Shop update #109 (11-27-19)
This weekend was spent putting the new patrol box through it’s paces with my son’s Webelos Patrol.
My son’s group bridged over from being a Bear Den into a Webelos Patrol this year and this was our first camp out without the whole Cub Scout Pack being there. It was just his Patrol camping and we were able to get a lot accomplished.
We got there at 7:30 Saturday morning and I set up my new patrol box and cooking station on one of the picnic tables.
I showed the boys how to setup a Coleman camp stove and how to light it. My wife showed them how to crack and whisk eggs for scrambled eggs and then how to mix pancake batter. We setup 3 cook stations and cooked scrambled eggs at one, pancakes at another, and heated up the pre-cooked bacon at the third. The boys were rotated in groups of 2 every 5 minutes so that they got to try each station.
While they were eating, I setup 3 wash bins, 1 with soapy water, 1 with clean rinse water, and 1 with sanitizing water. We then taught them how to wash their mess kits using the wash bins.
After breakfast, the Patrol went on a 3 mile hike to finish up their Webelos walkabout requirement.
By the time that they finished their hike it was lunch time.
After lunch, the boys went off to explore the camping area and play games. I brought them over to the cooking station for 5 minutes to explain to them how to melt some candle wax in a water bath and then sent them back on their merry way.
Once the wax melted, they packed some sawdust into a cardboard egg crate and I gave it a healthy coating of the wax. We let that cool for another 15 minutes and then I cycled the boys, one at a time, through making kindling and then how to start a fire.
They each made a fire teepee with the kindling and one of the fire starters that they had just made. Once it was burning, we went over the fire triangle, and then they put the fire out by dumping sand on it with a camp shovel. The other scouts worked on woggles while I cycled them all through the fire training.
Once the sun went down at 5:00 pm, the boys made walking tacos for their dinner using ground beef, taco seasoning, and pinto beans. They also chopped up lettuce and tomatoes for their tacos. I made sausage tortellini soup for the adults.
After dinner, my older son who is a Boy Scout, built and lit a larger fire for us to all relax around.
I took the scout to my dutch oven cooking station and showed them how to start coals in a coal chimney. They then prepared a s’mores cake in the dutch oven using angel food cake as a base, covering it with graham crackers, covering that with chocolate bars, and then covering it with marshmallows.
We took the oven back to the cooking station and I showed them how to dump the coals from the chimney and place them on the dutch oven. We let it cook for 15 minutes, and then checked it every 5 minutes until it was done cooking at the 25 minute mark. We served the cake out to all in attendance and everybody loved it.
All the scouts were in bed by 9:00 pm and slept the night away.
