Troop 1131 at Raven Knob Scout Camp 2006

Raven Knob 2006 #1

Troop 1131:

A warm hello to everyone from sunny Camp Raven Knob. The roads were not as busy as we thought they might be over the Fourth of July weekend, and our troop arrived safely yesterday. We got settled into our new home for the week at camp. We have lots of adults in camp right now, including one mom, Nancy Levonian. However, we really miss Gary Klinger, a stalwart and icon of our troop's summer camping experience. Without Gary, it's hard to keep the waiters in check as Gary has done for many seasons.

Bruce Summers is the camp banker this year, and other adults like Mike Tiffany, Mike Johnson and Nathan Sherrard are helping a lot. Tom Ferrell, James Pratt, and Mike Tracey are in camp with us for a few days. I've asked them to help out at the Swimming merit badge at the waterfront and with the First Aid merit badge as we have about 20 new scouts in each of those classes. Some of our older scouts like Randy Froehlich and Calvin Sauerbier have a free period to help with the New Scouts too.

Our campsite is set up interestingly; we have a about six extra tents in the leader's campsite. I addition to our normal "Red Roof Inn" latrine, they have installed two Port-o-Johns in the center of our campsite. Even so, those facilities are not sufficient. However, near our campsite are the new showers and they have a couple of real bathrooms (porcelain), and there are lots of good bathrooms throughout the camp that boys can use during their daily rounds. The PLC has opted to march all of our scouts to the shower house after lunch today, Wednesday and Friday. This is the first year we're doing this and it should be interesting.

Each day, one patrol is designated the service patrol, and has to clean up the campsite after breakfast and before they head off to their merit badge classes. Then, while the boys are at merit badge classes, a Troop Commissioner (camp staff) inspects our campsite and gives us a numerical rating. If we get a high enough rating each day, and doing several other things, we receive an "Honor Troop" certificate.

Last night, after a spaghetti dinner (with salad and peaches), we went to Vespers, and to the opening campfire. Vespers are held every night, but we go as a troop only the first night. Individually, boys can attend the other nights. The opening campfire was a lot of fun as each staff area put on skits to introduce themselves to the scouts. The aquatics staff includes one of our Life Scouts, Matt Wolfe, who earned BSA Lifeguard last summer. Matt was very funny, diving on a wet plastic sheet last night. There were several of the old standard camp songs, and an inspirational song to celebrate the Fourth of July. We do not do fireworks at camp.

Back at the campsite, we had a cracker barrel, and the boys went to bed at taps (10:00 p.m.); most were asleep almost as soon as they got in there sleeping bags. The camp has issued me a pager, it's able to receive text messages. The primary purpose of the page is to allow the camp staff to send camp-wide messages to scoutmasters without resorting to loud speakers blaring all over camp. It's a very effective way to communicate. We received some email messages for scouts this morning at breakfast. So that system is working fine. However, if you want send me a text message, the pager number is 336-371-6033.

That's it for now. More tomorrow.

Philip Sternberg
Scoutmaster, Troop 1131