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Health & Fitness

Troop 135 February Orienteering Campout

Troop 135 goes to Tarrywile Park for February 2012 Campout.

I arrive at Prince of Peace church at 4:45 p.m. I help Ryan with some of the water jugs and bring them down to Mr. Pflomms' truck. Naturally, while carrying them water spills out and both Ryan and I get wet. Michael Klauck, who is the new Senior Patrol Leader calls line up and then checks to make sure everyone is there. We all pile into the cars we are riding in and I end up in Mr. Petersons' car with Tim, Michael, Andrew and both Peters.

The ride to Tarrywile Park in Danbury was not that far, but within the last 10 minutes of the ride it starts to rain. We all get our rain jackets out and start setting up the gear in the middle of the field. By the time all the patrol gear and all of the tents are set up most of us are soaked to the bone. I am tenting with Ryan and Jake, we get in our tents and take turns setting up our sleeping bags and pads. Soon we are all set up and Jake takes out some trail mix for us to eat and to bet with while playing various types of card games. All of us are wiped out by 10:15 p.m. and end up falling asleep really fast.

I wake up at 1:30 a.m. and realize that the rain fly is flapping like crazy outside. I can't fall asleep until 2:15 a.m. I am woken up again at 3:30 a.m. to the tent being hit by huge gusts of wind stronger than 40 mph. This time I fall asleep a lot quicker. I wake up for the last and final time at 4:30 a.m. and within a minute half of the tent collapses. I quickly wake up Ryan and Jake just because I felt it was necessary. I get out and fix the tent and quickly get back inside. All of us stay awake because we realize that the tent could collapse at any time again.  

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The tent collapses one more time and I have to get out and fix it. At this point the leaders come by and tell us to start packing up our stuff because we are moving the tents down to the edge of the field. The three of us are soon packed up and getting out of the tent so that we can take it down. Once we take down the tent we move to the bottom of the hill and set it up again. Then we go back and get our gear that we left at the top of the hill. The leaders then tell us to get the patrol gear and move that down to. Moving the patrol gear takes longer but isn't that hard.

Once the patrol gear is down we have nothing to do so we start cooking our breakfast of egg and cheese on a bagel. Brandon came and taught Devon, the new kid, how to clean up the dishes.

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We have a few hours of spare time that we can go sledding and relax. Most of us go sledding, which was a blast. I crashed at one point and my hand started bleeding because it hit the ice at full speed.

At 10 a.m. the whole troop goes for a three to four mile hike. I'm hiking with Tim, both Peters, Ryan, Chris, Kirk and Jake. We go out and follow the trail to the radio tower. We soon get to the top of the mountain but there was no radio tower. Looking down the mountain we can see a radio tower. It is about five miles away.

We don't really do anything but then Tim realizes that there is another radio tower off to our left. We decided best to call Mr. Lauri, our Scoutmaster. Tim was right and we were supposed to meet at the tower to our left, Mr. Lauri had pointed to the wrong tower. We go back to the trail and head over to the radio tower. When we meet up with the other group at the mountain top a snowball fight begins!

Soon enough it is time to head back down to camp. I decide to randomly throw snowballs into the entire venture scouts (they were hiking in a separate group). At one point they all turn around and chuck snowballs at me. The moment they turned around I hit the ground and instead of me getting hit it was Ryan, Brandon, Jake and a few others. A small snowball fight starts again but soon ends.

We get back to camp and I realize my sleeping bag is not on the trailer where I had left it to dry. I rush over and find it on the ground. I hang it back up and let it dry a bit more. Chris and Devon start making the grilled cheese for lunch. The grilled cheese was a bit burnt but was eatable.

We were going to go orienteering before and after dinner but the leaders decided that we would only go after dinner. So the whole troop sits around and talks till dinner. My patrol is making chili for dinner. I do not like chili so I had some trail mix and a quesadilla. We clean up and then pretty much hang around for an hour or so. Around 6:30 p.m. we get ready to go on a night orienteering course. In my group there was Ryan, Jake, Brandon and Mr. Lauri, as a leader. We go through all of the orienteering points but do not come in at a fast time. It takes us about two hours and we get back around 9 p.m. since we were the last to leave at 7 p.m. After that we go straight to bed since we are very tired.

The winds have died down and our tent does not collapse on us once during the night. I finally got a full night's sleep. I wake up in the morning and start packing up. Soon enough we are packed up and out of the tent. This is all done by 6:45 a.m. Jake and I start making pancakes for breakfast.

Everyone eats after their tent is taken down. Everyone helps on clean up since it is a big job and we need to clean everything. All of the patrol gear is soon packed up and put in the trailer. We do a sweep for garbage and then another sweep up by where we camped Friday night. We line up by the cars and Mr. Lauri gives a small prize to everyone and a bigger prize to everyone who pretty much led the group. After going over our favorite part of the campout we pile into the cars and head home. We arrive at Prince of Peace Church and wait for our parents to come so that we can go home and get some much needed rest.

For more info. about scouting in Brookfield please contact the following people: Cubscouts - Rob Libbey Pack 5 at 203-7445-2412, Rob Janofsky Pack 135 @203-775-9578, Boyscouts Kirk Lauri Troop 135 @ 203-470-9050, Jonathan Gibney Troop 8, Tom Tyrell, Troop 5 @ 203-775-4448.

Written by,
Nicholas Palmer
Troop 135, Troop Historian
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