Biker Dudes!

For our scout meeting this week we started early and took our last troop bike ride prior to heading to Camp Hunt. This is in preparation for a 50 miler around Bear Lake.

The weather was definitely warm and the sun pretty intense as we rode south and the west into the sun.

We decided to take on the Porter Rockwell Trail again in Draper. This time with the goal of going at least 5 miles out and 5 miles back for a total of 10 miles.

Not as many scouts showed up this time. We presume that's because summer has arrived and families are taking vacations and just generally busy with family based activities.

But for those that did come, we had a great ride. Most of the way south and west is uphill, though gradual for many stretches of the trail.

The sun was definitely in our eyes while we headed west. The nice thing about this trail is there are very few points where we had to cross a busy street other than 13th East. A bunch of great bike/pedestrian bridges have been built.


As we headed west we could see a lot of paragliders along the section leading up to Point of the Mountain.

When we past the 5 mile mark we decided that was a good point to call it half way. It has been a little over an hour as well.

The return trip went much faster as most of it was now on the downhill slope and much easier to keep the momentum up.

As a reward for completing a good ride and reaching our 10 mile goal, we took a detour to Dairy Queen for dipped cones and sticky fingers. A nice way to finish out the evening. Thanks Donald for the cones and a nice cooling down time at DQ!

Notice how Larry has a hard time finding his mouth! It was a two napkin event for him. Oh wait, that was Chris who needed the two napkins.

No more scout meetings until we head to Camp Hunt. Be sure your paperwork is in order and you've packed all the necessities for a fantastic camp in July!

June Means Prepare for Scout Camp!

One of the merit badges all 10 scouts will be working on Camp Hunt is the Fish & Wildlife Merit Badge. We've decided to all do this merit badge for a couple of reasons. One reason is it's an interesting merit badge. The second reason is it will help the boys qualify for one of the coolest scout patches--the World Conservation Patch. Or as Max P would say, "I want to get the panda patch!"

In order to earn the World Conservation Patch a scout needs to earn the following merit badges: Either Fish & Wildlife Mgt or Soil & Water Conservation, Environmental Science, and Citizenship in the World. (All the scouts who have not earned Enviro Science are signed up for that merit badge at Camp Hunt as well.)

To complete the Fish & Wildlife Mgt merit badge at camp, the scouts need to complete a requirement ahead of time. We thought it would be fun and interesting to build bird feeders and document the different birds that come to the feeder in the weeks prior to going to Camp Hunt.

Everyone already knows this, but we are so lucky to have Larry M as part of our program. We just asked if he could get some wood and design a bird feeder the boys could assemble on our scout night.

The results were awesome! The bird feeders were challenging enough to test the scouts' abilities to follow instructions and drive nails properly.

They also had to work in teams of two or more and it was great to see the scouts work together to accomplish their goal.

The end result was a nice bird feeder that each scout could take home, fill with bird seed, and observe what birds are attracted to their feeder.

Now each scout can be ready to complete the merit badge at Camp Hunt and be well on their way to earning the awesome "panda patch" as well.

Well done Larry for getting the supplies ready and guiding the scouts to a successful step earning another merit badge on their way to becoming Eagle Scouts!