grinNberrett - 2008 09

It seems like just yesterday that I was a boy scout. I have fond recollections of my time spent in the Boy Scouts. I had some of the best leaders a scout could ever ask for. They probably can't say that I was the best scout that a leader could ask for. I am extremely grateful for the time and energy that these men spent on my behalf. Now it's my turn to expend the time and energy so that my scouts can look back with my same fondness. This is a daunting task that I have undertaken. There is so much to learn, so much to teach, so much to do. What have I gotten myself into?

Tonight in Scouts we made Wilderness Survival Kit. Why? Because it passes off requirement 5 of the WWilderness Survival Merit Badge.. These kits fit nicely in an empty Altoids tin. I sent out a list of the needed gear on Sunday. There was some confusion as to what some of the items were. One of the mothers kindly suggested that I should have given more details about the items and where they could be purchased. The kids came with a variety of hot spark kits and candy tins smaller then the Altoids tin. I guess it was a good thing that I forgot to include an Altoids tin on the list of items to bring. Because of this, I brought along some plastic first aid kit boxes that I had purchased at the dollar store. The only problem with these boxes is that they can't be used as a single mirror like the inside of the Altoids tin can.

Most of the kids really enjoyed the activity. Some of the boys made the following comments:

Here is a picture of the kids and their kits. Mine is the one in the Altoid tin on the table.

Literary Response #2

Lunch Date with Brielle

I asked Brielle yesterday if I could have lunch with her today; luckily she said yes. I probably should have checked the lunch menu first. The lunch choices were Country Fried Beef Product or Boiled Hamburger patties, chocolate milk, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, salad, and a whole wheat roll. I choose the beef product and Bre chose the hamburger. She barely touched her hamburger, ate a couple bites of potatoes, drank all her milk, and ate part of her roll.

I had been making her sack lunches, but just stopped. So i'm thinking that I better restart sending her with a home lunch. Otherwise, I should just kiss the lunch money goodbye.

Bre is quite the popular little girl. It was fun watching her interact with her peers. She gets along well with others and is well liked by her peers. It was a fun time. I should definitely do it more often; but with a home lunch. :)

P.S.
Make sure you get a visitors pass if you want to go the the playground after lunch. The playground patrol doesn't like long haired weirdos taking pictures of the kids.

2008 Fall Camporee

There wasn't much prep work that had to be done for the camp; The kids brought their own dinner, and the District provided the breakfast. I cook the boys dutch oven dump cake for dessert. It was a big hit with the boys. The dumb cake was simple to make. Here is the recipe.

Dump Cake
Ingredients:
* 1 18-ounce box cake mix (any flavor)
* 2 16-ounce cans of pie filling or other fruit
* 1 12-ounce can of pop
* 2 tablespoons butter

Preparation:
In a 12-quart Dutch oven, spread evenly butter on bottom.
Drain the fruit, pour it into the Dutch oven, and sprinkle the cake mix evenly over the top.
With your finger, make a swirl in the mix. Pour in a can of 7-UP.
Cover with lid. Put 8-10 charcoal briquettes on bottom, 16-18 on top.
Cook for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or to a golden brown.

Servings: 10 - 12

I used a spice cake mix with apple pie filling and a can of root beer. The boys really liked it.

I made a tarp tent and slept in it. I woke up around 4 with the tarp about a foot from my face. The grommet had torn away from the tarp. I wasn't to worried about fixing it until I saw a flash of lightning and heard the thunder. I quickly got up and pulled some rope out of my backpack. I feed it through the grommetless hole and strung it between two trees. Luckily it only took 10 minutes to fix, as a quick, but light, burst of rain happened about 5 minutes after I fixed it.

Unfortunately one of the boys tried to defy gravity. The only thing that he accomplished was a gash above his right knee. Thankfully the resulting injury wasn't anything more.

Hangover Pills

I heard a commercial for a hangover pill while driving to church today. It made me chuckle when I heard it. Apparently the company that makes the pill figures that there are a lot of people with hangovers driving to church listening to FM 102.7.

Happy Birthday Roy!

I listen to the Radio From Hell show on the way into work each morning. One of the segments that I especially like, is called things that must go. I was thinking about this when the friends, family, and employees of Chuck-A-Rama starting singing happy birthday to Roy. I decided to make the best of the situation and walked over to Roy's table and joined in the celebration. After all, they are including everyone within ear shot in the celebration.
I sure hope that my singing helped Roy have a better birthday!

What a Crappy Wrapping Job!

Well, the plans to return to the San Rafael Swell this weekend got scrapped. Johnny had to work and Reese and T-y wanted to attend the birthday party for one of their friends. Apparently bowling trumps camping; well at least today it did.

T-y and I went shopping for a present. T-y's friend is a baseball fanatic, so i thought we hit the jackpot when I found an Uno card game, MLB American League Special Edition. We also bought some Kit Kat bars and ate them in the car. The chocolate got all over T-y hands so I gave some tissue to T-y to clean his hands with.

I am not a big fan of wrapping paper. I hate buying it cause it's a waste of money. I prefer to use other types of paper to wrap gifts. Typically I use newspaper, but if it's a special occasion I will use the comics or one of the colored ads. T-y's chocolate mess gave me a great idea on how to go about wrapping the present. Check it out.

Some Crazy Party

Aanmda aedntted the bahridty praty of one of her finrdes this enivneg. I am not sure waht they did at the prtay, but she cmae hmoe lnokoig like this. Alptpreany tehy had smoe srot of maekup fhgit.

Where is the mine?

When we got back home we checked Johnny's map of where the mine was. The mine was in the direct vicinity of where we had stopped for lunch. It was a little disappointing that we were right there but couldn't find it. Johnny called the BLM to ask how hard the mine was to find. The BLM agent stated that it was located about 20 feet above the ground. This is why we couldn't find it. We were looking for the opening at the ground level. Apparently I am blind when looking for mines, but have 20/20 vision when spotting scorpions. Drat! Oh well. There are lots of places unexplored in the area, so we will definitely be returning; perhaps even this weekend.

I should have done more due diligence in checking out the area before we left. The trail is pretty visible when zooming in using the Satellite view in Google Maps. Just chalk this up to yet another learning experience. Here is the route we took to get there.
Red - The established trail.
Purple - The trail we blazed.
Orange - The established trail we took hiking out.
Green - The established trail we followed after lunch looking for the mine.

San Rafeal is Swell

Johnny invited me to go on a search for gold this weekend. He has been wanting to backpack part of the the San Rafael Swell since the beginning of summer. He wanted to hike to an abandoned mine called the "Sorrel Mule Mine" and camp there. The hike to the mine is about 3 miles downstream from Fullers Bottom and the trail crosses the river 3 times. So fish, fish he got his wish.

We setup camp and discussed the plan for the next day. We decided not to backpack into the mine. We decided instead to do a day hike to the mine. The kids liked that idea better. Johnny dug a pit for the fire. Soon after T-y started digging a hole. I wasn't sure why until he started a fire in it. Brielle wasn't going to be shown up by T-y so she built one too. T-y has built a fire all by himself before, but Brielle hadn't. She was pretty proud of her accomplishment.

Our scouting report, Baylor, stated that the road seem to go on and on and was leading away from the the river. So we decided to blaze our own trail.

The land is open range, so there were a zillion dried cow pies. I happen to kick one over and found this hiding under it.

It's a good thing that Dr. Jones recently gave us some advice about scorpions.

When it comes to scorpions, the bigger the better. Small one bites ya, don't keep it to yourself.

Thanks to this advice, we left the scorpion alone.

We blazed our own trail for about a mile and took a rest. For the more part it was easy walking. Walking across the desert landscape is pretty easy. We just had to watch out for those prickly rocks.

We crossed the river, fought through the brush and stumbled upon the trail.

We traveled another mile and stopped for lunch. The mine wasn't marked on the map I brought, so we only had a general idea where the mine was located. Johnny left the map with the mine marked on it at home. We thought we were in the right location, so Johnny went off looking around for it. The kids went off and played in the river.

Johnny didn't find the mine, so we set off down the trail hoping to find it within the next 45 minutes. The stars were not aligned for us today. We were unable to find the mine. The kids complained that they hiked all that way for nothing. I asked them if they had fun and they said yes. So we hiked for fun.

We were able to follow the trail all the way back to the the jeep road. The current was really slow, so Reese, T-y , and Baylor walked up the river. They had to eventually get out of the river, as it became deeper T-y's head. It turned out that the trail head was just off the jeep road. It was about a 1/2 mile up the road from where we decided to blaze our own trail. It took us about 3.5 hours to hike in and 2.5 hours to hike out. It was a fun trip and the kids really enjoyed walking in the river and building their own fires. It is definitely worth a return trip.

:: Posted by brb
:: Filed under /daily_journal

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