Yes, on Saturday morning Gabriel and I went to Camp Massasssoit in Plymouth, MA. Overall the event went much better than I thought it would. As you may know I had low expectations to start with, but none of my concerns were warranted. Everything I was worried about was addressed. We got a good camp site which made a huge difference. Gabriel got to shoot bows-and-arrows until his arms ached. The downside was that it rained all weekend. The kids and the adults all handled it with far more grace than I would have expected. Sure, there was complaining, but for the most part it was in a good natured way. Like when people say “How about this heat?” - its more about a shared discomfort than actual anger or frustration.
The drive wasn’t bad - we listened to music of his choosing and the time passed quickly. We got there around 9am and immediately set up camp. We got a good location - flat and relatively close to the fire (20′ - 30′). There were picnic tables and the rest of Gabe’s Den set up around us.
We had some lunch and Gabriel did some whittling and some exploring. By noon-time we had to go to the opening ceremonies. Gabe had already completed all of his advancement requirements, so he asked if he could go to the archery range instead.
Gee, should we ignore the carefully planned itinerary (Outdoorsman, Archery. BB-guns and paddleboat)? Normally I make the kids follow every one of the rules, especially schedules. But this time I decided that Gabe should get an opportunity to have fun - a lot of it. So we tried to sneak in to Archery two hours early and succeeded! Basically, Gabe shot arrows all afternoon. He did zip over to the BB-range a couple of times, but it turns out that he’s pretty bad at that and couldn’t even hit the target. Everyone has things they are good at and things they aren’t.
But it rained all day. Well, there were a couple of hours where it stopped. But mostly it was varying degrees of drizzle with 42 degree weather. An hour or two of that isn’t so bad, but after eight or ten hours of being in it the cold and wet has a way of sapping the strength and warmth from a person. There was a cold breeze near the lake at the archery range that could really suck the heat out of a person! Gabe and I were prepared for it, but its hard to keep that cold from seeping in to your bones, you know?
At some point the adults and I decided we needed a tarp to cover our picnic tables so we could have somewhere to huddle if the rain kept up. We imagined that even if we could get a fire going, it would be miserable trying to eat a foil dinner with rain dripping off our noses. Since someone else had parked so I couldn’t extract my own vehicle I got someone else to give me a list 25 minutes away to the local home depot where I bought a nice heavy duty tarp. we strung it up over our picnic table in short order and that kept the rain away for the rest of the day. In the end the tarp didn’t actually do us any good, but in fact, just having it up lifted our spirits which had started to sag because of all the rain.
Dinner turned out great. The kids LOVED the foil dinners. The camp delivered charcoal to every campsite and the rain held off so we could cook some decent food. Additionally people had brought things from home in a potluck fashion. Chicken Skewers, pasta salad, veggie-skewers. I brought corn-on-the-cob and hamburger-bun pizzas that were going to be made in the dutch oven. The corn went over GREAT. The foil dinners were VERY popular. By then nobody seemed interested in the litle hamburger bun pizzas so I left them alone.
There was a campfire with singing and skits, which is typical and virtually mandatory at scout campouts. It got cold so Gabe wanted to head back to the warm campfire. We enjoyed its warmth and the good company for about 30 minutes before Gabe said he was tired and wanted to go to bed.
He slept like a rock. I don’t know how he slept through all the helicopters that kept buzzing the camp. There was some kind of night-training at the nearby national guard location and during the night flight after flight of helicopters flew by.
It must have been very tricky flying through the torrential downpours that came through at about midnight. It made a lot of racket on the tent, but otherwise didn’t bother us. After an hour it died down to a gentle bone-chilling drizzle again. I managed to sleep for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, but I kept waking up. It was an awful sleepless night for me. I wasn’t cold but I couldn’t get comfortable.
And it turned out that the rain got between my ground-cloth and my tent and soaked the floor of my tent. But only on my side. My mattress pad got very wet and so did some clothes that were on the floor of the tent, but everything else seemed ok.
Waking up in the cold and damp is a miserable chore. Fortunately I was motivated by a very full bladder to haul myself in to my shoes and clothes. My back… oy! No wonder the little woman doesn’t like sleeping on the ground!
While some other sat around a campfire sipping instant coffee I packed up our gear. after breakfast at 8am we loaded up and bolted for home. We picked up some proper coffee a pastry at a dunkin donuts and cruised home in silence.
You would think that after a rough night like we had that it would have been awful. But it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I hated not sleeping and being uncomfortable, but it wasn’t that bad. In the end, Gabe didn’t seem to put out by the cold weather. Everyone’s spirits stayed remarkably high and I think everyone had a good time.
Knowing how the event would turn out, would I go back and do it again? In a heartbeat. Sure. I hope its something that sticks with Gabe as fond memories.
Oh and Sunday I spent loafing and dozing on the sofa. I put away the big things and tossed some stuff in the washer and dryer. But mostly I rested. I feel much better this morning.
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