The boys were slow getting up. Jack commented that when he went to sleep on Monday night in the tent I was still up and when he woke up on Tuesday morning I was already up and gone. I bought a backpacking stove (Jetboil) and was getting up in the morning to make coffee and read my book while the camp was still quiet.
After Morning Colors and breakfast, Jack and the rest of the pack headed to their first session which included a short nature walk.
During Evening Colors the previous night, they announced that they were going to have an adult only redwood historical trail hike. Covering three and a half miles, the hike has 18 stations that weave the story of early California logging history. It included how early loggers cut, transported and milled the large redwood trees. The trail traveled by old logging sites, an old mill site, log slides and oxen bridges. I spent most of the morning on this hike. This hike wrapped around Mt. Radin and dropped into another valley behind the main camp. I had hoped to have a GPS plot of this hike, but much of the trail was in a steep, heavily wooded canyon and I was not able to keep a GPS lock on my Garmin 205.
By the time I got back to camp, Jack et al were in a Scoutcraft session. They worked on their map and compass skills. One of the camp staff people running this activity was a girl from the Czech Republic. She spent some time teaching the boys some Czech words and games.
We decided to make our own lunch at camp. The boys built the fire and we barbecued sausages and hotdogs. I also made some baked beans and a couple of ears of corn. Last year, we did this for one of the dinner, but the schedule is so packed this year that we decided to use the food we brought for a lunch instead of a dinner. Based on the feedback that we got from the other packs about lunch, it looks like we made a good decision.
Our activity for the afternoon was the pool. With temperatures approaching 100, the water felt great. The boys spent most of the session working on their aquatics beltloop. At the end, everyone played sharks and minnows.
We headed back to the camp and the pack worked on their skit for the closing campfire for an hour. Afterwards, there was a short free time. Jack and I stopped at the trading post to get his Nature Hike Patch and then headed to the BB-gun range. The range was almost empty and Jack had a great opportunity to shoot some more.
Following Evening Colors and dinner, we all headed to the closing campfire. Each pack did two skits.
The day was not done yet. They offered a star hike after the closing campfire. I took the three older boys and we hiked up to the top of Hermit's Knob with a large group. This was not an easy hike in the dark. The stargazing was not great; we really needed to be there an hour later. By the time I got the boys back to the camp, it was almost 10:30 p.m. Jack crashed hard.
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