Scouting on Vacation

Did I say three-in-one vacation? I really meant four-in-one vacation. Before we left for the trip, I flipped through John's scout book and belt loop requirements, to see if there'd be anything we could do while we were up there. I figured there might be a few outdoor-type opportunities we don't normally get in the city.

I knew Brian planned to take the boys fishing, so I wrote down a couple things they could work on if they wanted to (like proficiency in casting a line, and cleaning a fish if they caught one). So they were able to do that. Turns out John is pretty good at casting!

I also thought it'd be fun to go stargazing. I love how you can see so many stars when you're high up and away from city lights like that. I've always wanted to learn more than the basic constellations (the north star and the dippers were all I knew). When I saw locating five constallations was a scout activity you could do, that was the final bit of motivation to get me to really do it. I checked out a few astronomy books from the library before we left and we took them along. Unfortunately, we had a full moon while up there and the light from the moon was really bright all week long. So some of the smaller stars weren't visible. But I had a lot of fun taking my boys and my sister's boys out into a clearing Saturday night to look for constellations. They loved it too. Ryan kept asking to go again, but there was too much cloud cover every night after that.

I didn't write any other scouting requirements down. Since I had just gone through all that material though, it was fresh in my mind and I just tried to jump on opportunities when they presented themselves. I told John that talking to a ranger about what they do was one of the things he could do for scouts. So after ranger Cindy at the Tusayan ruins was finished swearing the boys in as Junior Rangers, John asked her some questions. We learned a lot of interesting things about what rangers do. She started as a volunteer the year before, but they invited her back this year to do tours. She's up there something like six months out of the year. I'd love to do something like that when I'm retirement age!

Something unexpected was coming across the observatory. Visiting an observatory is an option for earning the Astronomy pin. I don't know if John has to go inside one to make it count, or if talking with the person who worked there was good enough. In any case he's still have to do a report. I still have to ask Anna about it (if she doesn't read the blog first, I guess, LOL). But either way, the observatory was a neat experience for him.

Another thing he could do was visit a fish hatchery. Brian knew there was one near Payson somewhere, so we planned on stopping there if we had time and energy on the way home. It turns out we did NOT have time or energy on the way home, so that didn't get done. Oh well. LOL!

For one of the awards John was trying to earn, he has to do a wildlife conservation project. Little did we know we'd find an opportunity for this right at our campground. When we were driving around deciding on a site, this is what we saw:

Now who does a thing like this, I ask you? I asked John if he wanted to make cleaning this up his service project. He said yes. (Don't worry, we would have cleaned it up anyway.) While we worked, we asked him why something like this is harmful to the little critters who live here. (I wanted to make sure he understood what this had to do with wildlife conservation.) I didn't need to worry. He answered my questions no problem.

Ben had to stop and show me his loose tooth. I swear this thing has been trying to fall out all summer!

We bagged up and hauled out the glass and aluminum, but burned the paper products (no different from using newspaper for kindling in your fire, for any staunch environmentalists out there). ;)

I meant to take a totally finished "after" picture, but forgot. You get the idea though. Looks a lot better, doesn't it?

Anyway, we got a LOT more scout stuff done than I thought we would, and none of it was stressful or anything. Encouraging kids to get scout stuff done is pretty easy, I've decided, as long as I'm familiar with what's in the book and zero in on stuff that matches John's and our family's interests. It's been a good experience for all of us.