Stosh

It's easier and more expensive to hike 9 days at Philmont than on the AT, but without knowledge one has to pay the tollmaster. Same for Northern Tier and going BWCA on your own. The year I went with my troop, Outfitters were charging about $350-$425 per participant depending on whether one rented canoes or not. Summer camp was $210 that summer and we went to BWCA for $135/person (9 days and 57 miles) and that included the fishing license. Knowledge is a wonderful thing.

I do what @@Krampus mentions. That's what the red wool jac-shirt is used for. My mentor pins are on that along with whatever else I might fancy at the present time.

In my patrols, the boys like using the Green Bar Bill (GBB) approach to patrol duties. I haven't seen a duty roster for years. Each boy has a specialty function he enjoys doing. Obviously there's the PL and APL, then the Sctibe, the QM, then GrubMaster, Chaplain Aide, ActivityMaster, etc. The requirement is not designed for the old patrol-method program and thus a little tweaking is necessary. The new boy needs advancement. He works under the tutelage of the GrubMaster to design the menus, shop and cook the meals for the weekend, Friday night and Sunday morning he works with the GM as the assistant GM and maybe learns some new techniques, etc. He works with the Chaplain Aide for the non-denominational prayer, etc. There's a lot that goes into the process before the boy actually takes on the cooking for the weekend. Training in food prep and safety, nutrition and menus, fire building and stove safety The GM can work with the boys as a class teaching them all these skillls and if it's the NSP boys doing the learning, why can't they offer their services to another patrol to do the cooking for them for advancement. The intent of the requirement is to cook a day for a small group of boys. Yes, it says for THEIR patrol, but THEIR patrol in this ad hoc culture could be for another patrol for the weekend. I can live with that. Then the GM can rotate around the patrols and support the newbie cooks all at the same time. For me the intent of the requirements is to provide appropriate training and opportunity to use that training in an actual setting. Let's say there are 4 patrols, one of them NSP. With a mess hall summer camp it will take 4 years for the boys to get this requirement done in their own patrol at camporees (plop camping, otherwise the outing may make that process more difficult, canoeing, hiking, biking, etc.), but could knock that out with 2 camporees in one year otherwise. The training could be done all at once in the NSP rather than 4 times, once in each patrol. And the best troop GM could do the training, too. I guess I'm not ready to penalize the boys just because the requirement says YOUR patrol instead of A patrol.

I have a fabric seat/back pad that I do a little lashing and have myself a camp chair in no time. I camp, I don't suffer.

I prefer the even heat of a DO over the reflector ovens. Never had very good luck with them. DO's I can control the heat just as well as at home in the oven in the kitchen. - just a personal preference. The cardboard box ovens heat more evenly as well.

@@blw2 Plop camp cooking doesn't have to be a big ordeal if the boys learn to do it correctly in the first place. What a lot of scouters teach our boys to do is to make it a big ordeal. I teach my boys the fastest most efficient way of doing it and we have great food and very little effort. When I went to the BWCA I bought 7 grocery bags full of food to take on the trek. By the time I got done, I threw away 4 grocery bags full of garbage and repackaged everything accordingly. The pudding was taken out of the package and dumped into a ziplock. Then an appropriate amount of 2 cups of powdered milk added. Identify the package with a Sharpie and toss in the food pack. Then one just opens the corner dumps in 2 cups of water, messages it for 2 minutes in the bag and the pudding is ready to go. Pancake mix, the same way, Everything is pre-measured, just add water. Mountain Man breakfast? No problem pre-cut the meat into cooking size, cut up the onion and green pepper, you can dump the two of those together in the same ziplock. If you want you can crack all the eggs and put into ziplock and if you're not going to eat it until Sunday morning, freeze it and you don't need the extra weight of ice in the cooler. Basically my scouts have the Mountain Man breakfast in the Dutch Oven before the charcoal is ready. They even fry up the meat on the charcoal chimney. No effort or energy is wasted. The way I have seen it is the GrubMaster is out there at the crack of dawn cutting up the onions and green peppers while swatting mosquitoes yelling at someone to get the charcoal going. Right? Well, that's how we have taught them to do it. It doesn't have to be that way.

I took over a Webelos 1 program because there were no Webelos 2 boys. The first year we went through as many of the pins as possible and most of the boys did just fine, a couple missed the meetings for whatever reason. So the second year we did them again but at a more intense level to keep the repeaters interested. Communications pin we did some flashlight Morse code and a little flag work from two remote areas, etc. Kids loved it and when we were done, everyone was very happy with the pins and program. So stop an think a moment, what's wrong with two outings of fun rather than just the one? I don't think one will get any complaints when it is announced that the den has to go on another outing so the other boys can get their pins. At least I never had any of the boys complain about having to go have fun twice.

The problem with hat pins is that when one lifts the canoe up onto their shoulders and doesn't get it exact, those little pin backs can leave quite a gouge in the scalp.

For all you Brits, we'll try to use the term GLAMPING instead. Full Definition of PLOPintransitive verb 1: to fall, drop, or move suddenly with a sound like that of something dropping into water 2: to allow the body to drop heavily —usually used with down <plopped down on the couch> transitive verb 1: to set, drop, or throw heavily 2: to place or set carelessly or hastily <plopped the money into stocks> — plop noun We use the term to plop down in one spot for the camping with the expectation that extra gear is available from the nearby trailer and/or mothership. Otherwise, there's no way for anyone to understand on the forum all the alternative slang uses of certain words, (wink, wink) "if ya' know what I mean."

My problem is my boys get all excited about the marketing packages of the freeze dried "food" and want that. I ALWAY repackage proportioned, regular food, i.e. rice, noodles, pudding, pancakes, etc. in zip lock, mark them up and eat often times what I would normally eat anyway. Even then, when backpacking the really long distances, I do rely on foraging to supplement the food. I remember going to Canada fishing with the buddies and only took rice and oil. We ate like kings! As you can attest, frying up lake trout doesn't take very long at all. Minute Rice is really about 5 minutes...

This works well in areas where recycling is not mandatory. EVERYTHING in the community I have my unit in requires everyone to recycle and have bi-weekly pickup. Very little "garbage" is actually produced. Even the yard waste is recycled into compost by the city. No one is going to separate out aluminum cans just for the scouts. Other scrap metal? Scrappers are picking up stuff all over the place and basically do this for a living. When this policy went into effect, a lot of homeless people got into trouble for taking cans out of the city park garbage containers because once in the garbage container it belongs to the recycle business. It was viewed as theft. People who went up and down the street doing curb picking, that halted that unless the homeowner put a sign on it stating it was free for anyone to pick up. Big items like sofas, etc. would be put out like this otherwise the homeowner needs to pay to have it hauled away. It's better to check out the viability of the area before jumping in with both feet.

And that myopic view of the world does nothing to help get their buddies to the event who have parents that both work and still can't afford it. Scouting is NOT an individual activity, it involves working with and leading other people. Scouts that are in the program only for themselves end up Paper Eagles.

Like maybe the green space in front of the city council building?

Canoeing without portages? That can be a culinary trek. That I would take my aluminum DO and have a blast. I have a 17' canoe that can haul 750#'s. That's a lot of goodies. Toss a line out back and there's no reason one wouldn't have a feast that evening. One has to be able to teach the boys all the different experiences from fine-dining plop camping all the way to survival death march with fantastic overviews and vistas. I have been to BWCA on portages that are on the map, but have grown shut that in late August they can't be found and had to cut our way through brush to get to the next lake.. You know you are probably the first person that season to be in this part of the park. That's a good place to be. I never said we disagreed, @@DuctTape, I just use more realistic terminology when it comes to explaining the different treks....and I would rather miss a meal than eat some of that freeze-dried junk they over price and sell at the big box sporting goods stores.

@@DuctTape One always needs to do the math.... Trail mix weighs more than freeze dried fare. But a backpack stove weighs some too as does the fuel. Okay leave them home, forget the freeze dried fare, stick with the trail mix Oatmeal can be eaten cold, mixed with water and swallowed. One eats to survive, A backpacking trek is not a culinary expedition. Nature itself provides plenty of nutritious fare out there that one can gather up and not carry. Not many people eat dandelion greens at home, but it begs the question why not, it is more nutritious than iceberg lettuce. Maybe I eat only to survive on a backpack trek, but at the end when I'm really tired, my food might be gone, but I'm not still carrying the weight of a stove and fuel containers. Weight that could have provided me maybe a day or two more on the trail if replaced by food. Sure, along the way every few days at Philmont we were resupplied with food and fuel. At other places that isn't the case. You start out with everything you need until you get off the trail. If Philmont resupplied every 3 days, that meant that one was really taking only a series of weekend outings. Might as well save the boots, plop down and eat like a king. If one wishes 9 days in the Yellowstone back country, one better rethink the process.

At one point the intent of the parent pin was a non-uniform memento because parents didn't wear uniforms. They wore sport coats and nice dresses. The pin was in recognition of what their child had done. Tie tac? How many people wear sport coats, let a lone ties? Where's mom going to pin her pin? Tank top? Sweatshirt? T-shirt? Up until I recently retired I wore a sport coat every day to work and church, yet none of them had lapel pins and when I did wear a tie, I did not use a tie-tac. Customs change with time. This is nothing more than a historic tradition that has come and gone. If it is however, still relevant to scouters maybe a new tradition should be started about wearing them on the scouter's uniform.

@@Hedgehog hit the search button, I've already let the cat out of the bag...

Powerbars, oatmeal, canned meat, peanut butter and crackers? Standard fare at Philmont where they are setting the stage for how backpacking is supposed to be done. There is a serious difference between food and good food. Pop Tarts and hot dogs are food, but so is roasted corn, garlic mashed potatoes and apple slaw thick cut pork chops. If it wasn't for the backpack experience, the food taken on that activity would NOT be acceptable fare for most troops on a weekend plop camporee. The best I have heard anyone say over the past 45+ years of camping and backpack food was that some of it was "pretty good". If I said that to my wife, I'd be eating at McDonalds a lot more often.

After many days on the trail at Philmont eating survival food, they promised us DO stew and dessert. I was so looking forward to it. Yeah, Dinty Moore and dump cake cobbler. I could have done that up in my mess kit and done a better job. Needless to say, I reserved a spot on the dining car of the train on the way home and had a real meal just to make sure I hadn't lost my food appetite for good. Yes, the tablecloth and napkins were both made of real cloth and the silverware had full handles on them.

Welcome to the forum. It's really a campfire, the heat at times can be pretty intense. The people here tend to be quite passionate about scouting!

Thank you for your service.

I for one enjoy cooking at home and my skills over the years has made me a pretty good cook at the campfire. Yes the DO is a plop camp piece of equipment and my aluminum DO does allow me to extend that further into the woods and especially with canoe/kayak camping on sandbars. However, my idea of backpack cooking is more in line with survival cooking and cooking for calories for the trail. It is not designed as a fine-dining outdoor experience. There is nothing tasty about reconstituted freeze-dried anything. I do beef jerky, I can handle trail mix, oatmeal and cream of wheat cereals are standard home fair easily transported to the trail. But I would rather carry a can of beans than put up with freeze-dried. I do the foraging for fresh food instead depending on the time of year and availability. Fall backpacking with the woods full of berries is a nice break from just instant oatmeal. There are a lot of nutritious greens in the spring out there as well and a lot of nuts in season as well. One has to be careful of some foods like wild rice that is regulated by law. Fishing is also a fantastic way of supplementing the diet along the trail. Again, that is a food regulated and a license is required. When allowed, hunting is always a good way to enjoy a super meal. I went out the back door a few minutes ago and brought back a rabbit ready for tomorrow's stew, so foraging can make the home menu quite nice as well. Bisquick and other modified mixes make good basics for carbohydrates as does powdered milk. That mixed in an instant pudding mix just needs water. Noodles always come backpack ready for any trip. But then that type of food is not trail food, it is more in line with what one can do at home any day of the week for a nice meal. Pancake mix comes with a just add water label and although not as good as the add egg and milk, it still works well. The reason I promote backpack cooking methods only with my older boys is because many of the younger boys have enough trouble just getting a grilled cheese sandwich the right color of brown. And when one is on a Philmont trek even the older boys don't like the instant oatmeal washed down with canteen water walking down the trail routine. If all you want is the energy, that's just as good as anything out there, doesn't need fuel and there's no clean up. Suck it up boys, you're on the trail. LIke I said, it's survival food, not fine-dining.

There's nothing in the regulations that say the scouts can't have a say in the workings of civil government, but they can't do so in uniform(?) I would encourage the boys through the Citizenship in the Community MB to work within the system to assist with the campaign. I wouldn't do it, however, in uniform. There are others here on the forum that may have better insight than I in that I haven't participated in such an endeavor in my scouting career. I have done so as an individual, but not with BSA recognition involved. http://www.siouxbsa.org/News/PoliticalEvents0308 This policy relates to endorsing political candidates and being involved in political campaign rallies, but nothing about the situation you are describing. That's what makes me nervous about giving you the proper advice.

First of all welcome to the forum. Unless there is zoning concerning the parking issue, it's a public park and thus open to anyone. It's going to be an uphill battle not allowing the public to use public property. Possibly approaching the city parks and rec department to see if parking could be limited to say maybe 2-3 hours. If nothing else it would be a great revenue generator for the park. Maybe signs could be posted and the area zoned to indicate the parking is for park use only. I think the solution to this lies with the city council as indicated by the petition. I would push the issue at every planning meeting of the group in charge of the park until a definite conclusion is drawn. I don't know what a lawyer could do to help in this issue because of the public land issue being open to all people, including casino patrons.

For me it's just a matter of who's running the show. In sports the boys learn to follow. In scouts the boys, theoretically, are supposed to be leading, depending on whether the adults are coaching the scouts or having them truly lead on their own. What would happen if the coach and staff didn't show up? What would happen if the SM and staff didn't show up? It's kinda like the Tom Landry approach. Can the team run itself or do they need the plays called by the coach every step of the way? As a coach it would be my job to do what I can to help the kids win every single game. As a SM, I teach the rules of the game, winning is up to the boys.