Author: bucksurdu

The kids really enjoyed their 24+ hours afloat.  I wasn’t with them (as described in my previous post), but I’ve included some pictures that Candy took to give an idea of what the kids did.  As they set sail, it was raining, but by mid day the rain had abated, the weather turned nice, and they began to enjoy themselves more.  Living in Maryland, many of the kids have been on boats before, but the captain, “Skip,” literally showed them the ropes and had them manipulating sales and taking the helm.

On the way out of the Inner Harbor, they passed the Francis Scott Key buoy.  This is thought to be the location from which he watched the bombardment of Ft. McHenry the night he wrote The Star Spangled Banner.  Tommy said that you could barely see the fort from this point.  You can see that it was still overcast when they passed this point, but Tommy thought that he could probably only see the flag and not the fort itself.  Certainly this would be true at night.

 

The kids prepared meals for all on board, including Skip and his first mate.  Lunch was simple fare — salt beaf, hard tack, and rum.  Actually, it was ham and cheese sandwiches, but that doesn’t sound as nautical.  For dinner they made cheese burgers on Skips shipboard grill.  Breakfast consisted of French toast and bacon.

About 4:00 they dropped anchor near Annapolis.  The kids broke out Skip’s foldable boat and played in the water for an hour.  Scuttlebutt is that the water was warm if you kept moving, but was chilly if you sat still.

After dinner they played more Kung Fu Fighting and then hit the sack.  The girls took up the V berth below decks.  Tommy and Ryan had to sleep on deck, which they didn’t mind until about 11:00 PM when it started to rain on them.

The first thing Erin had to tell me when I met them at the dock was that she got to pilot the ship under the Bay Bridge.  Skip said he doesn’t often let the Sea Scouts do that, particularly on their first voyage.  Tommy said that Erin was quite good at maneuvering the boat.

On the way back to the Inner Harbor, Skip’s engine overheated and began smoking.  They came into the harbor on just wind power until the last mile or so when Skip turned the engine on long enough to approach the dock.  In addition, over the emergency radio, they heard a report of a boat taking on water and saw a Coast Guard boat speed by to rescue them.

Before releasing the crew, Skip sat them down and complimented them on their performance and attitude as well as the way they quickly learned the needed skills.  This has become a common theme with the Venture Crew.  There’s lots wrong with American society and our largely ill culture, but the kids in the Venture Crew routinely impress me with their maturity, teamwork, and support for each other.  This is a tremendous group of kids, and they are a pleasure to be around.  You parents out there should be proud of these kids!

By the middle of the week, the kids were starting to get worn out.  After the late-night Kung Fu and all the physical activities, the kids were showing some signs of fatigue.  I was getting worried that they weren’t having much fun on Wednesday, but by the end of the day, they had perked back up.

I had a lot of trouble getting Tommy and Ryan out of bed.  In fact, they barely made it to the morning formation.  I guess they were up half the night goofing around.  I remember those days when I was a kid when you could talk all day to your best friend about nothing and just have the best time.

We did finally make it to formation and breakfast.  The kids had some trouble with the powdered eggs, but again, I thought they were okay — particularly for camp food after a strenuous day.  After breakfast, we were off to high COPE.  Normally, they would have done a second day of low COPE, but since many of the Venturers had other activities scheduled for Thursday and Friday, Scott wanted the kids to get a taste of high COPE.  The kids all got to do three events, while taking turns belaying and helping in other ways.  The three events were the giant’s ladder, which was meant to be a two-person, cooperative event, a traverse of a two-rope bridge, and a zip line.

The first two people up the giant’s ladder were Maddie and Sammy — the shortest kids in the group.  While they both struggles somewhat, they helped each other get up the ladder.  Sammy was actually able to shinny up the cable between the rungs!

 

Erin did a very nice job helping her partner up the ladder.  He was struggling a bit, but Erin didn’t seem to mind the height and helped push him up to the next run.

I don’t know if the kids appreciate these scout experiences.  I didn’t get to do things like this until I joined the Army.  How much easier Beast Barracks and the Infantry Officer Basic Course would have been if I had had these opportunities!

The instructors said that to be an instructor you have to be able to traverse the giant’s ladder solo.  Tom basically negotiated the ladder himself while helping Ryan, who has an injured shoulder.  Tommy and Ryan were trying to set a record pace for the day.  Tommy really made the ladder look effortless.

Looking a bit tired after two and a half strenuous days and a big lunch.  Instead of climbing, the kids elected to go back down to the waterfront to sail and perhaps ride the giant float/tube again.

Because the floats were both broken, the scouts decided to get in these little two-man sail boats and sail into the river.  Left alone on the dock, without even a buddy with which to swim in the bath-warm water, I elected to ride in the power boat with two scouts who were trying to learn to ski.

After both of the scouts had several tries, coming close to getting up on their skis, I was able to get in the water and ski myself, which was fun.

After dinner we set up some cones in a big field and started our own nine-player ultimate frisbee game.  The teams were Mike, Tommy, Sammy, and Michela vs. Jamie (Michela’s dad who joined us for the day), Ryan, Maddie, Erin, and me.  Our team got stomped 10 to 3.  We were hoping to attract other interested players so that all of us could play on the same team, but most of the Venturers were at the pistol range.  It was an intense game, and I think everyone had a great time.  I was once again reminded that I am no longer 20.  Following our game, we all sat around joking.  I picked up blade of grass to put between my thumbs as a reed to make noise.  All the other crew members started doing it too.  Ryan went for loud and ugly, nearly coughing up a spleen.  Maddie could actually play notes and did a pretty good job of emulating “To the Colors,” the bugle call used at morning and evening formations at Broad Creek.

As we were getting ready to take a shower, “Bongo,” one of the camp commissioners, told us that they had set up a camp fire in our camp site and wondered why none of the Venturers were participating.  As I mentioned earlier most of the Venturers were at the pistol range, so this was just a matter of one too many simultaneous events.  We told him we were going to take showers and then would join the program; however, they were filing the pool, which meant there was no pressure in any of the showers, so we just wandered over to the camp fire.  As we all had an early morning ahead of us, we all elected to go to bed before 10:00 PM.

 

Tuesday began with an early wakeup and reveille formation.  As we were getting ready, we thought these tents were on fire, but then we realized that it was just the condensation re-evaporating in the morning sun.

People like to complain about prepared food.  We live in a society of critics who have never done anything themselves but like to complain about the deeds of others.  (Google the “Man in the Arena” by Teddy Roosevelt to wind your way to it on the politics and humor area off my main Web page.)  I thought all the food was good.  It was generally tasty, and there were almost always extras for seconds.  In addition, they always had out the ingredients for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the most finicky eaters.  My philosophy is that if you complain about hot meals three times a day, you just have never been hungry enough.  In any event, I thought Broad Creek did a good job with the meals each day.

Tommy, Candy, and Michela “getting down” with the post-breakfast sing-along.

Tuesday morning we returned to COPE for what is almost always my favorite event of these COPE weeks:  low COPE.  Low COPE doesn’t have the drama of climbing the “giant’s ladder” or walking a two-rope bridge 40 feet in the air, but I think it is a much more interesting and fun experience.  Much like the leadership reaction courses used by the Army for decades, low COPE involves a series of problem solving events that stretch the creativity and teamwork of the group.  On Tuesday the Boy Scouts working on a merit badge were separated from the dozen or so Venturers from several crews.  The combined Venture crew, calling themselves “The Super Velociraptors” after 15 seconds to come up with a name, went through the events together all morning.

The now-sentient Super Velociraptors trying to escape from the evil mad scientists lair so that they could eat all humans.  The first challenge was to get across a acid lava spikey pit of doom, but only the plastic disks could touch the lava.  Also, if the disk was in the lava without also touching a velociraptor, it would be incinerated and lost.  After a few minutes of planning — and even a rehearsal or two — they set out on their journey.

This involved the lighter scouts riding on the backs of the heavier scouts as they slid and inched their way across the acid lava.  There were 14 or 15 kids and only 6 of the protective, floating, acid-lava-resistent disks.

Throughout the exercise the kids demonstrated good communication and problem solving skills.  I was quite proud of our kids.

Another event involved getting a tire off of a pole without the tire touching the pole or any of the scouts touching the pole.

A physically strenuous event involved getting all the kids up and over a wall.  In the picture above the staff in the black shirts were not helping get people over the way, but were merely spotting for safety.

The scouts quickly realized that the heaviest kids needed to go over the wall in the middle of the pack, while the lighter kids needed to go toward the beginning or end.  Here Maddie is pulled and pushed over the wall.  Scott was so impressed with this group that he gave them another challenge: to get him over the wall, but he would be a limp body and not help at all.  This involved a fair amount of risk — and no small amount of pain — on his part, but the kids came through with flying colors.

This event, called All Aboard, had an obvious solution.  The rules were that in order for the teleportation pad to teleport the super velociraptors to their next challenge, each person needed to get one foot on the pad, one foot in the air, and no feet on the ground.  The obvious solution involved slowly adding people in a balanced way around the pad; however, Erin came up with this unique solution, which solved the problem quickly and with little effort.  Scott, the instructor, seemed pleased with the unique solution.

The final group even of the day involved passing the entire group though the tire, representing a hole in the wall.  The rules to this event changed several times during execution.  At first they had a pair of glasses that they could pass back and forth that enabled the wearer to touch the tire without being incinerated.  After one or two people made it through, the glasses were stuck on one person’s head and could no longer be transferred.  Then later, they could only talk in velociraptor language.

Again the kids did very well during this and all the other events.

On Tuesday the kids decided not to go to climbing in the afternoon again, but instead relax for a couple of hours and then head down to the waterfront to ride the big float being pulled behind a speedboat.

During the siesta, we again played some volleyball.  The boys seemed oblivious to the fact that we were playing with three, pretty, teenage triplets.  They were more interested in the game.  Sigh.

Zzzzzzzz.

We linked up with transportation to the waterfront about 1600.  The direct route to the waterfront is not fully paved yet, and so we took a circuitous route to a public peer and then took a speedboat to the waterfront.  The goal of this journey was to ride the float being pulled behind the speedboat.  Unfortunately, only six people were allowed on the boat at any one time, so all the adults had to sit on the shore.  The water, heated by the Peach Point nuclear power plant, was like bath water.  Even if we couldn’t ride with the kids, it was relaxing to just float in the water.

Eventually both of the floats broke, coming back to shore as wilted pancakes.  The aquatics director took a few of us out on the boat with a knee  board.  I didn’t quite get the hang of it, but he said that Sammy was the best knee board rider all Summer.

Maddie managed to get up on the knee board, but like me, she never quite got her knees fully into the divots in the board and so didn’t have a smooth or long ride.

We missed dinner because of the late events at the shore; however, they set aside plenty of turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn for the 20 or so of us who came back late.   We watched the pistol range safety class while eating, because the kids were interested in shooting on Wednesday evening.  Then we took some late showers and played a game of Kung Fu Fighting (a card-based game) before hitting the sack.

 

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!

Sunday, just before noon we rendezvoused at “Scout Hall” to take five of our eleven Venturers (one would be joining us later that evening) to Broad Creek for Venturing Week.  This was a week set aside by the scout camp for Venture crews.  The turnout was much better than last year, but there still weren’t enough to fill the camp, so additional Boy Scout troops attended as well.

We drove up in two cars full of kids and baggage, arriving just as registration began.  It was a little disorganized, and we weren’t sure where to go, because there was no one to meet the Venture crews and orient them.  Eventually we figured out that the girls were in one camp and the boys in another.  We unloaded bags and occupied tents.

We wandered down to the pool area, where we all completed the swimming test — all passing.  A couple of the youth leaders gathered the Venturers for some team building events and game, including Captain on the Deck.

Another activity planned by the youth leaders was tie dying shirts.  For those crews that didn’t have Class A uniforms, the tie dyed shirts were meant to suffice for V-week.

Everyone then got into their Class A uniforms for evening retreat ceremony on the parade field, followed by dinner in the chow hall.

At dark the camp staff put on a terrific campfire show, including a number of really humorous skits, many of which I hadn’t seen before.  The camp director, Hank, gave a stirring rendition of a poem with all the lights turned out.

The show concluded with the camp staff singing the Broad Creek song, and we all filed back to our tents for some shut eye.

 

After spending a little time walking around all the little shops in Estes Park, we bid farewell to sunny Colorado and headed for Nebraska.

On the way to the booming metropolis of Minden, Nebraska, we stopped in Kearny for dinner.  Just off I-80 was the Buffalo Bill Cody trading post and museum.  The museum consisted of a few small displays toward the back of a 60’s-style souvenir shop.  They did have some interesting clothing and weapons as well as a 1:16-scale replica of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.  The souvenir shop had all the goofy stuff I remember in souvenir shops as a kid.  It was a nostalgic break from the long drive.

When we arrived at our hotel, the only hotel in Minden, we saw these and several other Model A Fords in the parking lot.  A group of old car collectors was meeting in Minden to participate in a car rally in Kearny the next day celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Lincoln Highway.  We spent more than a half hour talking to a couple of nice antique car enthusiasts.  Now Tommy wants us to buy a Model A.

The purpose of stopping in Minden was to see the Pioneer Village.  It was created by Harold Warp, who made his fortune in plexiglass in the 1940’s.  When the one-room school he attend as a kid was about to be torn down, he bought it an started Pioneer Village.  This was a terrific, family-owned museum that is every bit as good (perhaps better) than the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI.  There were 30 or so separate buildings, many the size of warehouses, full of antiques.  One of the things that made Pioneer village interesting was that all of the antiques were arranged in chronological order.  There was a building full of Chevy’s from the earliest cars to the 1970’s.

Most of the displays had nice, descriptive signs in front of them.  I learned a great deal in the short time we were there.  We spent four hours in the museum, but we could have easily stayed for two days.

In one building they had some docents who showed the kids crafts, like baking on old coal stoves, making lace, or (as above) making brooms.  The gentleman working with the kids was personable and informative.

One of the more interesting displays showed kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms from 1830 to the 1970’s.  These displays, again in chronological order, were separated by about 30 years, so it was a nice way to see how technology developed over time.

This was an interesting display of an early car air conditioner.  Imagine attaching this onto the car window (in some cases it was displayed on the driver’s side)!  None of the vehicles were restored, being in the condition in which they were acquired, but most of the vehicles were in running condition.

There was a reasonably-priced snack bar where we got hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch.

I found these two displays very interesting.

That night we stayed in a ho-hum hotel in Minneapolis.  After an ordeal returning the rental car to the airport and taking a combination of light rail and taxi, Sam and I returned to the hotel for bed.  The next morning we were up early to pack and take the shuttle to the Amtrak station — just in time to find out the train was almost two hours late.

We barely made our connection in Chicago, but once on board our sleeper car, we enjoyed a relaxing journey from Chicago to Harper’s Ferry, WV.

On the train from Minneapolis to Chicago we adjourned to the club car and played a game of Phase 10 while enjoying lunch.

We had two “roomettes” on the train.  A roomette could seat two people very comfortably.  At night the seats were made into a lower bunk.  The upper bunk folded out of wall/ceiling, just like in old movies.  The kids deemed having their own roomette as “awesome.”

Food on a train is quite good.  Meals in the dining car are included in the price of staying in the sleeping car.  Unlike on airplanes, where you get fed extruded meat paste if you get any food at all, on the train you get real food.  We each had steaks, vegetables, and baked potatoes.  Service was slow at dinner, so we’re not sure if the steaks were really excellent or whether they just tasted good because we were VERY hungry.  When we returned from dinner, our beds had been made up.  We had brought our desserts (cheesecake with strawberries) back to our rooms, so we ate dessert while watching a few Mickey Mouse cartoons on my laptop.

The next morning, after Tommy and I had hot showers just down the hall from our roomettes, we all went to the dining car for omelets and French toast for breakfast.

Our train arrived in Harper’s Ferry about 30 minutes late, where my parents picked us up.  Our car had been cluttering their driveway while we were gone.  After a nice lunch we headed home, our vacation completed.

We only have about eight states left to meet our goal of visiting all 50.  Planning is underway for next year.

 

After a short drive from our hotel near Aspen, we arrived at the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.

The views along the highway during our drive were impressive.  Though shot through the windshield of the car, you can see in this picture that I-70 running eastward was at one level and running westward was at another level.  At some points this height difference was as much as 100 feet.  At one point, we went around a mountain, but I-70 westward, high above us, went through a tunnel.

We had actually visited this park three years ago, and we’re trying to not repeat sites until we get to all 50 states; however, Rocky Mountain was on the way home from Arches.  The last time we visited we hiked sites on the eastern half of the park.  This time the plan was to drive the western and northern roads, ending in Estes Park on the eastern side.

We began our visit with a short hike to Adams Falls.  The picture shows the upper half of the falls as they approach the overlook.  The falls then curve 90 degrees and continue to drop.

We could have continued this hike another five miles to some mountain lakes but only took it as far as this first mountain meadow.  We wanted to get up into the mountains.

On the way up the mountains from the visitors center, we saw quite a bit of wildlife.  Like in Yellowstone, it’s easy to determine when someone has spotted an animal, because a traffic jam forms.  In this picture you can see a moose grazing in the meadow.

Moose are typically active at dawn and dusk and tend to stay in tall foliage.  The other moose we saw on this trip were standing in tall grass and were difficult to see.  This one was right out in the open.

Not far up the road from the first moose we encountered this pair by the side of the road.  While they did not seem overly concerned by the cars passing them, they did keep a wary eye on us.

 

We took a nice short hike through another mountain meadow.  There were nice descriptive signs along the marked trail that explained different aspects of what we were seeing.  In this picture, Tom, Sam, and Candy are testing just how cold this mountain stream really is.

Along the road we passed this group of mountain sheep.  They were actually quite some distance away, but I happened to have the long lens on the camera.

 

Along the drive we stopped at a number of scenic overlooks.  This one, at Gore Range, is soon after we crossed the continental divide but just before we reached the highest point along the road.  We had just passed a sign saying that we were two miles above sea level.

 

We stopped at a parking area with a trail that led to this rock formation.  It was a short, but surprisingly difficult, walk at that altitude. The marked trail passed through terrain classified as arctic tundra.  We saw a few large marmots running across the path during this walk.

At the top of the rocks we found this dial.  The marks on the dial are used to aim your view in a particular direction and then indicate the number of miles (sometimes several hundred) to another mountain peak.  We were at 12400+ feet above sea level.  Note that even in late June, we could still see snow.

While we certainly weren’t at the highest mountain peak, we were at the highest easily-accessible peak.  The views were terrific.

 

After a couple more hours at Disneyland, we got on the road for a grueling drive through the Mojave to Moab, UT, to see Arches National Park.

Along the way we passed by Barstow, CA, the site of the National Training Center, and Victorville, the site of the DARPA robotic car Urban Challenge.  We also had a chance to overdose on chili dogs at Weinerschnitzel, one of our favorite fast food restaurants when we lived in Texas.

Despite a very late arrival in Moab, we get started bright and early at Arches National Park.  This was the first stop on this Summer’s trip where we had a lot of heat.

The famous arches of this park are formed by snow and rain eroding the sandstone of the mountains and hills.  Over time, “fins” are formed in the mountains.  The fins often erode to from arches, and then over time the arch becomes so thin that it collapses.  The park offered several opportunities for short hikes (1 to 3 miles) as well as longer, more-serious hikes.  Due to the heat, we only took the short hikes.

One of our first stops was the trailhead for a short hike through the “Park Avenue” formations.  They have this name, because the series of rock formations look a little like a city skyline.  This one looked to me a little like an Easter Island head.

This was a one-way hike.  Candy dropped off Tommy, Sam, and me and then drove to the other end of the hike to pick us up.

One of the more famous formations in Arches is the Balanced Rock.  You can walk pretty close to this formation, but there are signs everywhere to stay on marked paths.  What looks like just sand and gravel is covered by a microscopic “biocrust” that is damaged by footsteps but is essential to minimize soil erosion and as part of the food chain in the region.

We took at short walk to see the North and South Window arches.  Not far away are two more arches, called the Turret Arch.  A disappointing aspect of this park was the huge number of people.  It’s not too obvious from this picture, because I waited until the crowds had passed to snap the shot, but everywhere we went, we were fighting crowds.  We did take the “primitive trail” around the back side of these two arches.  That might have been the only time all day that we weren’t in a big crowd.  The people in this picture help provide some sense of scale for the size of these arches.

After a picnic lunch we took a short hike to the observation point to see the famous “Delicate Arch,” the unofficial state symbol for Utah.  The walk was hot and dusty.  The arch itself was a bit of a disappointment.  While impressive, unless you want to take a six-mile hike to its base, you cannot get very close.

I think what makes Delicate Arch interesting is that it seems to be standing all alone.  The other arches are still part of massive fins.

While driving to see the Landscape Arch, we passed Skyline Arch, which might have been the most picturesque one we saw all day.

Landscape Arch (toward the left of this shot) has an interesting story.  The arch stretches over 100 yards across.  In 1971, when tourists were allowed to walk up to and under this arch, tourists heard cracking sounds and pebbles began to fall.  The cracking provided warning for the tourists to flee just before 180 tons of rock fell from the underside of this arch.  This is as close as you can get now.  At its thinnest, Landscape Arch is around six feet thick now, and it’s unclear how long it will remain an arch.

About 1600 we got back in the car and headed to Colorado to position ourselves for touring Rocky Mountain National Park the next day.