welcome to the forum and thanks for pointing out this issue.

 

Wherever my boys go on any activity, I always have a Plan B option in my hip pocket.  A few years back my troop wanted to do a white-water canoe trip on the Bois du Burle river in Northern Wisconsin.  It's a 5 hour trip up to the river.  We get up there and the weather is "ify" on Friday night and T-storms heading our way on Saturday.  That pretty much ended the canoe trip right then and there.  So what's Plan B?  It can't really be something similar to Plan A.  What is up there?  Well, there's the Bong Museum with a full scale P-38 to see plus movies and other artifacts including Bong's Congressional Medal of Honor.....  There's the ship yards in Duluth and there's always ships to be toured there.  Done the military destroyers and nuclear cargo ships and a whole bunch of really neat stuff to see there, etc.  Tossed out the alternatives to going home to the boys and they all decide the Bong Museum was the right thing to do.  Off we went.  They had a great time.  I don't think they would ever be interested in doing museums as Plan A's, but Plan B's make excellent museum opportunities.

Sounds like you had a really good time but that stuff is not what I thought you would find in a Bong Museum at first I would have thought that was a not a scouting approved activity and why am I hungry ?

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Sounds like you had a really good time but that stuff is not what I thought you would find in a Bong Museum at first I would have thought that was a not a scouting approved activity and why am I hungry?

 

I was wondering how long it would take for someone who's mind is wandering into all the wrong places before they couldn't hold it in. Your winning booby prize is Iowa Corn. :)

 

 

http://www.bvhcenter.org/History.html 

Edited by John-in-KC
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I was wondering how long it would take for someone who's mind is wandering into all the wrong places before they couldn't hold it in. Your winning booby prize is Iowa Corn. :)

 

 

http://www.bvhcenter.org/History.html 

Yea Stosh I googled it before I posted expect to see Cheech marien and Tomy Chong out there say come on in lol

Edited by John-in-KC
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Scouts are no better - someone always mentions Bong State Park when we pass the sign on the highway headed north to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and beyond in a Beavis and Butthead manner.  We still haven't quite gotten up the courage to stay there.

 

To the subject at hand, there are a lot of colleges, museums, nature centers, botanical gardens, arboreteums and the like that offer merit badge programs to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts (and programs for Cub Scouts too).  Some will be excellent, most will be good and some will be poor.  Before taking part in one of those programs, you should do at least a little homework.  Read the requirements and contact the group to ask questions like "How do you handle pre-requisites (if any), how do you handle requirements that might take more than a day to do.  You might even ask who designed the program - was it someone with a history with the Boy Scouts?  It's a shame the person that coordinates them for the CT Historical Society was rude but was this person also the instructor?  You're going to run into these kinds of situations but a good thing to keep in mind is that District and Council volunteers can run some pretty awful merit badge colleges too, and so can some summer camps, so if it was really that bad, you might want to try to talk to them about how it can be improved.

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@@CalicoPenn

Thanks! Unfortunately this was one that someone recommended. According to the coordinator they have been doing the programs for years. The person who coordinates it also instructs. Just wasn't a friendly person to work with. I never checked to see if it was a new person. Maybe my recommendation came from when someone else was running it. The coordinator seemed young 23-24 ish. So that might have been the issue. But poor representation for Scouts everywhere.

 

Looking to see if anyone from CT recommends any one else. Asking as part researching - cannot go just based on who I know. The merit badge programs the CT Historical Society runs are very unorganized. Looking to find better options.

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I will admit I was momentarily confused by "Bong Museum" but quickly realized it must be a museum named after a guy named Bong. Which it is.

 

When my son was in the Cub Scouts we did an overnight in the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. I think that was a special "Scout weekend." The closest thing our troop has done is overnights on the Battleship New Jersey, which in a sense is a museum, but that's not exactly the same thing.

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Kevin,

Not sure what council you are in, but check out this calendar for ideas: http://www.ctrivers.org/Calendar.

New England Air Museum looks good, but I have never been.  There's also CT Science Center, Boston Museum of Science, Battleship Cove. Mystic Seaport, Mystic Aquarium, etc.

Lots of ideas at the calendar.

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Experimental Aircraft Association fly in has places to camp and more airplane stuff to see than you can imagine.  The weekend of the fly-in Oshkosh is the busiest airport in the world.  They also have a year around museum as well. 

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and an excellent museum it is.

 

They have a youth camp program too, that looks good.

 

I'm an EAA member

 

Patriots Point in Charleston has a pretty great Scout program.... sleep on an aircraft carrier along with lots of great opportunities for scouts.

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