Webelos weekend

We left the church parking lot at 8:30 in the morning, a little bit later than the 5:30 start on the Norwich outing! With the forecast predicting temperatures of below 0 degrees, the scouts were prepared for a bitter cold day at Nobscot. Arriving there, the scouts first took a trip up to the cabin carrying all of the troop gear. The cabin we dropped the gear at was beautiful, and new since we had been there last. It had a staircase going through it on the outside edge, spiraling up to an observation deck. 12 wooden beams surrounded the structure, each displaying one of the pieces of the Scout Law. After taking a trip with the troop gear, the boys headed back to the cars to gather up their personal; gear and packs, each also taking one log of firewood for the fire that night. After the final trip was taken from the cars, the older scouts started setting up tripods made out of metal tent poles for the turkey feast they were having for dinner. The construction of the turkey cookers started off with three metal tent poles forming a tripod. Then coals were shoveled underneath, ignited by the fire that they had already started over in the stone chimney. They then wrapped the 10-12 pound turkeys in chicken wire, afterwards hanging those bundles with chain from the tripods. If we had just cooked the turkeys like that, it would’ve taken a very, very long time to cook thoroughly, so to speed up the cooking time, the scout wrapped the tripods in tinfoil, trapping the heat inside to continue to cook the turkeys. A couple of scouts had already done this sort of turkey cooking before this camp-out, so they were the guiding hands during the procedure. While the turkey cooking was being set up, the scouts who weren’t doing anything went to a cabin with a guy from Eastern Mountain Sports. He showed them different kinds of camp stoves for winter and year-round use. After he had demonstrated them, he brought out some dried foods for eating, to show us how good food could taste that was out of a bag. After having that for a little snack, the scouts then hiked up to Tippling Rock, where they looked at the view, and slid down the sides of the rock, which were slippery, and provided a good deal of amusement. The exhausted group then hiked back down to the cabin, and had a lunch of Ramen Noodles and vegetables. Following that meal, the Webelos started to arrive at the cabin. When they did arrive, Mr. Harvell started some games with the Webelos. The first activity was trying to light matches with the end of an ax or a hand-ax. For the next activity, the scouts were divided into groups, and each group was given a can of soapy water. The goal of the game was to boil the water enough so that the soap bubbles that would be produced rose to the rim of the can. After this activity, there was one more yet to be done. The whole group went into the cabin, where there was another activity. In this game, you had to find something in that cabin that started with every letter of the alphabet, and write them down on a piece of paper. If the item was small enough, you had to put it in a plastic garbage bag. When all of the groups had finished gathering the items, the bags were brought over to a scoutmaster, and examined. The examining was important, because if you got all of the items correctly, you won a Milky Way bar! When that activity was through, the scouts just hung around, some of them going out and working on the fire outside.

After that the individual troops cooked up the side dishes for dinner, and then ate it. For dinner they had stuffing, vegetables, potatoes, and of course, the turkeys themselves. After that delicious dinner, the scouts headed over to the old stone chimney outside of the cabin, and crowded close to roast marshmallows (in other words, play with the fire). When all of the fun was over, and the Webelos left, the groups headed off to the cabins, with the big kids in the cooking cabin, and all of the others in the Pond View cabin. They then hung out for a while, with the other kids watching the football game on a scout’s portable color TV. The Next morning, the scouts packed up all of the gear, and then headed home after another great camp-out with Troop 63.

by,

John F