High Adventure

Some of you may know that I work with the Boy Scouts. The 16-18 year old group to be exact. We have camp outs almost every month that are usually just over nighters. But once a year we have a camp out that is a week long. The High Adventure. Ours occurred the week of July the 13th this year. This year it was my responsibility to plan and execute it for the 6 youth and 4 leaders involved. I started thinking about it about 9 months ago. The plan changed an evolved up to the very last minute. Here are the basics of what happened:

We camped at a beautiful little lake called Boulder Lake.



It's not a large lake, but it's beautiful and clear. There are about 6 campsites around the lake complete with picnic tables originally constructed in the 1930's as part of the Job Corps CCC project. There were two "restrooms" that looked to be about as old and mostly unusable.



But that's fine, because this camp out was about survival, and self sufficiency. So we made our own latrine. We also made our own shelters, and slept in them all week. Even with the mosquitoes made the forest hum like a florescent bulb at night. I was really proud of the boys for sticking to it!

Here are some of the shelters we made:





This was mine:



I slept in that thing for 4 nights.

The Boy Scouts have a lot of rules. Seriously, a ton. One of which is not to cut green wood. So we made our shelters out of whatever was laying around on the ground. Basically we ended up with great structures that really needed some green boughs to fill them out. That's okay, though. It was a fun experience.

Along with shelter building, we spent the week developing skills as fisherman and even spent some time learning to make snares. The lake is stocked with a fair amount of Brook Trout, and most of them were legal size. We even got a few that were 11-12" long. They weren't exactly record book fish, but they were quite tasty.





One of the other leaders (we'll call him Steve) and I would wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning (mostly because of the mosquitoes) and take one of the canoes out on the lake until the boys woke up. They usually slept until about 9:30 or 10.




(This is "Steve" in a pose I like to call "the Creepy Santa")

Now most of the time when the scouts sleep in until 10 on a camp out it bothers. It's a waste of time. Mine and theirs. But this camp out was different. This camp out was a "self serve" camp out, if you will. Most other outings involve the leaders making food for the scouts while they sleep, just in time for them to wake up to eggs and bacon. Not this time. It was a strict, "you eat what you make" camp out. There was a little bit of a learning curve, but eventually it worked out. The first day Steve and I had some pretty killer sausage, fried egg and fresh biscuit sandwiches going on. Top grade stuff!




When the first of the scouts wandered down from his shelter and saw them, his eyes lit up. "I want one!" he said. I said "Great! Go get some fire wood, build a fire and make some." He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Then he wandered around the camp for about 15 minutes, trying to piece together the mysteries of biscuit making in his head, I guess. Eventually he got a fire going and got some biscuits. Of course, we had started almost an hour before woke up, so by the time they ate, we were back in the canoes again. It was clearly an experience many of them had never had before. Considering some of them are going to be going to college within the next year, it was one they needed to have. There's no one to cook for you while you sleep once you move away from home.

That being said, we did eat like kings! Even if the boys did have to cook for themselves, they ate well. We made carne asada tacos, and taco soup and (the tour de force) Cornish game hens roasted over coals. Oh yeah. Caveman style.



This is "Steve" man handling one of the game hens.





They were DELICIOUS!

No of us had ever done anything quite like this. It seems pretty simple, and it turned out to be, but there's always the thought of food poisoning kickin' around the back of your head when you see something like this. I'm happy to report that the latrine did not receive any extra use due to the hens.

Here are some other cooking photos:





That's right! Corn on the cob and fried SPAM!

There's another lake called Little Boulder just south of Boulder lake. We took the short hike there one of the days. It's a shallow lake even smaller than Boulder lake without any established camp sites.











We also enjoyed a bit of rifle shooting and archery. No one got shot, scoped, or arrowed, so it was a total success.







(For the record, that's the real deal. No photoshop required.)

Most of the rest of the time we spent swimming, hiking and catching things.





All in all it was a great trip. I can't wait until next year.