March 24-26 was a Troop 66 camp out at Sunrise Park. It was a patrol competition camp out. A patrol is a group of scouts. There is a patrol leader and an assistant patrol leader. To choose a patrol leader, some scouts volunteer to become a patrol leader. If only one scout volunteers to become a patrol leader, then they become patrol leader. If two or more volunteer to become patrol leader, the remaining scouts have a vote.
For the competition there were things like fire building, first aid and cooking. The cooking competition was at lunch where each patrol had to make a meal. One person from the senior patrol tried some food that each patrol made. The senior patrol is a patrol of some of the more experienced/older scouts. They decide what the troop is going to do and make sure no one gets hurt or lost. I’m not sure how the senior patrol assigned points for the cooking portion because I am not part of the senior patrol.
After that, we did a search and rescue exercise. No one was actually lost or hurt; it was just practice. Two groups of two from the senior patrol went to random parts of camp and the other patrols had to find them. Every ten minutes they would call out something random which would help us figure out what direction they were in. It helped my patrol find some of them.
There was an adult patrol for the competition. There isn’t usually an adult patrol. They had to do the cooking competition, fire building and first aid but they didn’t do search and rescue.
On Saturday, once the competition was done, we made a massive fire, even though it was raining. The senior patrol brought a massive dead log down to the fire. It took four of them to push it and they had to saw it in half to put it in the fire. The logs were so big that they never fully burned.
The winner of the competition was announced at our next meeting. My patrol lost by half a point. Everyone had a great time though.