Monday, September 12, 2011

ALERT Cadet Alabama 3rd Alpha

This past weekend we had the Alert Cadet Squad up at the camp.  I believe when the numbers finally came in there were a total of 12.  Vernon and his two boys were the first to arrive on Thursday afternoon and quickly set up camp.  He was the head man or 'General' for this particular outing and definitely an experienced camper.  I got this directly from their website, "The vision of the ALERT Cadet program is to “turn the hearts of fathers to their sons and to assist fathers in winning and keeping the hearts of their 8-17 year-old sons.” 


ALERT stands for Air Land Emergency Resource Team.  Vernon had been to the camp before and we communicated via e-mail several times during the week.  He wanted to know if there was any particular project they could help us with while they were here and just so happened I had a couple !  Now he had a schedule already made out from the time they arrived until their depature which was Saturday at noon. 

Thursday, I took him around on Easy and pointed out a couple of problem areas that could use some clean-up.  Several of the guys brought tools and equipment and made quick work of these tasks.  They did a great job, we could really use more groups like them. 
They did some hiking and some specific projects related to ALERT as well.  They could not have picked a better weekend as the night temps were in the 50's and days hovered around the high 70's.  I asked if they had any encounters with critters and one of the guys said they thought there was a situation that envolved a large snake...only to later find our it was one of those sneeky black belts that get loose occasionally and coil up somehow. 
I also received a call early in the afternoon on Saturday about a lost shoe from one of the boys.....well it seems that maybe it had actually been hidden.  Mom put her son on the phone and he told me right where it was so I went and retrieved it.  This is not the first time a shoe had coming up missing here at the camp.  All in all I think they enjoyed themselves and we enjoyed having them.  We definitely look forward to future outings from the ALERT Cadet Group. 

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