Crazy Awesome Camping weekend - I think my son's hooked!
This weekend was my 6-year old son's first camping trip with his cub scout pack. Our pack is part of the Mount Diablo / Silverado council, and they maintain a camp in the Santa Cruz mountains, which is where we went. I don't think I'd ever seen him have such a great time. Here are some of the things that we did:
Hiking: We went on a couple of short hikes to get to the farther points of the camp, where the nature trail and the ranges were. As we walked, we found the perfect hiking sticks for myself and him, which we ended up cutting to length and smoothing out.
Archery: This was my son's favorite activity. At first, he needed a little help setting up the arrow and keeping it in place as he drew it back, but being only 6, I was amazed at how quickly he got the hang of it (and that he was strong enough to do it effectively). The range also had an area with balloons and other fun things to shoot, which caused a lot of excitement. Retrieving the arrows was also an excuse to go wandering up the hill behind the range to find the arrows that were overshot.
BB Guns: Although he enjoyed this activity (and I had originally thought that this would have been his favorite), It didn't rate as high as some of the others. I think it's because the stock on the gun was a little long for him, and he had to hold it in an unnatural position to line up the sights. The action of the gun was also a bit complicated, which means that I needed to do more handholding than was necessary for Archery, for example.
Sling-shot shooting: He had a lot of fun with this, but the surgical tubing in the sling-shot tired him out a bit faster, which limited the number of shots. Also the targets weren't quite as fun as the ones in the BB gun or Archery.
Knots and Knife Skills: My son was able to earn his whittling chit by demonstrating that he understood safe whittling skills on a bar of soap with a plastic knife (of course, now he wants to know when he can get his own pocketknife). He also got to try his hand at knot tying with a very cool lenght of cord that he brought home with him.
Woodworking: He got to use a drill press, a belt sander, glue, hammer, and nails to build a CD holder. Power Tools. Need I say more?
Pumpkin Carving: My son also got to carve his pumpkin pretty much by himself (I got to do the dirty work of scraping the inside of the pumpkin because he got a little tired halfway through, but the rest was all him). He was so proud that this was the first thing he showed his mom when we got home.
Flag Ceremony Each morning and evening before meals, there was a cremony for raising the flag, or lowering it. All the scouts had to dress up in their uniform, stand at attention, and participate in it.
Faux Campfire: Because of the fire danger, we couldn't have a real campfire. However, the staff put on a pretend campfire with skits, songs, etc. Each of the scouting dens put on their own skit as well. The staff were amazing. One of the skits they put on, had me on the floor laughing. I'll try to describe it here:
- There were 3 people pretending to be blind. One of them announced that they were hunting (they each had a stick that the pretended was a rifle). They were hunting mimes (as in mimes who are silent and pretend they're in different situations using body language only). As the blind folks wander around the area, out come 3 other folks who are the mimes (and they did a great job with the big smiles on their faces and wide-open eyes). The mimes begin with standard mime routines, but eventually start using the routines to capture the hunters. One uses a pretend lasso to capture and tie up one hunter. Another creates a box around another hunter, and the third mime uses a fishing routine to catch the last hunter. This had to be one of the funniest things I'd ever seen.
Activities within the pack: Our pack (which is chartered at our local elementary school), were allowed to have charcoal campfires in our firepit, so we could have our own small campfire. The younger kids would bring me sticks that I would whittle the ends to a point for putting marshmallows on, while the older kids would do this themselves. I also used this time to work on both my son's and my hiking sticks.
Mealtimes: The staff were incredibly accomodating at mealtimes with respect to my son's diet (life-threatening allergies to milk products, beef, pork, shellfish, and nuts). Whenever possible, he ate what everybody else did (but he had his own little cafeteria line where there was no risk of cross-contamination), and I had already checked with them on the meal plan and brought what I needed to fill the gaps (such as frozen teryaki chicken, cooked noodles, luncheon turkey meat). Because of this, the allergies weren't much of an issue and he could be involved at mealtimes.
My son's question to me as we left: "Dad, I wish we could stay one more night, go home tomorrow, and then come back the next day..."
posted by Larry Grey @ 9:25 PM
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