Merit Badge University

Article submitted by Seth F.

          Saturday February 19 Old Missions District 3rd Annual Merit Badge University was held at the LDS Church in Hayden, ID. Over 180 scouts were in attendance from about 20 different troops.

          What a great opportunity to earn a few merit badges! The Python patrol had a good showing with half of the patrol attending. They included Finn, James, Kellen, Scott, and myself. Also attending were Tyler, Jose, and Daniel W. It was a busy day with several merit badges offered including, Aviation, Cinematography, Electronics, Geocaching, Nuclear Science, Photography, Scout Heritage and Space Exploration just to name a few. After the opening ceremony at 8:30, everyone broke off into their different classes. Lowes was gracious enough to volunteer to do five different merit badges which included Electricity, Home Improvement, Salesmanship, Plumbing and Woodworking. Some of us had to be transported to Lowes to attend these classes.

          Lunch was served at the church at about 12:30. Then it was back to work again for the last two classes of the day. The Closing Ceremony was at 4:45. At the end of the day, I think everyone felt like they had learned a lot. The second leg will be held on March 26th, same place, same time.

Klondike 2011

We are at Camp Cowels and we are here because we are preparing for klondike. The weather we very, very cold bet we were able to set up everything in the when it was still light outside.

When we got to the campsite, we got all the gear unloaded and got the adult tent and the scout tents set up. Once all the tents were set up, we got all our stuff that we brought with us in the tents. Then, once that was done, we set up the dining fly. We got the dining fly up in about 10 minutes. After that, we got out the burn barrels and started a fire. Some boys ate their dinner by the fire and some boys ate their dinner under the dining fly.

The next day we got our sleds ready for the Klondike and went to the flag ceremony. The first task that we had to do was we had to push our patrol leader up a hill, on our sled. I am happy that the Sharks patrol leader wasn't Gabe. Gabe is really tall so he would be very hard to push up the hill. My patrol went to the upper course so that when we finished we would be closer to the finish. We did the whole hill and went back down and did the lower course. When we got to one of the lower course stations, our patrol leader was unconscious (he really wasn't) and we had to carry him on a stretcher (made out of a tarp and 2 staves) with snow shoes. We had to do this because if he really did go unconcious we would have the material to make a stretcher and get him out of there.

When we finished, we got some soup and went back to camp. Out of our whole troop, we came in first. This was the best Klondike ever! this klondike was probably the most funnest one that i have been on in my entire life because my patrol was very comunitave and we worked together as a team.
The next day we tore down everything, packed up and went home safely. When we got back to the Scout Shack, we unloaded the gear, hung up the tents and went home.

I would, most definitely, want to do Klondike again.
Posted By: Devin C.