We brought the 2012-13 year for Pack 380 to a close with an awesome campout at Camp Tamarancho in Marin County. The weekend was filled with hiking, fishing, flag ceremonies, tacos, orange bomb dessert, hand-made ice cream, a B-17 motor, orienteering, map reading, waffle dogs, the Pack 380 swing, fort making, creek exploring, campfire skits and repeat-after-me songs, and wild life that included a fox, a snake, a deer, salamanders and other assorted creatures.
One of the highlights was the ice cream that the scouts made on their own with a lot of shaking and jumping. Take a small ziploc bag and fill it with half and half cream, vanilla extract, sugar and frozen berries and seal it well. Place the bag inside another larger bag and fill the larger bag with ice and rock salt (or as the box says, "ice cream salt"). Last step is to shake and shake until the mixture hardens into ice cream. As some of the scouts said, "this is the best ice cream that I've ever had and I made it myself!"
Another highlight were the waffle dogs made by our Master of the Grill, Mr. Christy. Imagine if you will a corn dog, but inside the dog is a breakfast sausage and the outside is breading from waffle mix. Now imagine making this over heat in a cast iron waffle maker as below.
These dogs were absolutely incredible!
Another big hit was the fishing at the lake that was on the campgrounds. The fish were not biting much but the scouts got plenty of time to practice their casting. On the first day, the best was could do was to catch a canoe. The second day Xander came through for us and caught a fish.
Another activity on the second day was a two to three mile hike. The highlight was tracking down the location of a B-17 9-cylinder motor that is the only remaining item from a B-17 that crashed on the site in the 1940s. The motor is located on the Redwood Trail next to a totem pole.
The orienteering featured four check-in points in total. The first point was the A-frame at one of the other camp sites. The second point was at the rifle range with the reward being water which hit the spot given the mid-day sun. At the third stop at the climbing wall were the "gummie" worms that were quite gooey again due to the mid-day heat. The final stop was the fishing hole where appropriately the reward was goldfish crackers.
The evening campfire program came together due to the leadership of our girl scout, Bonnie. In addition, several of the parents chipped in provide guidance to our scouts. The most memorable moment might have been the "tipping" of our cubmaster.
We wrapped up the final morning with a lesson on Leave No Trace. Using what they learned in the lesson, our scouts did a great job in sweeping our site to make sure that we were going to leave it in even better condition than how we found the place. Way to go scouts!
If anyone has ideas for the campout for next year, let us know!
