This is the worst campsite ever.

Time for a funny story from camp. I wish I'd have been able to make it, even with not being the Scoutmaster anymore. I had some other commitments and was unable to attend, though. It's been a long time since I missed a summer camp.

So I had made reservations for summer camp well over 6 months early and specifically picked a certain campsite that was off by itself, large, yet with a sweet little spot where you can park your car and not have to handcart or pack your stuff all over the place.

Apparently by the end of the week, nerves were wearing thin, and some of the boys were looking for things to complain about. Nothing new there. :) They started saying how much they hated their site. It was so far away, not enough trees, too close to the road, blah, blah. They were all united in being upset that the camp director had put them out in this wasteland.

That was until the new SM, Brother Bentley, had enough with the griping. He pointed out that the camp director didn't stuff them out in no man's land. Smyth made the reservation, and he chose the campsite. Look at the other sites. They're tiny or there are groups of 5 or 6 of them piled on top of each other or they're right on a busy trail so everyone is walking around or through their camps all day.

Oh. Well, yeah, I mean, Smyth picked a good site. Yeah, it's pretty nice, with water close by and a big area to spread out our tents in, and everybody isn't cutting through our camp all the time.

It was great. As soon as they knew I had picked the site, they liked it. I had picked it for all those reasons, since I'd been there before. It's just funny how quickly the tune changed, and it made me feel good that the complaints stopped when they knew I had hooked them up with an awesome site, whereas when they thought it came from some random dude they didn't know, it was a terrible site.

Time Off

I've gotten used to it. Not being the SM, that is. I was released with some reorganization that was done in the ward a little while ago, and I haven't gotten around to coming back here to talk about it. Part of it is because of the mixed feelings I have. The Bishop didn't want to burn me out too much, especially with some grad school stuff going on. I'm still serving on the Troop Committee, so I help out where I can.

The thing that has slapped me around and brought me back to the blog after a 5 month hiatus (that was after a year of posting at least once a month), is that I was just asked to be on Woodbadge staff again. I'm excited about it. I hope to be able to recruit some great people in our ward and stake.

It has been great to see the new Scoutmaster picking up all the training and going to some great council-sponsored activities. The new guys are doing a great job. I hope I can get at least one of them to my Woodbadge course.