Sunday morning dawned bright, early and cold. I guess 49 isn't cold if you're from up North but for this Florida girl 49 is COLD! We seemed to be the first ones awake and my wonderful husband slipped out of the sleeping bag and fired up our camp stove to make coffee for me, while I stayed snuggled under the warm covers. Once the coffee was ready I put on lots of layers of clothes and sat down to drink my coffee. No one else had come out of their tents yet and we sat there watching the sun rise over the pine trees. After a few minutes we see a man walk into the clearing carrying 2 Starbucks coffee cups towards his tent. He saw us and then sheepishly said "I couldn't stand it and had to drive into town for lattes" I looked at the Island King and said "Wow, he went and got lattes for his wife" The Island King said "Hey, I don't do lattes but I did get up and make your coffee while you stayed warm in the sleeping bag" LOL He's right and he knew I was just teasing him. Frankly, there is nothing better than coffee made over a camp stove at sunrise in the woods.
Slowly people started emerging from their tents. We'd found out the day before that most of these people have never been camping before (RVs parked on a concrete slab next to a clubhouse in a giant RV park does not count LOL)and as we sat there we watched one man try to get the fire going to warm everyone up. The man took a big log and put it in the fire circle and then tried to light it with a match. When that didn't work he started gathering leaves and tried lighting them. The Island King put down his coffee and said "I need to go help or they'll never have fire" He grabbed a piece of lighter knot that had been laying next to our tent and walked over to the fire. By now several men were frantically trying to light leaves and the Island King showed them the wood he had and explained what it was. He moved the big log (you can't start a fire with a big log) put the lighter in, added some much smaller logs, lit a stick, stuck it under the lighter knot and within seconds they had a roaring fire. He added some bigger logs and immediately we had a big warm fire. It was so funny watching the other men watch him and I was really proud of my husband - the Fire God LOL
By now everyone was awake and standing by the fire trying to get warm. Breakfast was cooking and the main topic of conversation seemed to be about those train whistles. I guess I wasn't the only one who kept getting blown out of their sleeping bag when that whistle went off.
We had a big eggs, sausage and biscuit breakfast and right before we ate, our pack leader went to say the blessing. As he said "Let's pray" every person there yelled "Woo-Hoo" He grinned real big and thanked the woman from Brazil for starting what he considered to be the best pack tradition of all.
After breakfast we were off to the archery range. The boys were really excited about shooting arrows and earning their archery belt loop.
There was a safety lesson from the archery instructor
And then it was time to shoot the arrows
The boys enjoyed shooting the arrows but bow and arrows require a lot of practise and they didn't do so well. They had fun but both of them agreed that they like shooting the BB guns better.
Next we hiked over to a big pavillion and did a little leather stamping. We were each given a round leather disk and there were all kinds of leather stamping tools to stamp onto the disks. The boys had a blast because very seldom are they allowed to take a mallot and beat the mess out of an arts and crafts project LOL
All of us enjoyed this project and I'm going to try and find some stamping disks to make more stuff here at home
We hiked around the reservation a little more and then it was time to pack up camp and head for home. The boys were whooped and so were we. When you come into the reservation you have to park your car at a main parking lot by the gate and then you hike everywhere you go so we did a LOT of hiking. Fortunately you can drive to your campsite and unload but once you're unloaded you take the car back to the main parking lot and everywhere you go is on foot. I think we must have walked 100 miles while we were there.
We had so much fun and I can't wait until the next Fam Camp. Those boy scouts really know how to have fun!Labels: Done
