On June 24th, 2021, I went to Scout Camp. On July 3rd, 2021, I went home. During those ten days I spent every night in a tent with one of my friends, Celestine. We slept on two dark green single-sized cots that we had put our own bedding on. This was my first time sleeping in a tent.

Every morning, one of our leaders would wake us up. at 6:30 AM, make our beds, get ready for the day, and one or two people would be sent down for Kitchen Patrol or KP. After KP was finished, the other scouts would head down for breakfast, and after we ate, we went to class.

On the first day, we went to the Handicraft Lodge for Basketry, Leatherwork, and Woodworking classes. On the following days, we stayed at our campsite. During Basketry class, we made a medium sized basket out of wooden reeds we had soaked previously. It was square at the bottom and round at the top. I struggled with weaving the bottom under the base of the basket, and I snapped a reed in the middle of the basket, One of my scout leaders had to stick a new one in. After completing it, we moved on to a smaller basket; this one was also made out of wooden reeds. It was a circle at both the bottom and the top. It had a circle base instead of a square one. And after finishing both of these, we made small chairs with rope seats. We glued the wooden rectangles and short wooden cylinders together, and weaved the rope around the corners.

For Leatherwork class, we made a keychain and leather circle. For the circle, we took a flat piece of leather and metal print pieces and printed little symbols, our names, and our troop numbers, on the leather. For the keychains, we got two colors of vinyl chord and wrapped it around a key ring. We were told to weave it to make a square shape going up. All of us, Celestine, Maeli, and I, struggled. It took a while for me to understand what I was doing, but after a while I got the hang of it.

For Woodworking class, we were taught about hard and soft wood, we made a block of wood with our initials on them, and we made a matchstick or hatchet neckerchief slide. For the block of wood, we took the block, put our initials on them in bubble letters, and carved around them. For the matchsticks, we took a stick with a block at the end and a handle on the side of the stick. I made a matchstick so I had to carve the square into a circular shape. The leaders actually ended up working on it for us and gave them to us to finish it off.

My favorite experiences were when my troop and I made friends with troop 6282, when we went to Iconium to get Ice cream and floats, and when we went swimming. We didn’t get to as much as I would have liked though. Doing these things was very enjoyable for me, and it actually helped when one of my friends needed to go back to camp, but didn’t have a buddy to go with because they hadn’t shown up. So, Maeli and I walked with them back to their camp.

My least favorite experiences were when we had snakes in our tents and bathroom, the spiders in our tents, and all the rain. Once when we were supposed to have a campfire, it started raining. So we were invited to 6282’s troop campfire. We had a lot of fun! We did skits, songs, and stories for a long time. My favorite one was when we all screamed the chorus of I Want It That Way by The Backstreet Boys. We later found out that there was a snake that had gotten into the bathrooms and needed to be caught. When we came to camp, we found at least three spiders in our tent and there were four in another tent. They ended up naming two of them Cheese and Cracker. I also hated the rain. It rained most of the days that we were there and it stopped us from doing a few things including swimming and having the campfire I mentioned.

In conclusion, I had a lot of fun at scout camp, I learned a lot, and I made new friends. I learned things that will help me in my own personal life like manners for when I’m going out or first aid for when I get injured. I’m excited about the things I will learn in the future. I can’t wait to go to camp next year!