…get a bunch of scouts off in the woods and they WILL have FUN!”  And boy did we ever at this years Fall Camporee where the theme was ”Adventures in Hollywoods”. 

Out in the woods of a 700 acre plot of land in Surry County, each event area was tied to a movie theme such as Tomb Raider, Blazing Saddles, The China Syndrome, Castaway, Anaconda and oh yeah…Forrest Gump!  And you’ll never guess who was Forrest!  Yep, complete with riding lawn mower, park bench, suitcase, a box of chocolates and simpleton mentality, some say I was the perfect choice.  Momma would have been proud!

And Momma really would have been proud of T11’s best good friends and special guests for the weekend…the Weblelos II from Pack 11.  Do you know they won just about every event there was?  They won the Spirit Award AND First Place Overall!!  In the words of one of their leaders “Wow, did we have a great time!”  Well…I guess???  You took home all the ribbons!  Great job Pack 11!  

Our T11 boys did a fine job themselves, busy assisting the award winning P11 Webelos and managing to take home a ribbon of their own for winning the Blazing Saddles event.  Go figure, our boys winning an “eating beans around the campfire” contest.  Enough said! 

Thanks to the leadership of ASM’s Bunn and Foster and JASM Eagle Scout Tim, I was free to well just “Gump” around all day.  I hosted Gump-ardy, kind of like that TV gameshow, you know the one where the questions are answers and the answers are questions… I never understood that part but we had a great time!  Gump-ardy is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get cause if you pick “Knots for $100″… you might get a First Aid question and if you pick “Scout History for $200″… you might get a Scout Skills question. 

And boy some of the answers I got!  One question was about lashings and when I asked the Webelos if they knew what a lashing was one said “Yeah, its when someone hits you on the back with the end of a rope!”.  Well, so much for Youth Protection, that is ONE TOUGH PACK, I’ll tell you for sure!   

One Pack even made up a cheer for me.  It went “We’re Pack 77 and we like Gump, it must really hurt to get shot in the rump!”.  Well, I would have given them about 2 buzillion points for spirit if I could have.  Another Webelos group wanted to know what other movies I had been in and of course I had to tell them that “Wilson” in Castaway was one of my best good friends, which led to the question if I really was Tom Hanks.

Oh yeah, I remember the Cubmaster years!  Last weekend for me was just what the doctor ordered.  Thank God for Scouts…the little ones and the big ones!

Well that’s about all I have to say about that!

Mr. H, aka Forrest

 

Time DOES fly when you’re having fun.  I just looked up and it’s almost November!  Been a busy September and October.

The troop year started off right with an excellent annual planning meeting.  In addition to our annual events such as Fall Camporee, Blackstone, the Iron Chef / Webeloree Weekend and the Klondike Derby, the boys planned a lock-in at the Virginia Air & Space Museum, a trip to Washington DC including tours of the White House and the Pentagon, Beach Camping and of course more Shenandoah hiking.  Looks like another banner year for Troop 11.   

In September we did a ‘just for fun” campout at Paramount’s Kings Dominion.  Nothing quite like a campground with a pool table, video games, a big screen TV, an amusement park and delivery pizza to get a scout’s attention.  Not exactly back to nature but we managed to fill the bill of “just for fun”!

Scout elections were held on September 28th.  New patrols were formed with an impressive new PLC elected leading the way into October where it was “shipyard month” for T11.

On October 1, scouts delivered popcorn to the crew of the USS Newport News (SSN 750), a Los Angeles class nuclear powered attack submarine.  Scouts were invited on board for an impressive 2 hour tour of the sub including an up close and personal introduction to a tomahawk missile…”Don’t touch that!!!!”.  Well we made it through the experience without breaching national security and left the crew with plenty of post deployment Trails End Popcorn, so all’s well that ends well.  God Speed to the crew of SSN 750!

Then on the heels of a Nor’easter on October 7, we were asked to assist with the christening of the USS George H W Bush (CVN-77), the final Nimitz class air craft carrier.  What an impressive event and list of dignataries present, not sure who all we handed out programs, flags,”mid-speech” snacks and rain gear to but one things for sure, the boys will remember this one for years to come.  Oh and those Secret Service guys…they don’t mess around!

Well that gets us up to the Camporee last weekend which deserves its very own blog so stay tuned…there’s more to come.

Mr. H