The Cub Friendly Campout had quite an attendance this year with 45 troop Scouts and 15 Cubs. The troop drove 25 minutes out of McLean to Lake Fairfax Park. The Scouts were required to pitch tarps to sleep in, however, the Cubs had the pleasures of sleeping in tents. The troop tried out a new approach to catapults this year, with PVC and 2x2 planks, instead of using bamboo.
The weather couldn’t have been better on Saturday, as the temperatures were in the low 60’s and the sun was out. After the first hour, most of the scouts had their tarps up and were preparing lunch. Lunch was great; just enough to get you going to launch pumpkins out of the catapults! Everyone hastily grabbed pumpkins and materials for the catapults, and headed down the hill to the field where the assembly began.
Unfortunately, we are not able to use bamboo for the catapults anymore, so we used PVC pipe and wood to build them instead. As the catapults started to take shape, you could feel the anticipation for the first squash to be squashed! The pumpkins were thrown from T-shirt baskets attached to the end of a PVC throwing arm, and were launched into the air, sometimes as far as 60 feet!
When we returned from the field, the scouts and cubs set up an axe and hammer yard to chop up the last year’s bamboo. They did a good job chopping up all of it. If some of the bamboo chambers were missed, the air inside would pressurize and make an explosion when we put them in the fire, so we needed to try to chop up all of the chambers.
We always burn the bamboo from previous years at this outing. Some of the older scouts made the mistake of putting WAY too much bamboo on the fire, and the fire grew too tall, and Mr. Forrer had to pour a bucket of water on it to lower the flames. Also, a very special thanks to all of the Grub Masters during the campout. The food was tasty, and nutritious.
This trip was a blast! Unfortunately, some scouts didn’t look at the forecast for the early morning, as they were out of their tarps at 5:00 am, trying to keep the rain from coming in. Despite the rain, everyone had fun and enjoyed the eventful camping trip, which always is the highlight of the fall season.
-Sebastian Herbolsheimer
If you want to see pictures, click here.