As you may already know, I have a camping trip coming up with the boys. The local scouting council district is having a big “Cub Carnival” event. I think they’re going to have all the little, tiny Tiger Scouts, who are in first grade, straight through to the older Webelos scouts, who may be in fifth grade. They’re all invited to participate in these midway games and demonstrations of “scout skills” and I think it will be an all-around party. It takes place in the middle of October so there will be a chill in the air and I think it will be great to be outside.
Ben is going as a Boy Scout and will help set up ahead of time. He will be taking my trusty and reliable EMS 3-season, two-person tent. He and his buddy, Finn, have set it up by themselves several times now and it’s a nice straight-forward tent with no surprises, but it has a great design that limits condensation and comfortably fits two people.
My other son, Gabriel, is a Webelos scout – he’s in fourth grade. So he and I will attend the same event, but will be participants rather than “staff”. Webelos will be allowed and encouraged to camp out and sleep over. Gabriel has been camping several times before and is famous for being an excellent sleeper. I think he’ll have a great time.
Last spring we bought a four-season tent to add to our collection. The primary differences between a 3-season and a 4-season tent are:
o There are more tent poles to increase the strength of the tent. This will allow the tent to support more snow than a 3-season tent.
o Typically the roof tends to be more rounded to prevent excessive snow build-up
o There are extra tie-loops to allow the tent to be more securely tied down to additional stakes.
o The rain-fly is more substantial.
o There are fewer windows
o There is often a larger vestibule
In fact, there doesn’t wind up being a big difference, but I imagine theses small improvements make for a better winter-camping event. I haven’t been on one of those yet, but I bet I will this year.
So I got out the REI Mountain three person tent so I could practice putting it up ahead of time. I didn’t want to get to the camp-out and look like an idjit because I couldn’t figure out my own tent. And, as it turned out, I put it up wrong. I thought things didn’t look taut enough in some places and its because I set it up wrong. I can fix it today.
Also I got a great deal on a new backpack. I always wanted a good “for-real” pack and I never had one. I guess that if I had stayed in scouts my folks would probably have gotten me one, but I dropped it before that happened. REI had a good deal on an external frame pack. I let experience serve as my guide and got a very large one – its 4900 cubic inches. The idea is that SOMEHOW I wind up carrying crap for everyone else. In my house, its clear that because my kids are small I wind up carrying the things they can’t (or won’t). In any case, the one I got can also be tightened up (compressed) to pull the load in closer to the frame. I understand that the internal frame is good for scrambling over rocks and skiing and squeezing through tight places. I don’t anticipate doing any of those things. So I went with an external pack and got a good deal at REI’s close-out section.
On Saturday I went to “Introduction to Outdoor Leadership Skills” (aka IOLS) class. Well, it was really called IOLS-check because this was a class for people who had camped before. They wanted to make sure that you have all the camping skills of a first class scout and didn’t feel the need to teach a topic if the students already know it.
It went well. When I got there I needed to cram for the section on knots, but I did ok. I did great on the orienteering and first aid. I also built a fine fire and set up a camp site according to their rules. So it went well. We had a good time and proved we had the skills.
I sprinted home on Saturday afternoon in time to take Grace to soccer. She had a great time while the rest of the kids played in the woods and built a lean-to. We took care of the kids of a neighbor and that worked out well. The kids behaved well and did what they were supposed to. We spent the next day cleaning up the house and the yard. There was mowing and trimming and whatnot.
All in all, it was a good weekend with no broken bones. What more can a person reasonably ask?
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