Fall Camporee

I took some of my scouts to the district fall camporee this weekend. I had originally registered all three of my eleven year-olds to go but, in the end, only one went. That was a little annoying. One of them had a family event that he couldn't get out of. The other didn't want to come because he "was afraid of getting cold." ?!?! hmmm..... whatever... The big annoyance was that I put this campout on a calendar I gave to the parents two months ago but they acted like they had never heard about it. Why do I bother putting together a calendar if you aren't going to pay attention to it? Fortunately we had three Webelos go otherwise I would have just cancelled it. We got there late in the evening Friday night and had to hunt around for our campsite. They assigned us to a spot that wasn't marked and had no amenities (picnic table, campfire ring) identifying it as a campsite. We finally would up just picking a flat, semi-open area and went with it. The evening went okay. We got stuff set up, had dinner, etc. While desert was going on (smores roasted over the camp stove) Hank and I put together a bear bag. I had never done a bear bag before, so this was a new experience. In the future I think I would do things a little different, but we got stuff up there.

While we were putting up the bear bag one of the Webelos, Caleb, told us that he had a spider bite on his knee that was bothering him. He had apparently been bitten the night before at home while he slept. We took him back to the light and checked him out. The injured knee was swollen to twice the size of his regular knee. Unfortunately Caleb was the only scout there without a dad so it fell to Hank and I to make the call. We decided to take him down to the hospital and that we would call his mom on the way. We started down and, once we had a signal, called Marleah to have her be the liason with the mom, Emily. She let us know that Emily would meet us in Boulder and make the assessment from there. We met Emily and she took a look at his knee. It was swollen, hot and Caleb was walking with a little limp. She decided to take him to the emergency room. We went with her in case the doctor released him to go back to camp. Caleb really wanted to go back to camp and we wanted to be able to help him with that if it was allowed. We sat around at the emergency room for a very long before being able to see a doctor. The diagnosis was that there was no real reason to know what was going on with him. There were a couple of possibilities but only time would tell. The doctor did want to start him on some penicillin and antibiotics, though. The medicine became the real problem with sending him back to camp, though. Scout leaders are not able to administer medicine to their Scouts. We would have to turn it in to the first-aid officer for the camporee and the timing was such that we didn't know if that would work out. Also Caleb had never taken the medicines before and none of us knew how he would react. That became the biggest factor. We didn't want him to be up in the mountains if he had a bad reaction so we all ultimately decided to send him home. He was very sad about the whole thing. He kept it together during the rest of the time we were at the hospital, but, once we got in our separate cars, we could see him break down and start crying. It was like he didn't want to lose it in front of Hank and me and held it in. I felt very sad for him. By the time Hank and I got back up to camp we were getting to sleep around 4:45 AM. I had originally planned to get up at 5:30. To heck with that plan!

I wound up getting up at 6:30. Boys had started stirring and I knew that we had stuff to get done if we were going to be on schedule. The last couple of campouts like this I had been on we were notoriously slow in getting the cooking, eating and cleaning done in the alloted time. As such we were always missing flag ceremonies and late for the start of activities. I didn't want that to be the case this time so I wanted us to have plenty of time to get things done. I dragged myself awake, got dressed and headed out to get the boys started on breakfast. We were actually able to get all of the breakfast stuff done and cleaned up just in time to head over to the flag ceremony. I was very pleased. Despite the long night the day was starting off well.

Our first event of the day was shooting and was the one that everybody was looking forward to. What boy doesn't like to shoot guns, right? The Webelos got to shoot BB guns while our one Scout got to shoot shotguns. He was very excited. He had never shot a shotgun before. Neither have I for that matter. They had a skeet launcher (flinger? whatever the term is) and he had five chances to hit the flying skeet. He actually nailed one of them dead on. It was a great shot and he was all smiles. That one moment would have been worth the whole trip. The next activity was rescue throws down at the waterfront and the boys did okay with that. The last event of the morning was a first-aid scenario. The boys did okay eventually but it made me realize that I need to work more first-aid scenarios into my program. I teach them all of the stuff pretty well (in my humble opinion) but scenarios really bring it together. It was made worse by the fact that all but one of the scouts was a Webelos, but it still made me think. I will definitely be working scenarios into my first-aid program in the future. After that event we should have gone back for lunch and then back out for an afternoon of activities, but we wound up leaving instead. One of the Webelos was going to leave after lunch anyways and when we discussed it I found out the two of the other dads had to work this evening. Also factoring into it was the fact that Hank and I were dead tired. So, in the end, we decided to skip lunch and just pack up and leave. The boys were sad to leave, but that was a good thing because it meant that they were having a good time. I had been given negative advice about these camporees before but decided to try one out anyways. I'm very glad that I did because it was a great event and the boys had lots of fun. I will definitely be going back to the next one.