Tuesday, June 23, 2009 - 06:05 AM

Skymont-A great Place to Be

Scout Camp 2009

Each year, Troop 594 has a summer scout camp in June. With last year being at Woodruff, the scoutmasters chose a different place this year – Skymont. Skymont is a huge 4,500 acre camp in Tennessee. It sure is a great place! Some of its big hits are its C.O.P.E. course, shooting range, ecology lodge, and the aquatics center. The climbing tower and zipline were also very impressive.

Now that you know basically what the camp has and is, I would like to share with you what our troop did all week. Arriving on Sunday, we unloaded our luggage, and a staff member brought us to our camping place. Tents were already set up, and every meal except Wednesday was provided inside the dining hall. (On Wednesday we cooked hobo meals over the campfire.) The meals were pretty good for a summer camp.

The merit badge days were Monday thru Thursday in which we worked very hard. Some scouts attended the non-required rope C.O.P.E. course. Troop 594 earned around ninety badges during the week. Some merit badges included: soil and water conservation, astronomy, emergency preparation, oceanography, and swimming.

Friday was a fun camp-wide games day. The scoutmasters challenged the staff to a volleyball game and surprisingly won by about one or two points. Other games included the eggdrop, archery, shooting competition, and the scavenger hunt. Our troop competed in most of those.

Later, at night the same day, everyone came into the woods for a bonfire. There, each troop made up and did a skit on the platform. Next, the camp-wide awards were announced. Troop 594 definitely won more of them than any other troop. First of all, since we were neat and tidy, we won and got to paint two places on the Cracked Skillet Award. Also, we were awarded the Camp-Wide Games Award. Hunter Lewis also received an achievement for being the best in camp at archery. And the most important award our troop earned was the Montosky Moccasin Award. We had to do a bunch of requirements to achieve that! This was my very first time at scout camp, and I was impressed by the way Skymont was run.

Matthew Carpenter