Webelos Campout

I (Sweetie) recently went camping with Hobbes' Webelos den. In fact, both Calvin and I went along on the campout, as Mr. LITH was away on business.

We headed out shortly after school on Friday, intending to meet the rest of the Scouts and associated adults at the turn off for Black Jack Campground. Now there have been communication glitches with Scouts a number of times in the past, including times that we have made trips to Avalon (2.5 hours round trip) for meetings that had been cancelled, postponed, or moved. I had confirmation from Hobbes's den leader (let's call her Jefe Webelo) that they intended to leave Avalon at 4:15 PM, which would put them at the turn off around 4:45 PM... We arrived around 4:35, and proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. At 5 PM, I called Jefe Webelos and got no answer. By 5:05, I was beginning to construct elaborate scenarios by which we had been forgotten, or plans had changed and we weren't notified. I tried, with limited success, not to relay my frustration to the boys. At about 5:25, the van carrying the Webelos from Avalon arrived and we took our place in the caravan bound for Black Jack.

The theme of the weekend was to work on their Handyman badge and their Outdoorsman badge. So the Scouts set up their tent -- a huge affair that was large enough to house all the Webelos -- and proceed to build camp stools. The camp stools consist of a frame and a weaved top. The weaving at first went fine, with boys doing most of the work. As the frame filled in, however, the work got more and more difficult to do... and the parents began to pick up the slack. By the end of the evening, there were mostly parents standing around the table, doing the work!

We had dinner (hotdogs, of course) and after KP duty, the boys began running around in the dark like crazy people. Besides Jefe Webelos, all the other adults present were men, and naturally, they built a huge fire in the fire pit. It was a monster -- one of those fires where the side you have toward the fire is roasting and your opposite side is chilly. In fact, one of the guys had the entire bed of his pickup truck full of wood. And I think we burned most of it. We eventually had s'mores, which were hard to make properly with our forest fire raging...

The Webelos were showing no signs of slowing down when Calvin said to me, "Mom, I'm tired. Can we go to bed?" So he and I went to bed in our tent -- Hobbes was sleeping in a huge tent with the rest of the Scouts.
The night was quite cold, and I worried a great deal about Hobbes as his sleeping bag is pretty wimpy. I managed to convince him to put on lots of clothes: sweatpants, top, stocking cap, and socks. This is amazing -- Hobbes does not like to wear that many clothes, ever.

In the morning, we got up very soon after the sun peeked over the horizon. We had breakfast, ziploc omelets, which was awesome. You make them by putting beaten eggs or eggbeaters into a ziploc bag, then add whatever else you'd like (cheese, mushroom, onion, etc.). You squeeze out all of the air and seal the bag, then drop it into a pot of boiling water... in about 10 minutes: omelets in a ziploc! Everyone got to make their own and drop them in the pot, which they liked very much.

After breakfast KP, the boys and adults set to work on Cubmobiles. What are Cubmobiles? They are gravity-powered go-carts and making them satisfied the wood-working requirement for the Handyman badge. The boys got to use power tools, which is always popular with the Y-chromosome set.

Again, the project went on a bit longer than the boys' attention spans, so adults ended up finishing most of the project. But everyone, and I mean everyone, was in line to ride the Cubmobiles when they were finished. Hobbes' first trip down the hill, which was a bit rough, ended in a crash, which resulted in much muttering and stomping. Subsequent trips were more successful, so the Cubmobile experience ended on a happy note. Calvin and I took a trip in tandem, which was fun (although we almost crashed too) and then I took a trip solo. I like Cubmobiles!

After lunch, everyone packed up and drove home. A successful camping trip to Black Jack! And Daniel didn't even (permanently) lose his knife!