Every year, Troop 85 goes to summer camp. Summer camp is a wonderful opportunity to earn merit badges and learn scouting skills, as well as work on ranks. Many options are available, allowing each scout to work on merit badges and skills that they need. This year, we went to Camp Birch again. Camp Birch hosts a variety of activities aside from Merit Badges and scout skills.
Scout Services
A scout is reverant, so on Wednesday night, the scouts went to either a Scout’s Own nondenominational religious service or to a Catholic Mass at the chapel. Intrestingly, the priest saying Mass was from Troop 85 this year.
OA Callout
After the services on Wednesday night, the whole camp went to the OA Callout, a ceremony that recognized the scouts who had been found worthy to be initiated into the Order of the Arrow.
Flag Ceremony
On Thursday, our troop conducted the flag ceremony at opening and closing flags.
Various adults said we did a good job, especially as the flag ceremony was not something we had done before.
Camp-Wide Game
On Friday, the fourth session was devoted to a camp-wide game. The object of the game was simple: to get to various locations, score as many points as we could at each one, and turn in our scorecard. The first place winner of the camp-wide game was our Tiger patrol.
Family Night and campfire
Friday Night, after the camp-wide game, was family night. Families of the scouts at camp showed up to enjoy dinner and a campfire at camp. This year, instead of taking the food that Camp Birch offered us, each family brought in its own food, and the troop bought chicken wings. At the campfire, several troops, including ours, preformed skits. Ours went something like this:
Many years ago (likely in 1996), the legendary Civil War General LorBirch, and his best ‘Bud’ Martin were travelling through what is now the state of Ohio looking for the fountain of youth. While they were doing this, they ran into Native Chief Hughtay, and his friend, Mr. T. Hughtay tricked LorBirch into thinking that Mr. T had walked through the fountain by sending out a little kid to pretend to be him, and LorBirch bought the forest where they were with two horses and an imaginary, fourth-wall breaking monkey. Later that day, Martin tried out the fountain, and became an old man. LorBirch, despairing, asked the Lord for help, and out came Lord Baden-Powell, who was looking for places that turned children into adults. Not needing the forest, LorBirch gave it to Baden-Powell, who named the place after the two great men who had met there that day: Camp Hughtay LorBirch.
Overview
Overall, we had 15 scouts attend, and we earned a total of 80 merit badges, with 26 partials left for scouts to complete. While we were at camp, two scouts earned rank, and one attended Tecumseh Island.
Troop 85 