Boy Scout Day Camp

Last week Chase attended 3 full days of Boy Scout day camp in Genoa.  I was able to attend the first day as our den walker.  Our troop is fairly small with only 6 boys attending camp this year.  There were troops from different areas in Nevada making the total count like 250.  It was fun for them to meet so many new friends and interact with other boy scout troops.

The theme for this year was "Joust for Fun".  They were divided up into different groups with Chase put in the crusaders.   We had 11 boys in our group which was the perfect amount I think.

After opening ceremonies it was time to start our scheduled rotation.  Our first part of the day was a big section of time (like 2 plus hours).  We hopped on a bus that took us to River Fork Ranch for a conservation project.

There wasn't much direction once we got there,  we were basically told to just let them explore for almost 2 hours..get them off the trails, let them destroy things (really they said that).  You don't need much encouragement for boys to do this.  They did give us a scavenger hunt paper of sorts to help us out.  I thought this was going to be so much fun when they told us they had 200 plus kinds of birds, frogs, fish, etc. to see.  An hour into it...we saw NO wildlife...I mean not even a bug.  We just seemed to be wandering in hills of sagebrush.  The most exciting thing they found was a dead fish carcass.  Oddly enough it was still fun (although a bit long ).

Things picked up when they did give the boys an actual activity to participate in.  They had them cut down willows tied them up in bundles that they then used a pick axe to plant down in the creek bed that would then grow more when the river rose.  That was pretty cool.  After our conservation project was completed we headed back to the park to eat lunch with all the scouts.  They had hired jugglers and magicians to entertain the boys during lunch and also gave them snow cones.  The boys loved it!

After lunch we had a full day of stations to get too.  The boys built catapults and then got to try to shoot a dragon with them.  These were very cool.

They made swords, and got to design and build their own shields.  Of course there was lots of battling going on.

Our last station of the day was making solar ovens.  These were pretty cool too.  They got to make sausages and also make s'mores in these.  We ended the day with skits and closing ceremonies.  It was a jam packed day of fun.

I wish I had gotten to attend every day with the boys, it was so much fun.  Day 2 and 3 Chase got to learn jousting,  make bows and arrows, build a chess board and made chess pieces, spent time at the BB gun range where Chase hit a bulls eye in both and won a medal, along with so many other fun things.  He had the best time and earned quite a few belt loops.  He is so excited to go back next year...as am I.