Camp Jack Wright Campout

Scouts and Scoutmaster doing inventory - Click picture for more pics.

This was my first time to camp at Camp Jack Wright.  I had a really good time.  I don’t know that the Boy Scouts did.  I think the pavilion was a little far for their liking.  Also they had decided to take inventory on this trip so they brought everything.  I think they brought too much stuff to the pavilion instead of leaving it at the trailer and identifying it there.

We arrived at dark but because we knew we were staying in pavilions three and four we just needed to find them.  It was easy enough to find them but then the boys wanted to take the first pavilion and leave the adults with the second one that was further away.  Since the Scoutmaster had a brace on  his right ankle so he could walk that decision was quickly overruled.  You never heard so much whining and fussing in all your born days.

Now for the funny thing (at least to the leaders) that happened on this campout.  The leaders brought there stuff to the first pavilion and put it on the picnic table.  The boys brought all their stuff to the first pavilion and then carried it to the second pavilion.  It was a two stage process.  Well a little later some of the adults began looking for there stuff.  The boys had taken almost everything from the first pavilion to the second pavilion.  In the end they had taken enough adult stuff to amount to at least two trips between the pavilions.  Now that was funny.

I got to try out my new sleeping bag.  I had frozen at the Camporee so I had upgraded my bag.  I was looking forward to trying it out.  WOW!  The temperature that night was about the same as it was at the Camporee.  I actually got hot in my new bag.  It is going to be nice this winter.

The next morning the boys had a big breakfast planned with sausage and eggs and biscuits in a Dutch Oven.  By the time they got through cooking, eating and cleaning, it was lunch time.  Seriously.  I know there were several boys that learned a very valuable lesson from that experience.  Which, by the way, is what Scouting is all about.

Typically lunch is cold sandwiches but they had a big thinker in the planning process apparently as they had another hot meal planned.  I made the mistake of trying some of it when they offered it to me.  That won’t happen again.  YUCK!  So then they had to clean up all of that.  WOW!

Sometime later that evening they got started on the inventory.  It was listed on the camp plan to start after breakfast around 8:00 am.  Well they quickly went through it once.  Then I showed them how it should have been done.  Look out, here came the whiners again.  So taking what they had done they began to add to it and do it better.

They did get some free time though and came up with this crazy game that had them running all over the rock ridge along the backside of the camp.  Fortunately they only needed the first aid kit to stop the bleeding once.  Not sure what this says about the rest of the boys but we have a couple of boys that are real good at first aid.  🙂

Later on that evening they completed the game and finished knocking out the inventory.  It was time to cook something in the fire then.  Of course building a fire is always the highlight of a campout.  As they were preparing for that I slipped off and left the boys with the other two leaders.  I went and rehydrated some home made chilli for my dinner.  No way was I going to try what they were cooking.  Later on I found out it was hamburgers and hotdogs that they had cooked on a grill over the fire.  I think the hamburgers were burned on the outside and nearly raw on the inside according to the leader that tried one.  He hadn’t been there for lunch and so wasn’t as experienced in the cooking abilities of that group of Scouts as I was.  Poor guy.

I had mentioned that I was up for a night time Geocaching run if anyone wanted to so after they completed dinner a few of them and a leader came down to where I was all ready to go get a smiley face.  Boy did we have a hike.  We hiked nearly 3 and a half miles in a little over 2 and a half hours.  That doesn’t take into affect all the scrub bushes we tore through and hills we climbed and streams we jumped and rocks we climbed.  WOW! What a night hike.  We were all wore out by the time we got back.  However we all got a couple of smiley faces and that was good.

The next morning I got one of the Scout leaders to go with me and we hiked over the Camp Jack Wright side property line down into Tannehill State Park.  It wasn’t nearly as far as I had thought.  I needed to replace one of my Geocaches that had gotten stolen the weekend before during the Pack campout.  We quickly arrived at the scene and was able to replace the cache.  It was a nice walk back in the morning sun as it warmed up the forest around us.

Of course all this time the boys were hauling and loading gear.  I took the time to use my GPS to map all of the camp sites at Camp Jack Wright and take pictures of all of the interesting stuff there.  I still had to wait around for the boys to finish up.  Another lesson learned.  We got the trailer loaded and headed back to the Scout shack.

However once there the Quartermaster showed up and said all of the equipment needed to be divided among the patrols.  So out comes all of the equipment and starts going into little piles.  With more adults there this happened a lot quicker.  It was soon assigned, noted and placed in the Scout shack and everyone was on their way home.  Another successful Scouting campout.