Philmont Journal

Philmont Journal Day 2
October 19, 2008.

Had a 6:00 am wake up. got dressed, had a quick small bite to eat to hold us over until we had a full breakfeast a little was down the road. We had everything loaded and departed the house around 7:15 am. We head down to the colorado springs and then ended up eating a a place called the Cracker Barrel which is a country based breakfeast place. It ended up being a very good meal. Had lots of people approach us making very positive about the scouts or themselves being involved in the scouting program because we had on full uniform shirts. After that we drove to Trinidad, Colorado where we stopped at a walmart to pickup a few more last minute supplies for the trip and to go the the restroom. After that we loaded back into the vehicles and drove to the welcome to New Mexico sign were we took a few minutes to take a group photograph. Next we drove to Cimmaron, New Mexico and had lunch at a place called Hecks, I had no problem with the food since the food was very similar to the standard of food that you expect from a small town which is exactly like the food quality from where i live. I had a cheeseburger and then we loaded back into the vehicles to drive 5 minutes outside of town to Philmont Scout Ranch where we went to the check in center to check in. Once we arrived at the check in center I realized that I forgot my health form since my was not with the rest of the groups since I came at the last minute. Mr. Speights who is one of the adult leaders of the group got a hold of his wife and got the health form faxed down. Thank's Mrs. Speights for saving the trip, it is amazing what people are willing to do for certain organizations. After the adults determined the route we met with our guide who was Eddy. We distributed meals and the crew gear that philmont would be providing to us. We also had a final gear shakedown with our philmont guide to make sure we had everything we needed. We identified a few missing items that needed to be bought at the trading post. The guide left us at basecamp to spend a night in canvas tents with cots. After doing some final preparations we had a religious service. The religious service was a jewsih service which was very interesting learning about some of the customs of the service. This service was put on by one of our adult leaders Mr. Benzel. We then hiked 5 miles back into town which took until 7:30 pm to have dinner since philmont was not providing dinner that night. This time instead of going to Hecks we went to C&C which is a mexican place where the waitress ended up being overwhelmed with such a large group so late at night but that did not matter to us since we had all the time in the world. By close 9:00 we had finished dinner and ended up getting ready to leave. Instead of hiking back we took a car which one of the leaders brought just in case it was too dark and dangerous to walk back. We got back to camp brush our teeth and had taps at 10 pm.

Yours in Scouting Service
Mark W
Junior Assistant Scoutmaster
Troop 1616

Philmont Journal

Philmont Trip Day 1 Journal
October 18, 2008

Arrived in Colorado from Soldotna, Alaska. The flight I took was a red eye flight which got me into denver at about 10:15 am. At 10:15 meet up with friends from local Colorado Troop which I will be going with. This colorado Troop is Troop 780 based out of Castle Rock Colorado which is a suburb of denver. The reason why I went with this group was because before I moved to Alaska I was involved with this unit for a long time and became very close friends with many of the scouts and leaders of the Troop. Started driving towards Castle Rock and ended up going out to lunch and REI for last minute gear pickup for crew equipment. We got over to the friends house by 2:30 pm and by this time since i did not sleep very well on the flight took a short nap before the rest of the crew for the philmont trip started arrived. At approximately 4:00 pm the rest of the crew began arriving with gear. The purpose of coming over to the Benzel residence before leaving for philmont was because we had to leave fairly early in the morning to leave and also because we had to do a gear shakedown. At the gear shakedown we setup the Troop backpacking tents to ensure we had all of the correct pieces, setup stoves, check and cleaned the water filters, discussed what gear needed to go in our bags for personal gear, and discussed formulating a duty roster. After this we had a pizza dinner play some video games and went to bed.

Yours in Scouting Service
Mark W
Junior Assistant Scoutmaster
Troop 1616

Troop Meeting Review

After Meeting Review Troop 1616
October 27, 2008 Offsite Meeting
Central Peninsula General Hospital

For this nights meeting we had a tour and discussion of the services provide Providence Air Ambulance Service based out of Central Peninsula Hospital in soldotna, Alaska. For me personally this was a great opportunity because of the fact that I am interested in learning how to get into a career with a air ambulance service. I found out the answer to the question I have been looking at for sometime now which was great. After we had the helicopter portion completed we had a tour of the hospital conducted by Elizabeth Wilson who is the volunteer coordinator at Central Peninsula Hospital. I know Elizabeth really well because I am part of the auxillary their at the hospital, the auxillary is the volunteer department at the hospital. The tour went great and was very informal for many of our scouts.

After the the tour we sat down to run through the announcements, the scouts had a major problem with listening tonight for some reason which lead me to believe that most of the information was not effectively distributed but eventually the scouts will learn that announcements are very important. After gneral announcements I released the scouts minus the leadership group from the meeting. The leadership group talked about having a meeting to get the camporee planned and have a PLC meeting this coming sunday for 4 hours. This may seem like a long time but is not even close to the amount of time i will have to spend in order to plan the camporee since our unit is hosting the camporee.

Yours in Scouting Service
Mark W
Junior Assistant Scoutmaster
Troop 1616