June 5, 2010

Did you ever go on a campout? Tell about it.

I went on a lot of campouts during my youth. I did a lot with the scouts, a lot in the from yard or around the farm and even did one with a summer biology class where I saw my first flying squirrel. I slept on the ground many times and didn't seem to have much problem with it. I slept near lakes and rivers and had many wild animals come around during the night and really quite enjoyed all of those times. I did not however ever go on any campouts during the winter so when I was a scoutmaster and took the boys up on the bench above Mapleton you can only imagine the fear and trepidation that I was feeling as I slept in the cold for the first time. Well I have now spent many nights in the snow as well and love the fact that I know I can be comfortable any time of the year camping in any kind of weather. I may not enjoy some as well as others but I can do it.

June 4, 2010

Tell about hotdog or marshmallow roasting.

My father made an outdoor fireplace in our yard down in the area where our apple trees were planted. It was only about 150 feet from the house so it made carrying items of food easy to take to tables near that fireplace. We use to do a lot of summer meals at that fireplace and I have a lot of memories from roasting hotdogs and marshmallows to cooking hamburgers and dutch oven dinners in and around that fireplace. I remember one time when dad decided that he hadn't built it quite right since the fire was about 25 inches or so from the heavy metal plate that he had placed at the top to cook hamburgers and stakes. So he put a bunch of bricks in the bottom of it and then built the fire on top of them and it really worked a lot better. It was always quite cool to me how when the fire was burning all of the smoke would go out the chimney and curl it's way up into the air. Sometimes it didn't but most of the time it did. We held a lot of family, school and church parties around that little fireplace and it was really a lot of fun. That might even be what made Ruth decide to marry Clair because she came to meet the family and we had dinner by the fireplace and then Clair played the guitar and sang to us or rather sang to Ruth while we listened. He proposed after that sometime and she said yes so it had to be the romance fireplace. We later went hunting petrified wood and found two large 4 foot long stumps that we placed by the trunks of the apple trees upon which people could sit while eating. Then dad also made a large grape arbor and put tables inside of that where we could sit around them. It was really a lot of fun.