Troop 1131 at Raven Knob Scout Camp 2007

Raven Knob 2007 #2

Troop 1131:

The scouts woke at 6:30 a.m.. It was a cool night and chilly morning, but Monday turned out to be a beautiful day. We made some coffee for the leaders and some hot cocoa for the boys in our campsite. The troop bought new plastic mugs for the scouts, and they are getting a workout. After breakfast, I drove into Mount Airy to get a new tire and to buy some supplies for our various campsite feasts. On Monday evening we made s'mores and had a small campfire in our campsite. The scouts taking Nature merit badge and Reptile and Amphibian merit badge went on a frog hunt around 10:00 p.m., but they did not catch any frogs. Some of the new scouts got to see the North star, and will work on finding North using the sun tomorrow.

We had some advancement already. Chris Chandler passed his First Class Board of Review, and Nick Marteney, Neil Watson and Floyd Baker are ready for their Second Class Boards of Review.

The boys seem to like most of their merit badge classes; however, I did get some complaints about Geology and Archaeology merit badges. It seems the Geology counselor is new and young, and he likes to joke around. However, some of our boys think he is not doing a very good job and is distracting so I spoke to the Nature Area director about this. I'll let you know what happens. The complaint in Archaeology was, too much talking, too little doing. However, they do have plans to search through a trash dump!

We all had a good rest last night; again the temperature was cool. Our scouts were quite chipper this morning, Tuesday. There are several special events on the schedule today. We expect around 30 scouts to participate in a lunchtime hike up the "knob," a hill overlooking camp with a rocky outcrop. We also have two leaders, Jeff Watson and George Riley, taking CPR training right after the knob hike. This evening, the troop won the lottery for a troop shotgun shoot. We will be able to take 15 bigger scouts to the shotgun range after dinner. We did not win the lottery for a troop rifle shoot this year, and Archery is not available for troop shoots as they are using the evenings to give scouts taking the merit badge for extra practice.

James Tiffany and some of the other scouts built the aluminum foil oven so we're all set for a pizza extravaganza this evening. We plan to have scouts (especially new scouts) take showers this afternoon after the knob hike, but we may have to postpone the event to after dinner depending on when we get back to camp.

I am attaching a picture of the troop that we took at check in. More tomorrow.

Philip Sternberg
Scoutmaster, T-1131