Roughing it
First of all, thanks to you that have showed me your support from my last post. It is greatly appreciated.
So this weekend was a big Boy Scout camping weekend. We planned to go to the Herkimer Diamond Mine for the annual Scout Jamboree. The scouts spend a day mining and learning everything they need to get their Geology merit badge. We'd gone there last year with Grasshopper's cub scout den and he'd put together this big powerpoint presentation to get the troop to go. So the boys voted and decided to make the trip. All told, we were part of over 1000 scouts from 7 states to partcipate this weekend. It was crazy!
So how was the weather, you ask? Well, it was raining on the drive out Friday night. We left at about 5:30 pm so by the time we got there (about a 2.5 hour drive) it was dark. When we got there, the rain let up just long enough so we could set up tents and our rain flys for cooking by the light of our vehicle headlights and then tuck in for the night at about 10 pm. Sometime over night it began to rain again as we woke up to rain.
And the rain didn't stop. Not through breakfast. Not through lunch. We made the mistake of putting one tent in a low area and the rain flys nearby. Below, you can see the result:
The green tent on the left was about 6 feet to the right at the beginning of the morning. And we'd already moved 2 rain flys, both of which would have had feet in the middle of that lake.
So this weekend was a big Boy Scout camping weekend. We planned to go to the Herkimer Diamond Mine for the annual Scout Jamboree. The scouts spend a day mining and learning everything they need to get their Geology merit badge. We'd gone there last year with Grasshopper's cub scout den and he'd put together this big powerpoint presentation to get the troop to go. So the boys voted and decided to make the trip. All told, we were part of over 1000 scouts from 7 states to partcipate this weekend. It was crazy!
So how was the weather, you ask? Well, it was raining on the drive out Friday night. We left at about 5:30 pm so by the time we got there (about a 2.5 hour drive) it was dark. When we got there, the rain let up just long enough so we could set up tents and our rain flys for cooking by the light of our vehicle headlights and then tuck in for the night at about 10 pm. Sometime over night it began to rain again as we woke up to rain.
And the rain didn't stop. Not through breakfast. Not through lunch. We made the mistake of putting one tent in a low area and the rain flys nearby. Below, you can see the result:
The green tent on the left was about 6 feet to the right at the beginning of the morning. And we'd already moved 2 rain flys, both of which would have had feet in the middle of that lake.
We were seriously miserable by that point. However, fortune smiled on us by about 4 pm, the rain stopped. And basically didn't return. The skies didn't clear until overnight, but we were able to get a campfire going and spent about 3 or 4 hours after dinner sitting in front of it, drying out.
So overall, we actually had a good time. All the boys got their merit badges, we didn't get totally soaked, and we had some good chow. (As a side note, one of the dad's, on the insistance of the scouts, brought Korean marinated venison that was some of the best meat I've ever eaten!). I'm looking forward to sleeping in my bed tonight but the weekend wasn't so bad after all.
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