Troop 128 descended once again on Camp Wortmann. The boys built fires, split wood, went on a hike, played games and watched the sunset along with an awesome campfire.
Camp Wortmann is now owned and controlled by the Hartland Christian Camp. Hartland was awesome, when we got there they had set up the toilets and the lodge, they had a nice jug of ice water out on the table and they had people come twice per day to clean the facilities. We really did not know how to handle that. The price we paid them was the same as it has ever been since the boy scouts owned the property but now there is service. Even knowing that there is no cell reception on the property, they gave us a radio and a key to their medical facilities in case we needed them. Very well run camp indeed, we already have our reservation in to go back next year.
Even though we did not have any snow or really cold weather, it was still a great time. The land up there is beautiful with sequoia trees a plenty. This year we were able to go on a hike in some of the nearby forest lands and we hiked to Bethany Falls. This is a beautiful, short hike with incredible scenery. We got some nature and land navigation work in on this hike and had a great time. We have been coming to this camp now for years and had never been past Camp Wortmann before. This time we got to see some of the surrounding lands that we would never have seen if we had only ever come up here in January.
The boys worked on fire starting and every boy was able to start a fire utilizing a flint and steel. The boys learned the finer arts of chopping and splitting wood in the axe yard. We also had an short game of capture the flag. On saturday night they had a campfire. No skits at this campfire, much to the disappointment of Mr. Green, but we did perform the announcer's test and we retired a HUGE, 20 x 40 foot garrison flag. That alone took almost 30 minutes or maybe more to complete!
In the evening, the boys played some board games and card games, they probably would have liked to play more, but they were also very tired at night. These guys went to bed earlier in the evening this time than I have seen them in years of coming here.
As is typical, the food was great. The Assistant Scoutmasters allowed Mr. Green a cooking vacation, but it was still hard to keep him out of the kitchen.
All around, it was an awesome weekend and here is to hoping we can get more boys to go in the future.