Pictures of 2005-6 events The day camp for the younger scouts was a LOT of fun! And it was right here in Damascus, at the Izaak Walton League. Every day, we had slingshots, BB guns, archery, games, scout skills, crafts, and nature. A bunch of parents came along to supervise (and to shoot the BB guns). And best of all, hear the MP3 of the official camp song!
Once again, our Webelos dens spent a week camping in western Pennsylvania. They did the hamster dance each day before lunch. Presumably, they also did more Scoutcraft-y things too.
Camping with the Frederick Keys The Frederick Keys minor league baseball team invited us to join them for their annual Scout Night. We paraded across the field before the game, and pitched our tents in center field afterward. Some joker decided to wake us with reville over the loudspeakers at 6:50 am. Oh, and there was a baseball game in there too, I think.
Every July, our town celebrates how great we are with a parade. Of course, we were the stars of the show!
The poor fish at Kelpy's Pond were just starving! Good thing we fished catch-and-release style, or they'd all be gone now. The winning boy caught 26 fish in three hours!
The Wolves and Bears got together and built bird houses. Here's the design we used. We're going to sell them to raise money for the Red Cross.
We camped out with our families in early October at Little Bennett Regional Park. The weather was absolutely perfect, and the songs & skits went on around the campfire late into the evening.
48th Annual Scouting Jamboree on the Air More than a half-million Scouts worldwide created the ultimate global community by talking to each other via Amateur Radio as part of the 48th annual Scouting Jamboree-On-The-Air, which was held locally in Germantown on Oct 15th. We tried out a bunch of different ham radio sets (with really big antennas!) and were able to talk to scouts in Florida, New Jersey, Canada, England, Denmark, and Spain!
Every year, St Paul's parish (our sponsors) cleans up garbage from the woods behind the Damascus library. We were there as a thank-you to the parish, and to do a Good Turn for America.
Picking party in the Pumpkin Patch One of the boys in our pack lives on a farm with the most sincere pumpkin patch in town. After cleaning up the woods, we helped clean out the pumpkin patch! We also roasted hot dogs over a campfire and made smores.
We visited Mount Vernon in November, 2005. The Wolf den had made wreaths from leaves and pine cones, which we were allowed to lay at George and Martha Washington's tombs. Then we hiked all over the grounds and saw all about how the Washingtons lived.
Maryland Science Center campout Our Webelos dens got to sleep over ("camp out" is too strong a term!) at the Maryland Science Center.
We returned to the Mount Airy duckpin bowling alley this year for another bowling trip. This time, we got to take a backstage tour to see the pin-setting machines!
The Blue & Gold Banquet is Cub Scouting's main awards dinner. We got 13 inches of snow on the day we scheduled ours! (Pity we couldn't have had the Klondike Derby then instead, eh?) So we scrambled a bit and put one together for the following Monday night, squeezing all of us into St Paul's church hall. We still had a great time, got our badges, and watched a movie of the graduating Webelos. The boys especially liked judging the cake contest--can you guess the theme?
Our Webelos were invited to come along on the Boy Scout Klondike Derby in January. Unfortunately, the weather made it more like the Miami Derby! But the boys still got to show off their scout skills. Damascus is lucky to be home to a great telescope store, Hands On Optics. The owner and his amateur astronomer friends were gracious hosts to us, pack 1438, and Boy Scout troop 445 at a Star Party. We and a hundred of our closest friends got to see the Moon, Saturn, and the Great Orion Nebula through some great telescopes (and some high clouds). The Knights of Columbus provided hot chocolate and donuts to keep us going, and the Damascus Gazette even sent a reporter! Our Tiger Cubs participated in a District-wide event just for them--the Tiger 500! The boys made cardboard cars and took turns racing around the gym. Our Wolf den came to the aid of a Girl Scout who was working on her Gold Award. We built half a dozen bird houses and a bat box for her nature trail at the Damascus Rec Center. Then we all turned out to put them up. The second year Webelos graduate to Boy Scouting in an impressive ceremony. The Order of the Arrow provided the ceremonial indians, and the boys built a bridge to Boy Scouting on the planks of the 12 points of the Scout Law. |
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