Monday morning began with formation, flag raising, and announcements. One by one, the various units were released to the chow hall for breakfast.
The first morning we had french toast and bacon. Neither were terrific, but they weren’t terrible either.
All meals at scout camp end with a staff-led song. I don’t remember what song this was, but everyone was “getting down.”
After breakfast we met some of the instructors for COPE. COPE is challenging outdoor personal experience. It seems to consist of three phases. Day one consists of games and activities centered around getting to know the other participants. Some of these games were just fun, like Ninja, but others were team-based problem solving exercises.
In this exercise the scouts stood in a circle holding onto handkerchiefs. Then in a series of moves, the instructors moved handkerchiefs from one hand, through the center, and back to the scout. This created a pretty intricate “Gordian knot.” This used to be done holding hands as a “human knot,” but apparently someone dislocated a shoulder, so they have gone to this technique. The scouts worked for a better part of an hour trying to step into and out of handkerchiefs to untie the know without letting go of the handkerchiefs.
The other half of our kids participated in an exercise to get their whole group across an acid lava spikey pit of doom, The only object that could touch the acid lava without being destroyed were the two four-by-fours with ropes attached to them. It was interesting to see how the kids from our crew took charge early in these games.
The obvious solution is to stand on the boards and coordinate walking with them. This is difficult, but possible. Maddie came up with the idea of using them as balance beams instead, getting as many folks as possible on one beam and then passing the beam from behind them to in front of them. 
In the end, the group ended up using both techniques as some of the scouts were more comfortable with one technique than the other.
After a morning at COPE, we went back to the chow hall for lunch and then played volleyball against some of the staff during “siesta” time.
They have a very nice volleyball court at Broad Creek with well-marked boundaries. We joined the staff, who were playing after lunch. I was having a particularly good serving day.
Tom demonstrated some of his JV volleyball prowess — and getting angry at the lack of rules being followed.
Erin scored a few points with her serves.
Maddie did well, also; although, she might have done better with her eyes open!
After siesta we headed back to the COPE area for climbing. All the kids took a turn at the climbing wall, most twice. The consensus was that the rock bits were easier to climb that the 2×4’s.
The kids all seemed to have a really good time climbing the tower. We left the climbing area in time to make it back to change into Class A shirts for the flag ceremony and dinner. After dinner we participated in a conservation project. Our project was to use hedge cutters and scythe-like weed whippers to clear portions of the yellow trail which had become overgrown. Tom, Ryan, and I spent a fair amount of time trying to cut trees that had fallen across the path with two inappropriately-small hand saws. It was good for working off a few dinner calories but was not the most effective way to clear the trail!
