Scout Camp

While not very productive, last weekend was a good one. Because I work with the eleven year old scouts we only go on one camp every quarter and this weekend was it. We camped out at Camp Del Mar which is on Camp Pendelton so we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. The Camp Ground itself was full of very large and fancy motor homes that look kind of like a camperized greyhound bus but no-one went out to the beach. 

There were four leaders and seven boys. We camped right on the beach and it was wonderful. I love camping and as long as I can take my air mattress I sleep better than I do at home. It was great laying there late at night listening to the waves crashing on the beach mere yards away. It was pretty cloudy so we saw no stars but it was still wonderful.

Dinner was hamburgers and hot dogs, not very original but still good. The other good thing about campouts is that once it gets dark there is only so much you can do so I usually get to bed hours before I would at home. After a solid eight hours of sleep I woke to hear Brad ask if anyone else wanted pancakes before they shut down the stove. That got me out of bed quickly. We ate a good breakfast of pancakes and then struck camp.

I always have to get my feet wet but it was still rather foggy and while the water was beautiful I was not tempted to go more than knee deep.

Aaron had to get to his son’s soccer game so he left first with a load of boys and we were supposed to be mere minutes behind him. Unfortunately, Aaron was unable to find his car key. We looked for half an hour checking every possible place including lost and found but to no avail. Since I didn’t have a kid there and no place I had to be (but I really wanted to get some painting done this weekend) I volunteered to stay back with Aaron while everyone else got the kids home. Tim was going to meet Aaron’s wife at the church and drive back with a spare key.

Once everyone else was gone I sent Lisa a text explaining that I was going to be late and then Aaron decided to go look around the beach. I had thought about looking at the beach earlier but I didn’t because first of all, we didn’t do anything that would make a key fall out of your pocket and secondly, if it did fall out how would you ever find it in all that sand?

Because no one else had gone to the beach it was easy enough to find exactly where we were by following the footprints. We looked around the spot where we had left our shoes etc. and then I decided to go find the spot where we had taken pictures. I walked over to that spot and there, stuck in the sand blade first right up to the hilt was a key sticking straight up out of the sand. It was literally a miracle. It was in virgin undisturbed sand looking just like the sword in the stone.

We called off the plan to return the key and ended up no more than fifteen minutes behind the others.

As far as getting stuff done around the house I managed to pick more weeds in the flower bed, went for a six mile run and then headed to Home Depot. One spot on the wall where I repaired the plumbing needs better texturing so I went and bought a texturing gun and a bag of texturing mud. I didn’t actually start on the job because by the time I got everything ready we were getting close to the time to leave for our ward party.

The ward party was a trip through time. We all sent in pictures of ourselves from our high school years and Marissa Shoemaker had created “Year Books” for every decade with the pictures of everyone that graduated in that decade. They also asked for stories and then read peoples stories. I told about my touch powder escapades and Lisa told about playing on the boy’s hockey team. They also had desserts and two of my favorite desserts were there, doughnuts and lemon meringue pie. I of course had one of each. I may have had an extra doughnut or two as well.

It was a good weekend.