Wednesday
International Flag Ceremony - This week at camp, we have been fortunate to have a troop from
Paul Bunyan Lives! The scouts cooked a Dutch oven corn bread with M&M’s and marshmallows (interesting…), used a 2 man cross cut saw, moved a humungous log with a block and pulley, split wood, and made steaks and pounded them in the ground. Whew! Try to get to them to do that at home.
The Omache Triathlon—our own
Sharpshooters all! The troop tried their hand at rifle and archery during troop time. Half doing rifle and half doing archery. We had a few Dime Club and archery sharpshooters added to the camp list.
Dutch oven Dessert-o-rama! On Wednesday, the troop cooked our lunch and dinner in the campsite. After our wonderful meal of hamburgers, chips, watermelon and a vegetable Dutch oven concoction, the Scoutmasters along with their assistant scout took on rustling up some dessert. 9 amazing Dutch oven desserts were enjoyed by the troop and most of the camp staff who appeared magically once they were ready to eat.
Thursday
Canoe Swamp II – the boys liked it so much the first time they signed up for it again! We had about 10 boats out there vying to be the last one standing. Nobody went unscathed or dry! The two Geezer boats are licking their many bruised wounds but everyone had a great time in the water.
Fireman Chit - as a troop we worked on fire safety and fire-building techniques, earning a card to prove their knowledge.
There are lots of budding pyromaniacs in the group. Some of the older boys who already had this went to the shotgun range to take out some clay pigeons. Nearly all of them were able to hit at least one!
As a troop we went to the rifle range (most of us) and the archery range (some who did not want to shoot rifles). We have some amazingly accurate shooters in our troop!
But the real highlight of that troop time was the fact that the Japanese troop was also at the archery range with some of us and it ended up being an amazing time of international scouting diplomacy! Pictures a-plenty, exchanging of scarves, and whatever else they could find. It was a very special time and it was truly a privilege to watch the interaction. More on this later…
Scout-led campfire Thursday night. Troop 570 was well-represented in the lineup with a few skits and songs that received great reviews. The Japanese troop also performed a festival dance with color kimonos on, to the delight of us all!
Friday
This morning right before flags, Japanese Troop 3 presented Troop 570 with a ceremonial scouting kimono, signed by their entire troop and presented by their scout leader. A very special moment for us all. We have made some new friends this week and they wished to show their appreciation for that.
Wrapping up the merit badges classes in the morning heading into the last afternoon of “challenges”, Charlie’s Challenge to be specific. About 90 minutes of patrols going around the assembly area taking on small challenges laid out by the staff. Patrol flag, patrol yell, patrol spirit and patrol unity on display!
Tonight we will have the closing campfire and start turning our thoughts and preparations for heading home on Saturday morning. It has been an honor and privilege to be with your sons this week. Troop 570 represented themselves with distinction this week and made and impression upon the staff.
Your Troop 570 Geezer Blogging Crew
(More pictures up on the troop web site!)
Men at Work! For our camp service project, the Scouts and Scoutmasters of Troop 570 man handled tree rounds, moved chips, covered the trail, and sawed some downed trees on the trail. Big kudos to the younger scouts of the troop, who carried tree rounds either half or all of their weight!
Predator versus Prey—The troop played a round of predator versus prey with one predator and everyone else prey. Sounds lopsided, but that predator had a lot of power. In the end, the prey won out by attacking all at once.
Canoe Swamp—troop time also brought the infamous Canoe Swamp where the boys get in canoes without paddles and try to sink each other in boats. The Geezers made a good showing, but had trouble getting off the dock area. The canoes, it seems only hold 650 pounds. They sank immediately. But, never fear, they recovered in time to go on the attack. Many great strategies were used, however, in the end, all were sunk.
Capture the Flag—the most participants in the smallest field ever played a rousing game of Capture the Flag. Our troop of 50 played against a troop of 33. Much posturing, little advantage. They played to a stalemate after an hour. But as one young scout said, “That was so much fun!”
More pictures at:
https://app.doubleknot.com/openrosters/ViewPhotoAlbum.asp?PhotoAlbumKey=8075&orgkey=213
Your Troop 570 Geezer Blogging Crew
Greetings All! Your Troop 570 scouts and adults are adjusting to camp life up at
Camp food represents and eclectic variety of food groups (:^) but everyone seems to be getting enough to eat. Especially when the Troop 570 bank open up for withdrawals and they head off to the Trading Post to help supplement their food(?) intake.
One of our troop time activities on Monday had half of the boys working on the low COPE course for some group challenges and the other half completed either the Art or Fingerprinting merit badge! Even some of the Geezers had the opportunity to take on the challenges of the High Cope, and came away completely intact with very little therapy needed. At the end of all that a camp-wide drill took place as part of the Emergency Preparedness merit badge, which several of our boys are taking. SPL Kevin Schindler had our troop all lined up but was missing one scout – until he found himself (:^).
We started three in-camp merit badges last night for those that wanted take on some more! At 8:45pm until around 10:00pm, three scoutmasters counseled three separate sessions on Camping, Pioneering and Music merit badges to about 20 of our young go-getters!
More tomorrow…some pictures at:
https://app.doubleknot.com/openrosters/ViewPhotoAlbum.asp?PhotoAlbumKey=8075&orgkey=213
Your Pigott Geezer reporting crew
Greetings Troop 570 family and friends! The first day was a whirlwind of activity as we got much of our logistics for the week sorted out and got our camp site setup. Seeing AJ Calder, Elliott Heaton and Clayton Dietz on staff was fun and the boys got a big kick out of it. The weather cleared up nicely and was quite warm and sunny but late afternoon. Swim checks went fine and the water was actually “warm”, relative to the cloudy day that it was to start. The evening campfire was put on by the staff and brought out some old favorites (with some new twists and creativity) and some other new material. We will see if the creative juices will flow from that exposure on some of our future outings that require skits and songs (:^)
Half of the camp arrived this morning (LDS units) so we were actually HALF of the total camp for Sunday! It looks like all of our boys got signed up for the classes they wanted and were off to the races this morning working on Scout Skills requirements, merit badges and such. Acting SPL Kevin Schindler is doing a great job!
We will report more tomorrow, along with some pictures too!
Your Troop 570 Geezer crew.
Greetings Troop 570!
Your scouts and adult leaders are attending Summer Camp at Camp Pigott north of Monroe for August 2011. While we are there, we will be sending updates back to you on this blog to give you a little bit of a flavor of what we have going on and the adventures we are having (and the lack of sleep we are getting!)
Enjoy! And feel free to comment. I will make sure to share them with our adult leaders each night.
Wish us luck!
The fun continues, although I think that everyone will be happy to be home soon. It will be a quiet ride on the bus home (we hope).
- Wilderness Survival: The guys who took the Wilderness Survival Merit Badge fulfilled the requirement to survive a night alone in the wilderness with minimal provisions – no sleeping bag, no tent! They built their shelters with what they could scavenge from the woods. The best news of all is that they all came back early this morning, although they are looking a bit bleary-eyed. Although, it’s definitely a possibility that it could be just the bleary-eyed adult perspective.
- Rescue on
Lake Coeur d’Alene : The pair of Nathan Lee and Casey Rae decided to take the old-fashioned approach to waterskiing – by paddling the motor boat that ran out of gas. Their dads were along for the adventure, and tried to call every adult in camp – but we didn’t answer, lol. They waved to Mr. Lum, but he didn’t hear them yelling that the boat was dead. Mrs. Klabo to the rescue – she notified Bubbles, one of the waterfront staff members. After they rowed 90% of the way back to camp, the lifeguards came out to tow them the rest of the way. All’s well that ends well – they weren’t even late for dinner!
- Scoutmaster Dinner: The adult leaders were treated to a wonderful BBQ Rib dinner with Baked Potato and Corn-on-the-cob. To top it all off, we were serenaded by one of the staff members who is amazingly talented on the violin! It was a nice touch.
- Flaming marshmallows on a stick: We got a chance to get all of the guys together in one of our campsites for a relaxed evening of s’mores and male bonding. We sugared them up before they fell, exhausted, into their beds. In fact, there was more than one scout who fell asleep on the bench! ;-)
- Fishing derby: A few of the guys participated in the Fishing Derby. Good time was had by all. Sports fishermen – Coleman Holdridge, Nolan Morgan and Danny Wang have all either caught lots of fish, or, in Danny’s case, a 10” Bass!
- Art Show: Everyone who took the Art and Sculpture Merit Badges displayed their work at the Art Show. There was a secret ballot vote for Best-in-Show, but we’ve not yet learned the results. Ask your scout!
- Underwater Basketweaving: Remember from the old days when we used to joke about it? Well, at
Camp Easton , they really teach it! The last day of Basketry was held at the waterfront, and scouts (and one of our adult leaders) completed their last basket underwater, snorkel and all.
- SCUBA: Two of our scouts have participated in one of the newest Merit Badges. Elliot Macpherson and AJ Calder have had a great time, spending hours underwater.
This is our last blog entry for this year, so here’s what is upcoming:
- Banana relay We anticipate there are going to be amazingly funny stories from this – we heard it includes the adult leaders having to eat the bananas and a Scoutmaster Belly flop contest.
- Closing campfire: Since we are in the last session at
Camp Easton , it’s their FINAL campfire. Miscellaneous awards will be distributed – ask your Scout for details! - Bus ride home: you’ll get a call from your scout as we get closer to home. We are anticipating arriving at JHS around 5 or 6 pm tomorrow.
Be sure to attend our next Court of Honor where all of your Scouts will receive their Merit Badges and other awards.
Signing off,
Your Troop 570 Camp Easton Blogging team
Wednesday was busy!
- Indian lore sleepover: Twelve scouts went to the Scoutcraft area to sleep under the stars or in the TeePee. They came back with painted faces (obviously proud of the paint because they refuse to wash it off!) They had played an Indian Sign Language game, along with other fun activities.
- Astronomy observation: The clear skies here gave our scouts a great opportunity to look at the stars late at night.
- Order of the Arrow Recognition Day: All OA members were encouraged to wear their sashes all day. They presented a ceremony and explained the different levels of membership.
- Friendship: We were invited to a Friendship Campfire by another Troop. Plenty of skits, songs and laughter, and a birthday celebration.
- Celebrations: Birthday Boy, Casey Rae, was sufficiently
embarrassedhonored at our Friendship Campfire. Scoutmaster Rae took off his Scoutmaster hat and celebrated with his son. The Screaming Trees patrol assisted. - Fishing: WOW! An amazing number of fish have been caught.
- Scoutmaster shoot: Only egos were damaged (or fed). No actual Scoutmasters were harmed at the event. Appropriate prizes were awarded. Ask Mr. Rae about Killer Flipper. ;-)
- Sailing: Several of our guys have gotten essentially private sailing lessons as they worked on their Small Boat Sailing Merit Badge.
- Trading Post: The Trading Post has been doing a brisk business in Mountain Dew and other treats. In fact, the Trading Post is nearly empty! It’s the last week of camp, so there have been some price drops on some popular items (but NOT Mountain Dew.)
- Service: “Have drill, will travel”, says Mr. Rae as he cheerfully repaired the KYBO sign in their
Clearwater campsite. - Friendship 2: Male bonding is the order of the day – 5 of the older boys crowded into one tent to sleep Wednesday night. We don’t know how they all managed to fit in the tent!
Your increasingly tired Troop 570 adult crew…(but enjoying it!)
We are loading up pictures on the http://www.troop570.org/ website to give you and idea of what is going on here and what the camp looks like. Check them out at this link:
https://app.doubleknot.com/openrosters/ViewPhotoAlbum.asp?PhotoAlbumKey=7476&orgkey=213
New pictures added each day as we have time! Enjoy!
Wow, the days are packed here at
- First Class scouts and above had the opportunity to participate in an optional outpost overnight outing to
Mica Bay . Twenty two Scouts and three brave adults hopped in kayaks and the camp’s massive War Canoes. Gourmet food (canned stew) was consumed at alarming rate after the 5 mile paddle. They returned early this morning (4 a.m. wakeup for 5 a.m. departure came VERY early) to see the impressive job the younger scouts did at the camp-wide flag ceremony. In fact, they returned early enough to participate in the Polar Bear Swim, if they so desired. - The remaining scouts and six brave adults stayed at
Camp Easton to participate in the camp-wide Instructional night with additional work in CPR, Archery, Rifle and Shotgun, as well as earning their Fireman’s Chit and Totin’ Chit. Then the group went back to the campsite to have a great campfire with lots of singing and laughter, as well as practice for the flag ceremony, thought of the day and daily prayer. They represented T570 very well.
Your Camp Easton Adult Crew
Greetings from
Troop 570 has been very busy. You probably guessed that since we haven’t actually posted until now!
Here are a few highlights – although this entry will be a bit longer than normal, since we have a couple days of catching up to do and have had some technical difficulties!
- Bus ride: uneventful, air conditioned comfort with movies
- Waterskiing/wakeboarding: older scouts excited to try this out
- Fishing: fish are actually being caught!!!!
- Food: it’s gourmet and lots of it
- Camp-wide flag ceremony: as usual, Troop 570 made us all proud
- Polar bear swim: more than a dozen scouts and adults looking to become Polar Bears by jumping in the lake at 6:15 every morning!
- Camp-wide Patrol Games: ask your son about the Shoe game
- Chainsaw art: The Shotgun Instructor is making benches and picnic tables as we watch!
- Weather: NO RAIN, and not as hot as it could be
- Waterfront: water temperature is warm-ish (better than Parsons), sailors, swimmer
- Opening Campfire:
Camp Easton Staff put on a very entertaining program Monday night - Native American
Camp Ceremony : First-timeEaston attendees had the opportunity to participate in a torchlight ceremony. Ask your scout for details.
Signing off for now,
Your Troop 570 Blogging Crew
Welcome to the new Troop 570 Summer Camp blog! In here, we will be posting information about our Camp Easton adventures during the week so that our readers can keep up with what we have going on at camp. With almost 80 of us going to camp, I would think we would have plenty of interesting things to keep you informed on!