MacBrave

Our council's method of "fee assistance"? A one-time special popcorn sale with a 75% commission. Of course units have to order the popcorn in advance and hope they can sell it.........

My council, Crossroads of America, just increased their accident & sickness insurance from $1 to $12 a year. So with national's increase our membership fee for scouts more than doubled from $34 to $72 a year.

We have already advertised to our troop families that due to the timing of this increase we are going to have ask them to make up the difference between the old fee and new fee. With the recent announcement that looks to be $27 or so. Our troop currently covers the registration fee and boy's life through a weekly dues system, collected at troop meetings. Will probably have to double that amount come the first of the year............

I don't pretend to understand how our council/district numbers units. The 78-year old troop I currently volunteer with is 338. The new girls troop in the county is 219.

We had the first girls troop in our county visit our troop meeting just a few days ago. The SM of the new troop wanted her new scouts to observe how youth leadership runs the meetings, puts on the program, etc. They are struggling to get enough numbers right now, think they may have 5 girls signed up, 3 of them visited.

Yep, we have three of them. :

Our troop owns all Eureka tents. A couple years ago we purchased four new Timberline Outfitter 4XT tents. No complaints so far. We also have two Eureka Equinox 6 tents that are 20+ years old and really about at the end of their useful life. Leaders tents are a fairly new Copper Canyon 8 and an old Sunrise 6 (rarely used), although sometimes myself and others leaders will use our own personal tents. Luckily we have the use of a barn loft at the edge of town where we can setup/hang tents to dry. We really stress the care and maintenance of the tents and other gear to the scouts.

Yep, it is a beast. If we are camping in areas with other troops around we usually get a couple fellow scouters walking up and saying "Cool! Can we check out your trailer?" 😃 Several years ago, before I joined the troop, they got it weighed right before leaving for a week long summer camp so it had a lot of personal gear loaded in it. I believe it tipped the scales at 7k pounds. I don't own a vehicle that can pull it, but 3 of our current adult leaders and a couple parents do. Most of them say it doesn't pull bad, although gas mileage goes down the tubes if you are driving into a strong headwind (it's not exactly an aerodynamic design 😃) . You also have to be aware of how the weight is distributed, a couple years ago while following it down the interstate I saw it get a little "squirrelly' from crosswinds. Luckily we were close to home and could exit the interstate and take slower surface roads the rest of the way. We also just replaced the old hydraulic brakes with traditional electric brakes and replaced the axles. Should be good for another 25 years, although we really do need to repaint it.

The best recent picture I could quickly find of our troop's trailer. It's approximately 25 years old and the frame was custom built by a local metal fabricator. The rest of the trailer is mostly wood, designed and mostly built by our long time committee chair. It has a "kitchen" side, a "gear" side, and the back area is for general storage. Was originally painted a light green, with nice scouts graphics, chartered org. info etc. But after about 20 years that had faded pretty badly so the wood was sealed with a white wash. Still haven't gotten around to repainting, for a number of reasons.

For those units interested in learning more about Gus Grissom there is a small, but nice, Gus Grissom Memorial located at Spring Mill State Park. Spring Mill is located right outside of Grissom's hometown of Mitchell, Indiana. The state park is also a great place for scouting units to visit even without the Memorial. It has a youth campground, hiking trails, caves, a cave boat tour, and a very nice pioneer village with interesting building to explore.