Commitee Chair Dick beat me to the punch regarding Summer Camp news, if you haven’t read it, hop on over there and take a peek.  As usual good stuff from Dick.

Yeah, we had a great time.  Mild days, cool nights and brand spank’n new showers made the week even better.  I did the “Scuba thing” with two of the boys and tried to do the waterskiing thing but you now those donated boats just don’t have the horsepower they used to.  The folks on the bank had a hard time telling if the boys were doing the waterskiing or fishing merit badge for a while there but I finally did it…gave up and climbed back in the boat!  So much for the lesson in persistence that day.  Oh, but my failure must have really inspired the boys because all of them got the Merit Badge. 

In fact, we had a lot of “merit badging” going on.  Thirteen (13) boys completed 44 MB’s plus 6 partials, 2 Scuba BSA, 1 Snorkel BSA, 1 Mile Swim, 13 Duty to God awards, 1 Life Rank SMC and BOR, 5 in the First Class Adventure Program with 3 completing the rank of Tenderfoot.  All which segues nicely into the Court of Honor this Thursday night.

This Court of Honor will be kind of an after Summer Camp celebration at Warwick Yacht Club.  We will begin at 7pm and assuming we can give out all of the awards in an hour we will proceed to poolside for “dinner and a dip” at eight.  The troop supplies the main course and in true Camp Marriott Heater Stack tradition, the scouts will bring a cover dish or two to share.  We’ll eat, we’ll swim, some of us will eat again and then find a comfortable pool side lounger to bask in the glory of a great January through July in Troop 11.  

We are taking August off this year…well sort of.  No regular meetings but we do have some Popcorn Sales planned on August 5th, 12th and well we’ll see.  Also, we have a really cool event on Wednesday, August 9th.  We have been invited to drive down to Emporia to watch grown men jump out of perfectly good helicopters.  They call it a Command Jump or something like that.  Word is even our boys might be able strap on a chute and jump out of one, a parked one that is.  Should be a great time and another great memory. 

We end the month of August with the Summer OA Ordeal at our new council camp, Bayport Scout Reservation.  We have one adult and four youth Ordeal Candidates attending along with a host of T11 Ordeal, Brotherhood and Vigil members. 

The Troop’s “August off” kind of reminds me of my “days off”.  Some things I suppose, just aren’t meant to be!

Mr. H