Logan the Scout

I was never much into Scouts. I had some decent leaders but it just was not my thing. Logan on the other hand likes Scouts and I have absolutely no problem with that. We had a Court of Honor this evening and Logan received his Wolf along with some other awards.

Logan putting the pin on his mom.

Like I said, I have no problem that Logan is into Scouting. I am pretty proud of my kid.

The Pine Wood Derby

I have never participated in a Pine Wood Derby. In fact when I first heard of them I thought everyone was only kidding around. That was something from the movies and not real right?

Nope.

I never made it as a varsity scout in Canada and when I moved to the States I pretty much lost interest in scouting. It is just not my thing. I will support it and I will support Logan in scouting but that will be my extent. I am not sure what turned me off from scouting, I didn't mind doing some of the camp outs and things. Looking back it might have been some of my leaders who were a little too gung-ho for my liking.

So I have never participated in a Pine Wood Derby. I have never been to one, I have never even seen what one looks like. So when Logan brought his kit home I was both excited and intimidated. I don't know much about working with wood, I don't think I have carved or done anything with wood. And here I was supposed to help Logan make a car out of a block of wood!

Grandpa even made a little pilot for the car.

Thank goodness for Grandpa Breinholt. He came up to help Lynn with her house and he volunteered to help out. Even when he smashed his thumb and went back to West Jordan, he still came up and helped Logan with his car. Grandpa built the car and weighted it carefully and put on all the wheels and Logan painted it. I do have to admit that I was relieved that Grandpa was helping out.

Last Thursday night was the big competition. There were about 30-40 other kids and their cars there excited to race. We first had a nice quick dinner that was provided and then the real competition started.

Logan looks so serious here with his arms crossed (on the left). He was all business.

That was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I was a little surprised at how anal precise the people that ran the show was.

This was one of Logan's 1st place races

Logan did pretty well. At least I think he did well, remember this is our first one. He had four heats and placed 1st in two of them. He took 2nd and 3rd in his other races. He was certainly proud of himself.

The Lake Alice Adventure

Day 194

By now you should know that I am not much of a camper but I will venture into the wilderness every once in awhile. This time it was back when I was in 9th-10th grade and we went out as a Scout Troop to Lake Alice in Wyoming.

Now I was not much of a Scout either. I would rarely attend meetings but I thought this week sounded pretty fun so I decided to go. Most of the guys in my church ward were going and it did sound like a lot of fun.

The trip to Lake Alice seemed to take forever and we were all rowdy. I felt bad for Tavis's dad who volunteered to drive and come with. We must have drove him nuts. He was especially cranky when it came to all the road work. We would be driving maybe 2 miles an hour as they paved a new road. The heat was already unbearable but add fresh asphalt to the mix and we were getting all cranky.

But we finally got to Lake Alice and it was nice and cool. It was a real beautiful area. It was about a 2 mile hike to get to the lake so we had to carry our canoes the whole way. We left the canoes up there so we didn't have to drag them up to the lake everyday. Lake Alice was created by a massive landslide resulting in a lake that is three miles long and over 200 feet deep. Rumor has it that Lake Alice got its name from a little girl named Alice that drowned in the lake.

The first night didn't help my attitude about camping. It rained that night and day and unfortunately Damond and I put up our tent right in the middle of a depression so our tent and stuff was fully flooded. It took almost the whole night to get my pillow dry as I sat by the campfire. But as time went on I began to enjoy my time at Lake Alice.

One of the things we did was we made a homemade zip line. It worked really well and went down a rocky embankment down about thirty feet. We used a branch/log to hold on to while we zipped down until Dusty broke it. It wasn't his fault really, the rope burned through the wood and made it weak and he crashed down onto the rocks making a horrible wet thumping noise. His back was really scraped up.

But the thing I remember the most about this trip was the bear. Or the moose. Maybe it was just a deer. Or maybe it was Sasquatch or the Wendigo. We don't know what the heck that thing was.

We were up at the lake doing some fishing and it became quite dark. The leaders were back at camp and all of us scouts were up at the lake. It got so dark that we could barely see the shoreline as we canoed in. Suddenly up by the shore we saw this large black shadow moving toward the lake. And it stopped right where we come up onto shore! We couldn't tell what it was, the only thing we knew was that it was HUGE. We paddled closer and we shined our flashlights at it and then we caught its eyes. These yellow eyes that stared back at us. And each yellow eye was far apart from the other so this creature must have been huge. Tavis began to paddle closer saying "It's just a deer, it's just a deer!" and then he would suddenly change his mind and paddle right back out yelling, "That's a bear! That's gotta be a bear!" He repeated this a couple of more times. "Okay, I think it is a baby moose." And he would paddle in closer. And sure enough we would get closer and he would paddle back quickly, "That's a freaking bear!" Damond started to throw his fish guts at it which didn't make sense to me. He wanted to scare the creature away and if it was a bear, why would you throw fish at it, essentially feeding it?

Finally it left and we paddled to the shore and quickly got our stuff together. Tyler took the fish and said he would carry them for us and lead us down the trial. He would throw the fish at the bear (if we came across one) and we would then run. The rest of us scouts armed ourselves with paddles. And we ran almost the whole way home. I don't think I have ever gone 2 miles more quickly than I did that night. And we sang songs, anything to to be loud and get our minds off of being eaten by some horrible creature of the night. We got back to camp safely and the first thing our leaders asked us was why we carried the paddles back to camp.

By the time we came home I think everyone was tired of everyone else. Spending a week together was more than some could handle and our leaders were really happy to come home. I think they got tired of our endless chatter and pranks and doing stupid stuff. One of our leaders was getting frustrated with our trailer of canoes, he kept trying to line them up and was about to lose it. He couldn't tell from his rear view mirror if he was backing up correctly so he decided to roll down his window and look out himself. Tyler knew he was going to do this so he rolled down his window (he was sitting right behind him) and stuck his head out just as our leader looked back. Tyler scared the crap out of him and our leader was so mad. I don't think we dared talk or laugh for at least an hour after.

Split Rock Cave Horror

Day 94

I was not much of a Boy Scout when I was younger but occasionally I would go with the guys in our neighborhood on some camping/scouting trips. I like the outdoors but I am more of a city guy. I can spend time outdoors but not for long times. A week is about where I hit my limit.

One of these week-long summer trips was down in Southern Utah. We were going to hike some of the canyons in the Canyonlands. For those unfamiliar with the terrain, it is extremely dry, hot and rocky. We drove down the hundreds of miles in the summer time and it was miserable. We spent about eight-nine hours cramped in this family van and the air conditioner was going out. But we finally made it.

(This is not the actual cave but it shows how big the mouth of the cave was.)

We were going to stay the night at Split-Rock Cave, which is exactly what it says. It is a huge rock with a split right down the middle and has a cave that goes all the way to the end. We were all tired of being cramped in the van and so a bunch of us went into the cave for shade and to stretch out. This cave was big. You could have driven the whole van into it easily.

We all walked into the cave and journeyed all the way to the end. The crevasse was a few feet wide at the beginning but by the time we got to the end, it was only a inch or so. It was nice, cool and dark at the back of the cave. A few of my friend sat down but I remained standing. We talked and one of my friends, Danny said how creepy being at the back of the cave was. As a joke I thought it would be funny to nonchalantly pick up a small stone and chuck it behind him to freak him out. I picked up a rock without anyone knowing and threw it behind him. It hit the wall and rolled to his back.

And that is when we ALL freaked out. As soon as the rock hit the wall, the wall started to spread out and move away from where the stone made its impact. Danny and my other friends that were sitting jumped up away from the wall. Everywhere we looked the walls were moving.

And in a scene ripped right out of the movie Aliens I looked up at the crack in the ceiling which was only a foot or so above my head. The sun light was creeping in so we could still see a little. In the crack was thousands of spiders all crawling over each other.


(I was going to post of pic of a bunch of spiders but that wigged me out too much!)

And we ran more like Girl Scouts than we did Boy Scouts. And we refused to stay the night in the cave even though that nest of spiders was deep in the cave. Our Scoutmasters were furious that we had to find another place to stay the night. But there was absolutely no way I was going to stay in that cave and get my face eaten off!