Sequassen, Webelos, and Rockets- Oh My!! A campout to remember...

This past weekend, our troop organized a FANTASTIC campout at Camp Sequassen! The plan was to spend Saturday morning building rockets, launch them in the afternoon, and to invite the Webelos and AOL scouts from Pack 270 and 470 to join us. Perhaps the only thing that was more impressive than the success of our campout was the weather, as we were treated to a beautiful early Fall weekend with highs in the 70's and low's at night in the upper 50's.

The weekend started off Friday night with an unexpectedly clear night sky overhead. Because of a forecast for clouds, Mr. Hoyack did not bring his fancy telescope, but we made due with our eyes and two pairs of binoculars. The Andromeda Galaxy, the closest one to ours (a mere 2.5 million light years away and 200,000 light years wide) was visible as a faint blur or smudge in the sky. I took the opportunity to mount my camera with my telephoto lens on my tripod and was able to grab a couple pictures that highlight the eliptical shape of the galaxy- very fun! Mr. Hoyack and I are making plans to mount my fancy camera to his fancy telescope, so stay tuned for some hopefully much more impressive fancy images later this year.

Saturday started with a relaxed morning and breakfast. Shortly before lunch, our 4th grade Webelos guests from Pack 270 started to arrive to help build the rockets we would be launching that afternoon.

After the rockets were built, it was time for the cub scouts to come together as the newly minted Lion Patrol and make their own lunch just as they will do when they join a troop. To aid in this, we had a special appearance by one of our Troop's recent eagle scouts, the one and only Andrew Hoyack. He quickly set to work with the cub scouts making their lunch of ground turkey and cheese quesadillas (a simple recipe of ground turkey, a taco seasoning packet, shredded cheeese, and tortillas).

After lunch, we made our way up to the North side of Sequassen to Platt field for our rocket launching. Overall it was a great success. Mr. Hoyack and Mr. Linnetz got some fun slow motion video of the launches (see the video collages), and Sandor's extra large rocket provided a highlight to cap the afternoon. Through it all, we only lost 1 rocket that drifted into the woods with an unexpected shift in the wind, never to be seen again.

BE SURE TO WATCH THE VIDEOS WITH YOUR VOLUME ON!!

After rockets, we returned to camp for a relaxed afternoon of hanging out and cooking dinner, which featured an impressive vegetarian and turkey chili for the adults from Mr. Blatter, and included a dessert competition in which our scouts cooked for and were judged by the cub scouts.

Finally, the evening was capped off by a fantastic campfire program with Logan serving expertly as Master of Ceremony, featuring a number of skits by our scouts, a pair of songs each from Mr. Hoyack and Mr. Linnetz, and an impromptu skit by our cub scout guests.

Overall, it was a great success, with special recognition to our SPL Sandor, who did an outstanding job on his first campout as SPL, and to our many Pack 270 guests who helped make it a uniquely special weekend for us all.