Mangel Moments: SCOUT CAMP REPORT

Well I'm back! I spent 5 nights and 6 days at Scout Camp with the boys. This year we decided to go back to Slippery Falls Scout Ranch about 2 1/2 - 3 hours East of here on the Southeastern side of Oklahoma. Our troop has gone there every year that we have been here with last year being our exception when we went to Carlsbad Caverns and the Guadalupe Mountains for a 5 day trek. Slippery Falls has a great program that allows the scouts to earn quite a few merit badges in there time there (up to five if they work it right). For the most part the boys had a great time. We took up 7 boys and there were 3 leaders that went. 2 of the boys left Monday morning from Slippery Falls to a high adventure camp called Diamond H and came back to Slippery Falls on Friday. Those 2 boys had a good time, but probably wouldn't go back. There were some problems with some of the programs planned, so there ended up being some unexpected down time, but all in all I think they came a way from the camp satisfied. There are also some great opportunities for leaders to get out and earn some awards along with some training. I participated in Scoutmaster/Assistant Scoutmaster Specifics class which ended up being about 9 hours of "death by PowerPoint." Seriously I learned allot from the training even though it was a little on the boring side. I also went to a "Leave No Trace" and "Trek Safely" class that was really informative and also will now allow me to backpack or take to boys backpacking anywhere with no problems. There were a few other things I did but the next thing worth mentioning is a class called Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience or "COPE" for short. This was actually a merit badge class that the kids could go to, but because they only had two signed up, the camp was asking for leaders to come up and participate, they could only have a minimum of 6 to hold the class. There ended up being 9 adults and 3 youth show up. Every day we went through different team-building exercises. The following pictures kind of show a little bit of what I went through. This first picture is of an exercise very similar to the other ones that helped us come together as a team and allowed everyone to participate. I will try to explain this exercise. We first started at a pile of wood which simulated an island. We were to go from that island to another and then to another only using two 4X4's (about 8 ft long), one 2X6 (about 4 ft long), two small cinder blocks, one big cinder block, and lastly a short 2X6 (about 6 inches long). The only items that could touch the ground were the small 2X6 and the cinder blocks, oh yea, all 12 of us had to do it at one time. We eventually accomplished the task (in record time might I add), but this is just one picture of that experience.

The following pictures were of the last day of COPE, we were able to use our team building skills and balancing coordination to scale a pole, walk across another pole, then across some cable, and lastly (the fun part) zip-line about 200 yards. It was challenging, nerve racking, yet exciting all at once. I had a good time.