Camping–Day 1 (136/365)

“It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.”
― Dave Barry

TIME:  10:32 AM to
PLACE:  Camp Butterfly, Farmington MO
SUBJECT: Scenes from Camp

Stella and I went camping with the Girl Scouts.
It was raining when we arrived.
And it rained off and on pretty much all day.


Stella found this guy in the bathhouse.


During one of the breaks in the rain, it stopped long enough for the girls to go canoeing.
Stella and her friend Devin paddled while I rode in the middle.

After we returned to shore, they gathered clay and mud from the shallow water.


Stella gave my feet a mud treatment.

Forest (173/366)

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Essayist, Poet and Author of fiction and travel books, 1850-1894)

TIME:  5:57 PM
PLACE:  Boy Scout Camp
SUBJECT:  Woods

MB has been at Boy Scout camp this week.  Tonight was Parent Night.  HH had a ball game to coach so it was just me.  I left straight from work in  the Miata.  When I arrived I found out that earlier in the day, while MB was chopping wood, he had suffered heat exhaustion.  They cooled him down and replenish his fluids and he recovered just fine.  In fact, if they didn’t tell me about it I wouldn’t have guessed that he had issues earlier.

 
TIME:  7:56 PM
PLACE:  The road
SUBJECT:  View from the car

I left and enjoyed my drive home with the top down.  I head back on Saturday to pick up him and his gear – I’m going to have to use the Jeep for that, so I have to take “top-down” time while I can.

I Like Turtles (127/366)

“All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882)

TIME:  10:32 PM
PLACE:  Girl Scout Camp
SUBJECT:  Turtle

I guess our little talk with the girls worked.  They begged me to take them on a hike this morning before we left for home.  We took a different trail and ended up finding this turtle near the end of the walk.  He looks a bit grumpy though.  Kind of like the girls were yesterday.

A Fungus Among Us (126/366)

“Not ringed but rare, not gilled but polyp-like, having sprung up overnight—These mushrooms of the gods, resembling human organs uprooted, rooted only on the air.”

William Jay Smith (b. 1918), U.S. poet. Morels (l. 12-13). . . Book of Nature Poems, A. William Cole, comp. (1969) The Viking Press.

TIME:  12:59 PM
PLACE:  Girl Scout camp
SUBJECT:  Mushrooms seen on a hike

After we arrived at camp, we had the girls stow their gear in the cabins, ate lunch and then we went on a scavenger hunt hike.  We had to find and take pictures of several different items one might see on a hike.  My charges, the Brownies (ages 8-9) ended up being one of the whiniest bunch ev-ver!  They moaned & groaned & complained about being hot, sweaty and tired from all that walking.  The other leader and I had to have a talk with them about the proper way for Girl Scouts to behave at camp and how anyone who complained would not be receiving their hiking badge nor would they be allowed to camp next year.  They straightened up and ended up having fun despite the heat & humidity.

Lake Edge (195/365)

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Essayist, Poet and Author of fiction and travel books, 1850-1894)

TIME:  5:56 PM
PLACE:  Boy Scout Camp
SUBJECT:  Lake edge view at MB’s campsite

It was Parent’s night at MonkeyBoy’s Boy Scout Camp this evening.  The HandsomeHusband and I drove out to the campsite to eat dinner and to see how MB is holding up on his week away from home.  He’s hanging in there, although he did ask if we could come back tomorrow to take him home.  Nope, we told him, he’s paid up until Saturday morning and we’re going to get our money’s worth.

Lichen And Bark (064/365)

“Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 1, p. 411, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

TIME:  2:25 PM
PLACE:  Girl Scout Camp
SUBJECT:  Lichen on branch

The two girls and I left at 10am this morning for an overnight stay at Girl Scout Camp with StellaDella’s troop.  It was cold and rainy, but the lodge we stayed in was warm, dry and had its own kitchen and bathroom.  I had volunteered to oversee the craft activities and assembled three different crafts for the girls to make.  They also went on three hikes, performed a skit and of course, made s’mores around the campfire.  Even with all of that, they were still up, running around like crazy, until midnight.

Scout Camp (190/365)

 
“A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp.”

Raymond Duncan

TIME:  5:18 & 6:13 PM
PLACE:  Boy Scout Camp
SUBJECT:  MonkeyBoy at his tent and the Lake

Well, he survived the week.  And it wasn’t until Thursday night that he was homesick enough to have to borrow a leader’s cell phone and call home.  Tonight was Family Night ~ I ended up going by myself and was able to spend some time alone with my boy.  He said he had a good time while at camp ~ he swam, canoed, did archery, rifle shooting, kayaking and earned several merit badges.  We had the option of taking our camper home this evening.  To avoid driving back tomorrow (and due to the number of things we have going on Saturday morning), MB ended up coming home with me tonight after the ceremonial campfire ended ~ around 9:45pm.  He was so tired.  He told me that he didn’t sleep well all week; he kept waking up at night because he wasn’t in his bed and missed me and HH.  He quickly fell asleep in the car, but woke up when I pulled into Mickey D’s for some ice cream.  After eating said dairy dessert, he went back to sleep and slept until we arrived home.  He stumbled out of the Jeep, retrieved his pillow from the back and went straight upstairs to his bed.  Unpacking will have to wait until tomorrow.

Casting Iron In The Fire (086/365)

 
“Cast iron is so superior for cooking utensils to our modern aluminum that I not only cannot grieve for the pioneer hardship of cooking in iron over the hearth, but shall retire if necessary to the back yard with my two Dutch ovens, turning over all my aluminum cookers for airplanes with a secret delight.”

Majorie Kinnan Rawlings, 'Cross Creek' (1942)

TIME:  4:13 PM
PLACE:  Girl Scout Camp
SUBJECT:  Cooking pots

StellaDella’s Daisy troop had an overnight camp-out this weekend.  DramaQueen went with us as well.  We left today at 11am and plan on returning tomorrow at noon.  Another mom started the campfire and she and I oversaw the cooking of the chicken legs in cast iron pots.  The girls covered the legs with BBQ sauce and cola and we took them out and set them in the fire.  In about an hour they were done.  They tasted pretty good, SD had two of them for supper.  We also hiked, played outside games and made some crafts.  We are sleeping inside “lodges” that have bathrooms and a small kitchen – for that I am eternally grateful.