Twice the fun!

It was a first -- at least since we've been up here -- two separate groups camping out at the same time. We had the Royal Ambassadors group from First Baptist Huntsville and Cub Scout Pack 94. Sleeping areas had been arranged ahead of time and everything seemed to go very well.

Wes Blake from First Baptist had come up to the camp early on Saturday morning and brought a bunch of food and the cooker. He then headed out until the afternoon because of soccer tournaments and such.

Around 9:30 am the scouts began to arrive. I went out to meet them and to chat for a bit. They hung around the pavilion for a while, built a fire and did some other things. They camped out in the middle field just off the main road and around lunchtime, they began to get serious.


They asked if it was okay to build a fire ring up there and I thought it was a great idea.

They did a great job making a double fire ring.

Around 2:30 pm or so, folks from the other group began to wander in and set up their tents in the main campground.

I moseyed on up there and spoke with several of the guys. Most of them had begun to setup some different events in the upper field.

Wes had some kind of catapult set up with a unique name, but I can't remember what he called it. If I'm right on the story, it was a leftover science project. It was a pretty cool contraption. The boys had to make several different calculations in order to fling the object to the desired spot. String length, weights, how far you pulled it back, when you let it go, how you held your mouth, the wind . . . I don't know what all went in to the figuring. Certainly it took an engineer!

At a second station -- which was real popular with the boys -- they were shooting air rifles at soda can targets.

And further on done the meadow, there was a station with some of the men teaching the boys how to shoot a bow and arrow.

Just before supper time, Denise and I wandered over to the cub scouts' camp, checking out the commotion going on over there. It seems they were playing a game called "Chase Your Tail."

The boys were confined in a circle (made up by the adults) and each had a length of rope tucked down into their pants pocket at one end, and dragging the ground at the other.

The object was to step on another person's rope (tail), so that it came out of the pocket and landed on the ground. The last boy with his 'tail' intact was the winner. They were really getting into it!

We were taken around the campfire by Glen Smith, the scout leader, to check out what dinner would be.

There was some spaghetti stew that smelled really good.

And on the other side of the campfire, someone had some chicken chili that looked great.

We were invited to join them later.

We made our way back to the other group. They were getting ready for some flashlight tag, then some burgers and dogs cooked on the grill, and finally some s'mores. Doesn't everyone like s'mores? We took Easy and took a drive around the camp before heading back to the RV to finish watching the game. Once that was finished, we eased on over to the RA group and had a little dinner.

It was very good, and plenty of it. After chatting with some of the folks there, including John Shocke, Easy took us back over to the scout group.

We were just in time for some homemade peach cobler, cooked in a Dutch oven over the camp fire.

It was great as we hung around and listened to some stories and ate warm peach cobbler by the fire. We thanked them for their hospitality and turned in for the night, but the wonderful smell of the campfire lingered on. Glen said they planned to have a small service in the morning right after breakfast. Everyone from both groups was gone by around lunchtime and both groups did an excellent job cleaning up.