April District Camporee--Willow Park, Lehi, UT

The April 2012 camp was in a very familiar place for us, Willow Park in Lehi. We usually camp here in February and November traditionally, since it's at about as low an elevation as we can get during our colder months. And we know we can build big fires to keep us warm and practice our skills cooking over a fire.

This time Willow Park was the location of the District Camporee. The Silver Mesa District sponsored this event so we were happy to have a camp that gave us the opportunity to just show up and be enthusiastic participants.

We were set up in our respective zones, which consists of about 8 to 10 troops each. Our zone had a nice open place with two tables and fire pit and plenty of room to set up tents.

It was nice to have the opportunity to camp with the rest of our zone and get to know other scouts and their leaders and enjoy the association of the leaders of the Sandy Central Zone.

Dinner was whatever each scout or leader wanted to plan for themselves. We saw everything from Lunchables,   Dinty Moore Beef Stew, to "tube steaks" cooked over the fire.

Kee was kind enough to set us up with very nice cedar to use for the fire and we enjoyed a nice warm fire late into the evening.

After dinner the entire district joined in wild games of blind soccer. This is done by having the scouts paired up into twos with one scout blindfolded and the other scout not blindfolded. Only the scout who is blindfolded could touch or kick the ball, with the idea that his teammate would shout directions.

Unfortunately, the blind soccer only lasted a short time and then broke down to just regular soccer as some who were blindfolded were not really all that "blind" after all. But they still had a lot of fun.

Breakfast was an all-you-can-eat pancakes and sausage breakfast. The sausage had bacon mixed into the links  figuring anything with bacon in it has to be good. And it was!

The scouts had their tent knocked down in the middle of the night by a rogue troop in the district, but didn't seem to let that stop them from sleeping in. Max finally stumbled out of the tent just in time to join the morning games.

The games were really fun. The entire zone worked together at each station and it was a great experience for them to learn to work together even though they didn't all know each other very well before coming to this camp.

There was a station set up to complete a service project removing some of the excess brush around the camp.

There was a station set up where they had an imaginary alligator pit and they had to build a triangle shaped set up poles lashed together then have the victim walk the contraption to safety. This required the important skill of lashing, as well as teamwork to move the poles with the victim.

Unfortunately, our victim died probably three times and never made it out alive. In addition to falling back into the pit a few times, one of the lashings failed to hold.

Another event required the scouts to move a container of  "nitro" and safely pour it into a containment bucket without losing the container. I think they blew each other up at least twice on that one.

Then they had to get close up and personal and get everyone to stand on a box or log for at least 10 seconds.

A fun event that challenged the scouts was to get 7 or 8 scouts across a large railroad tie with half the scouts going to the east side of the log and half the scouts going to the west side of the log without falling off. This one took some strategy and a lot of cooperation to figure out, but eventually they got it done, then could do it over again very quickly.

All in all, it was a great camp and thanks to the Silver Mesa District for organizing and hosting such a fun event.