February Camp @ Willow Park in Lehi

Our February camp out this year was one of our traditional cold camps at Willow Park in Lehi. In contrast to our November camp at Willow Park that had strong freezing winds, rain, and snow, the weather was excellent this time. At least we didn't have much in the way of winds to make things uncomfortable.

Instead, we had calm weather and crystal clear skies. But that meant it got very cold and very frosty throughout the night.

Our camp was in the northwestern corner of the park by one of the group pavillions. Sometime over the last few months they created three new small camps near the pavillion. We were anticipating that there would be a bunch of scout troops and a full park. But there were only 2, maybe 3 troops in the whole park and no one else camping that we could tell.

After setting up tents, the scouts were able to start a fire using flint and steel. We've become so reliant on lighting our fires matchless, we found a number of times we've forgotten to bring matches altogether. We did have matches to light the lantern this time however.

Everyone cooked their dinner over the fire or used hot water. We saw everything from elaborate foil dinners to hot dogs roasted over the coals. Richard likes to cook his dogs very well-done and we've determined his new name is Burn Master Black Smith, or BMBS for short.

The scouts played night games until about 10 o'clock while the leaders sat around a very hot campfire. The night got progressively colder and frost was forming on everything well before getting in our tents.

Ben lost all the air in his mattress in the middle of the night and his two Yorkies were shivering, so he took them home and came back to camp around 7:30am. The rest of enjoyed breakfast over the fire. But the usual routine for Max P and Max M was to have Pop Tarts and Cold Cereal respectively.

The sun was a welcome sight in the morning and rapidly dried everything out that it touched. The temperature was in the very low 20's and my camera decided to not cooperate in the cold, so we only have pictures of the evening activities.

After breakfast, everyone enjoyed throwing rocks the canal that ran along the north side of the camp and into the Jordan River. Everyone got lots of mud on their feet, but enjoyed trying the break the ice that had formed in the canal.

We packed up and were on the road around 10:30am and were all home by noon to warm showers and warm houses.