Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Mineral Wells campout: Saturday

COLD!!!!

Oh My God it was cold! And the wind!

I learned that night that all a tent is is a overglorified windbreaker - and at high winds some will still get in. Combined with the fact that it was 36 degrees it got cold.

Now the sleeping bag I had was rated to withstand 30 degrees. My body was okay but my exposed head froze. I ended up sleeping with my cap on. Nate on the other hand was small enough to duck all the way into the sleeping bag so he did okay.

If it sounds like I am whining its because I am. I am not an outdoor person. So giving up my soft bead with heated mattress pad and down comforter for a cold tent on hard ground in near freezing temperatures was not an fair trade by a long shot.

So when it was time to start breakfast and they realized that we did not have any flour I VERY quickly volunteered to run to Wal-Mart to pick it up. While I was there I got a fleece cap for me and a knit cap for Nate.

Breakfast was good. We had scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, milk, orange juice. One of the parents brought Pop Tarts for their kids so Nate and some of the others showed up with Pop Tarts. But even then by the time I got through the line the bacon was gone and there was only a couple of sausages left. The Webelos helped some with the cooking and alot with the cleaning.

After breakfast the scouts had a trash patrol where we walked over the whole camp area where we were staying and picked up trash. I was really proud of Nate - he voluntarily went through briar bushes several times to get trash and toward the end he was getting good at it.

After that we had games. The first game was tug of war. They broke it up by rank: Tiger (which Nate is), Wolf, Bear, Webelos one and two. It worked out as follows:

Tiger vs Wolf - Tigers won.
Tiger vs Bear - Tigers won (This was not surprising as there was only two bear scouts at the campout vs nine Tigers)
Tiger vs Webelos one - Webelos barely
Webelos one vs Webelos two - Webelos two.

After that it was Fathers vs scouts. The first was five vs five (fathers won) then it was five fathers vs ten scouts (fathers one) then it was five vs all scouts (fathers won barely after a couple of fathers jumped in and helped ).

Then there was Tank and Commander. Basically its twelve scouts - six tanks and six commanders and six or more soft nerf balls thrown out on a field. The tanks are blind folded and rely on the commander to give them directions to go to a ball, pick it up and throw it at one of the other tanks. If you are hit by a ball then you and your commander are out and the last one on the field wins. It was so funny listening to the 6-7 year olds give directions (over here, follow me, this way).

Then while the kids played the grown ups did lunch. Lunch was chicken and dumplings, Potato soup, and dutch oven cobbler. The dutch oven cobbler was awesome!

After lunch clean up we did a three mile hike. Nate did really good and would not let go of his buddy (we were using a buddy system) until the end when they had to go up a steep hill and I convinced him it would be easier if he would let go of Devon (his buddy).

After that was dinner. Dutch oven Lasagna, smores cake, and apple crumb cake. All of it was good. And even Nate enjoyed the meatless lasagna.

After that I helped with cleaning of the ironware. Now while dutch ovens are awesome to cook with they are a pain to clean as they are cast iron. Basically we cleaned it with steel wool then heated some water in the pot and dried that out with a paper towel (to get any food left behind) then we heated it again and then put a thin layer of oil on the inside, then we heated that.

After dinner the kids told stories around the campfire for a while then we all bundled up in multiple layers of clothes climbed in our tents/sleeping bags and went to sleep.

More later....

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