It was required that everyone get a physical and then bring it to the scoutmaster. I had my physical two days before we were going to leave. I got a tetanus shot, which commonly triggers a fever, and that it did. I was supposed to go to an A's game with my friend, but I couldn't do that because of my fever. The next day we decided that I could not go up with the rest of the troop and that I would have to leave a day late. We were going to leave on a Saturday as a troop because Mormons don't like to travel on Sundays. So my mom drove me up on Sunday morning, and got there at the same time all of the other troops got there. I got there right after their mini church session and headed back to the campsite. I figured out I must have not missed anything, because our troop was the only troop there for one day, but I was wrong. In one day they had already caught two fish, three snakes, and killed a rat.
Hanging out by the campfire
Since our troop is five different churches jointed together, we had the biggest troop, so we had the biggest campsite. I was right on the lake, which was a good thing. Our campsite had three different areas in the corners with about 4- 6 tents in each area. In the middle was the main campfire area. The tents had wooden floors and three frames that were shaped like home plate on a baseball diamond positioned upright. There was a big Green canvas that fit over the frames perfectly. The beds were old and squeaky and there was a mattress on it that was just a rectangle with rock hard cotton inside. Sunday was another day with nothing to do, because nothing actually started until the next day, Monday. On Sunday, all of the scouts took the BSA swim test, to make sure you could go to the waterfront. If you passed the swim test, you got a buddy tag with your name on it and put it on the wall with all of the others. For the rest of the day, I went tadpole fishing with my friend, and played lots of football on the beach. When I was going into my tent to change my shoes, I found a snake in my tent and told the kid who had caught all of the others to come get it. They said it was Lafawnduh, who they had been missing all afternoon. At dinnertime, everyone put on their uniforms, and headed over to the dining hall. The servers gave us this tiny little 2x2 inch square of lasagna and a spoonful of green beans. All of the food was terrible. The lasagna was way overcooked and the beans were still frozen! After dinner, all of the troops went to retire the main flag. Soon after the flag was retired, the staff put on a welcome campfire at a place at the camp called Eagle Point.
Our troop eating breakfast in the diner
A closing flag ceremony
Monday- Wake up 7:30, Eat breakfast, go to opening ceremonies, go to classes, about two months before camp, everyone was allowed to choose the class they wanted to do. There was a choice of 36 merit badges and they were all outdoors.
Start classes: 1st period - Environmental Science
2nd period - Citizenship in the World
3rd period - Fishing
4th period - Canoeing
5th period - Pottery
Each class was a different merit badge and each period was about 40 minutes long. Eat lunch after 4th period, break until 2:00. After classes, the entire Camp Chawanakee had free time from 3- 5 where you could go to either the waterfront and canoe, sail, row, or swim, or hang out at your campsite. There was also an optional merit badge that you could complete in two of your week's free times. The options were Monday and Tuesday, or Wednesday and Thursday. I chose to do the Monday and Tuesday class for Carpentry. After free time, you had to stay at your campsite until 6:30. We had Dinner at 6:30 and then closing flag ceremonies. We then had campsite free time until it was lights out at 10:00. In that time we caught another snake and named it Kip and it was a little smaller than Lawfawnduh.
This should give you and idea of how many kids there really were
The view from our campsite
All the guys from our area playing poker
Tuesday- playing lots of card games we made up like poopsquish (which was probably the favorite), completing one of my six merit badges, going canoeing, swimming, and building lots of fires.
Wednesday- all the same except one of the kids in our troop invited two staff to come have donuts with us right before bed, which was fun. I caught a mouse and then fed it to the snake which was awesome because the mouse was three times the size of the snake's head. The next morning was the polar bear swim, and my friend and I who were in the same tent both wanted to do it.The polar bear swim is that you wake up at 5:00 AM and you go down to the water front and swim for a while in the water. The only problem was that our scout leader was the only only person with and alarm on his phone, and he didn't want to get out of his tent to wake us up at 5 AM. So we were thinking of ways how it could work, and I thought of an idea. We tie a rope to either mine or my friend's wrist going all the way across the campsite about 75 feet, to the leaders tent, so he could just tug on the rope to wake us up when the alarm went off instead of getting out of bed. He thought it was a good idea so my friend and I tied together 12 ropes to stretch across the campsite.
Thursday- The alarm system worked, did polar bear swim, got award for that. Completed three other merit badges. It was also the night of the Canoe Outpost which only a few lucky troops get to go on and we were one of them. The Canoe Outpost is you paddle across the lake and sleep with no tents under the stars. So right after dinner, we packed up our things in trash bags so they didn't get wet, and we canoed across Shaver Lake to the other side. Everyone got their sleeping bags set up in an old volleyball court we found and thought would be a good place to sleep. We got a fire started, but we made sure we didn't use the laxative wood which I heard they did last year. We had smores and told stories and jokes. After Everyone was done with their stories, our leader made an announcement saying he was at a meeting today and they somehow got off topic to reasons they will maybe shot down the camp for next year and years to come. Our scoutmaster said " Last year, at a lake about a half mile from here called Huntington Lake, there was two best friends, Wilson Stanford, and Jeremy Wells, that got into an argument, and decided they did not want to sleep in the same tent together. They split up in their sleeping bags on different sides of the campsite and went to sleep. The next morning the entire campsite woke up to screaming Wilson Stanford. Everyone ran over to Wilson except for Jeremy and found both of his arms were truncated and cut off. Then they heard another scream on the other side of the campsite and there was Jeremy, in the same situation, truncated , no arms. Underneath Jeremy's sleeping bag was written on a piece of paper:
See you at Shaver next year.
-Leo"
Then he said, well its time for bed, so can two people put out this fire, and sleep tight! Everyone screamed and got into their sleeping bags and made sure their arms were IN the sleeping bag! We prayed, and sang songs. It went from telling jokes and poop stories to singing hymns like the Tabernacle Choir. Before the story, everyone had wiggle room and about two people per ground cover, after the story, there were about five or six people per cover. Everyone eventually fell asleep, and on Friday morning, our scoutmaster told us the entire thing was a joke! Everyone was so relieved and started laughing but deep down everyone knew they were a little annoyed. Somehow, he managed to not laugh which I thought was crazy. I would have so cracked up when we started singing hymns!
canoeing to the Canoe Outpost
Friday packed up our things and canoed back to the main camp just in time for breakfast. Finished all merit badges, had a closing campfire at Eagle Point. And drove home, arriving at 1:00 AM with everyone in the car asleep.
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