Wednesday and Thursday

The weather cleared up, no rain for either Wednesday and Thursday, so we hung our towels up to dry for the day. The boys had a mandatory clothing change today (Thursday), as most of them still had the same clothes on since Monday. Eli won the fire building competition with a time of under 10 seconds to burn through the twine hung above the fire pit. I think he's been saving up fire starting materials since June in anticipation of the competition.

We ended up not participating in the dutch oven cooking contest, as there was much indecision over the ingredients.

We found out what Bradley looks like when he doesn't take his allergy medicine and pets a guinea pig (see pictures). A trip to the health lodge and Benedryl brought him back to normal size. The boys are looking forward to the Hollywood theme night tonight, more on this tomorrow.

On Wednesday evening, Chris and Steven left for their Wilderness Survival overnight trip, where they spend the night in the woods with the other boys in their merit badge class and the counselors with a rain poncho, knife and a bottle of water. We took pictures of what the looked like before leaving, just in case (see link above). They were back this morning in time for breakfast. I guess we didn't pay the counselors enough to leave them on the mountain. We'll have to adjust this for next week.

Tonight the troop and you, are sponsoring pizza for the camp staff. Its been the talk of the camp for this afternoon. Most of the staff is looking forward to some "off camp" food for a change of pace.

The first year scouts are enjoying capturing the many amphibians and newts that we're finding around the campsite (also see pictures above). We'll do a luggage check prior to leaving to make sure all the animals make it back to their natural environment.

Thats it for now.