[Philmont]: RE: have a good weekend?

We went to Shenandoah National Park, southern region this weekend. We
did 6 or 7 miles on Saturday on the Jones Run/Brown's Gap/Doyles River
trails. The waterfalls were quite pretty. Sunday we did 10 miles on the
AT/Rip Rap/Wildcat trails with beautiful views from rock formations.
Only 8 of the 12 of us made this trip. The boys worked really well
together and made my son's job as crew leader pretty easy. They
perfected our bear bag hanging technique - well after someone got the
rope untangled from the tree branch. Dining fly set up went OK -- now we
all know how to do it and will re-string the sides before the next trip.
We also used our two new stoves for the first time. (The ones we had
been using can't be taken to Philmont because they use the wrong kind of
fuel.) We also hiked at a good, but comfortable pace and I was usually
sent up front since I am the slowest hiker - the one with the shortest
legs.

We had a wonderful trip to the central region last month. This month,
however, the bugs (gnats, mosquitoes and flies) were out in tremendous
numbers joining us anytime we stood still for longer than 10 seconds. On
Saturday we found a nice, slightly sloped campsite for the night. The
bugs thought it was nice too. By the time we had the dining fly up,
there were swarms all around us. Cooking wasn't too bad, as the bugs
stayed away from the stoves. All the boys had shirts on their heads,
over their faces and it looked like we were all wearing veils. We
couldn't sit down to eat as we had to keep moving and use one hand to
swat the bugs. We had lots of "pepper" in the mashed potatoes and
spaghetti. Everyone had pitched their tents early but didn't dare open
the doors. Finally at 8:30 we all went inside and promptly went to
sleep. The light rain on Sunday morning kept the bugs away and gave us
practice putting on raingear and pack covers. By lunch the rain had
stopped and the bugs were back. Makes you eat really fast!

Made us all wonder -- Are there bugs at Philmont?

The other crew from our troop went to the central district this weekend
and we are eager to hear of their experiences.

Diane Mikulis
Troop 757, Glenwood, MD

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-philmont@troop47.com [mailto:owner-philmont@troop47.com]On
Behalf Of Robert Haig
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2003 7:01 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list philmont
Subject: [Philmont]: have a good weekend?

>From the lack of recent list activity I'm assuming (hoping) that
everyone is off on a shakedown hike. A 3-day weekend is the perfect
time
for some final fine-tuning...

I'm curious to hear where everyone went and how their trip went.

--
Rob
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As you gather around this virtual campfire with fellow
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Listserv Commands at http://usscouts.org/lists/lc.asp
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Send listserv commands to: listserv@troop47.com
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As you gather around this virtual campfire with fellow
Scouts and Scouters, do your best to be trustworthy,
loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
-------------------------------------------------------