Cub Scout Family Campout

Okay, well here is my first ever blog. This is P, often referred to but rarely heard from. I would like to share our weekend adventure.

O and I went on the Cub Scout Family Campout at Camp Manatoc in Peninsula, OH. The weather was supposed to be sunny and mid- to high-50’s. We arrived early Saturday morning, around 8:45a, to find the brave campers who stayed Friday night enjoying some camp breakfast (hash browns, eggs in bag, bacon, coffee and hot chocolate). Since we had already eaten, we skipped the opportunity to feast on some fine campfire cuisine. Around 9:15a, we hooked up with O’s old den and walked over to see the “Jamboree on the Air” ham station setup at one of the pavilions. The guy talked for about 45 minutes while the kids asked great questions like “when can we talk to someone” and “if you get too close to the antenna, can you feel the radio waves?” After running out of patience for a non-alien voice to appear over the 40M band, we hiked on to the obstacle course. O scaled the climbing wall and then ran over to the balance beam. He fell off once, but then made it all the way across!

Temp 50-ish. We hiked back to camp around 11:30a for our foil pack lunch. Adult leaders were thawing hamburgers over the open fire that could be combined with some of the frozen vegetables in the pack and cooked. I was thinking about a hamburger until someone inquired as to the whereabouts of a family who had attended last year. Another adult responded that after the extreme intestinal disorder the entire family experienced last year, they were not coming this year. Needless to say, O had the frozen veggies with some butter in his foil pack and I had two pre-cooked hot dogs in mine.

Temp still 50-ish, maybe a little colder in the shade. After lunch, we met up with O’s den and completed the Map & Compass belt loop. One of the dads is a pilot and was happy to share his knowledge. After much running around, we packed our hiking gear around 2:15p to begin bearing 140⁰ SE to the rifle range. Things were a bit backlogged, so we hiked over to a quarry and the scouts ran around for another 20 minutes or so. We hiked back to the range where each scout got to shoot a Daisy pump-action, single shot BB gun. O did really well, hitting a ping-pong ball three times, a soda can once, and the paper target three times. (Takes after his championship marksman Granddad.) I think I once hit a wooden clothespin with a BB from about 15yards away back home in the Nati…

Temp is now in the 40s. After the BB range, we went back to camp, ran around and then prepared for the spaghetti dinner that was going to be served by the Girl Scouts who camped with us. They boiled mass quantities of spaghetti in zip-loc bags, made some meat sauce and garlic bread, and put together a salad (from bags, not from nature). By the time we walked from the serving table to the eating area around the campfire, dinner was cold. O choked down most of his, I ate the rest, and then tried to get a warm plate of my own. Again, cold by the time I sat down.

Temp is still in the 40s, but getting colder. After eating, the kids ran around again and then around 6pm we lined up for our tickets to the Haunted Hayride at Camp Butler. We carpooled with O’s friend Alex and his dad (who works for P’s company’s primary competitor) and got in line for the hayride. Another dad sought out a hayride worked and asked about the start time for the rides. He was told, very specifically, that the rides would begin at the exact hour of dark o’clock. Well, on this day, dark o’clock occurred around 8pm. While we waited, the scouts ran around eating donuts and spraying each other with silly string. The hayride was fun, not too scary because of the extreme age range for the kids. We left Camp Butler and headed back to Camp Manatoc in the pitch black night.

By now it was probably in the 30’s and dark. Not city dark, but country, campground, kind of scary dark. O was exhausted, as was I, and did not seem very excited about the dump cake dessert (cake mix, pie filling and 7-up). He asked to go to bed, and I agreed. We crawled into the sleeping bags and O fell asleep almost instantly. We wore thermal undies, sweatpants, socks, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and knit caps. Throughout the night, we heard coyotes, people, raccoons, and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Okay, maybe not the lions and tigers, but there was something making a nice scratching noise right outside our tent.

When we awoke, the temp had to be below 30. There was frost everywhere, but all that was cold was my little nose that had no protection. We had made it through the night, and went out to see what everyone else was doing. There was a healthy mix of campers who were prepared for the cold and those who were not. I felt bad for the people who were cold, because it was really, really cold. We packed everything up and came home around 9:30a. Around the fire in the morning, some of the Webelos dads were talking about their winter campout in January called Klondikes. Personally, I will need some serious practice to be ready for camping in January. Thankfully, I have a couple of years to prepare. All in all, it was fun to be in the wild with O and do the scouting activities.

The Top 4 Things about Family Campout
4. Gettin’ jiggy with nature – raccoons and other wildlife, inches from my head making squeaky and scratchy noises, outside the tent looking for food and such to feast on for the evening.
3. The amazing acoustical dynamics of the campsite – snoring from tents 100 yards away that could be heard everywhere around the site.
2. Authentic camp food – like hot chocolate, Entenmann’s donuts, cereal in the mini box with milk from a gallon jug, and frozen broccoli/carrots/peas. Compared to the stuff that Survivorman Les Stroud eats (ants, plant leaves, tree bark, crayfish, and other natural delicacies), I guess we did not have it too bad.
And….

1. Spending 25 quality hours with O, doing new stuff!