Pacific Jamboree – 2015

The Pacific Jamboree – 2015 was held near Sooke BC, in July this year. Here are some shots from our fun filled week, hopefully showcasing the great time we had with 3000 of our closest friends!

1. Opening Ceremonies – crowd shot

2015-PJ15-28thVancouverScouts by 28th Vancouver Scout Group, on Flickr

2. The addictive fun of badge trading

2015-PJ15-28thVancouverScouts by 28th Vancouver Scout Group, on Flickr

3. Close Quarters

2015-PJ15-28thVancouverScouts by 28th Vancouver Scout Group, on Flickr

4. Unbelievably, they let ME throw a hatchet!

2015-PJ15-28thVancouverScouts by 28th Vancouver Scout Group, on Flickr

5. Learning Scuba

2015-PJ15-28thVancouverScouts by 28th Vancouver Scout Group, on Flickr

6. Pole Climbing

2015-PJ15-28thVancouverScouts by 28th Vancouver Scout Group, on Flickr

7. Rock Climbing

2015-PJ15-28thVancouverScouts by 28th Vancouver Scout Group, on Flickr

And so much more!!! The 7 day event was a blast, and you can see how much fun it was in the whole album:
https://flic.kr/s/aHskha4Pge

I hope you enjoy viewing as much as we enjoyed doing!

4 days at Cape Scott Provincial Park

Mrs Dragonspeed and I went on a 4 day hiking trip with our Venturer Scouts to Cape Scott Provincial Park. For those that don’t know where it is, here is a map to give you an idea: Cape Scott Hiking Map

Here are a few photos from the beautiful wilderness of Northern Vancouver Island:
1. The lush rainforest

Winding through the Rainforest by Brian Hampson, on Flickr

2. Sunset on Nissen Bight

Sunset on Nissen Bight by Brian Hampson, on Flickr

3. Sunset on Guise Bay

Sunset on Guise Bay by Brian Hampson, on Flickr

4. The old road

Old Military Road to Lighthouse by Brian Hampson, on Flickr

5. White Sand Beach – All to yourself!

White Sand Beach all to yourself by Brian Hampson, on Flickr

The whole photo album is here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonspeed/albums/72157657136513430

I hope you enjoy your short visit to our coastal rainforest Comments and Critique are always welcome!

Winter Camping at Manning Park with the 40th Marpole Scouts

The Scout section was out camping at Manning Park last weekend.   (pictures: http://www.fotothing.com/albums.php?action=viewphotos&albumid=3801 )

 

We arrived on Friday to find 50 Army Cadets and all their associated leaders busy moving into Lone Duck 2 (with all the gear that the military brings with them) and 3 Scout groups already settled into Lone Duck 1.  The parking lot was like Highway 1 at rush hour… you couldn’t move anywhere!

 

We unloaded and chose the area we were going to camp….  The meadow area was undisturbed, except for a little detail.  There were about 4-5 feet of snow on the ground!   We dug and dug and dug, until around midnight we were all finally in our tents, cozy, with the outside world at about -8C.

 

Saturday morning was chilly and a light snow kept falling.

 

By late Saturday afternoon, the weather had warmed up and it was now rain.  Yeach.  We persevered, and all the Scouts did a great job at handling the weather.  It was tough.  Dinner was a welcome, warm addition. 

 

We spent a bit of the evening in the shelter talking to some of the other scouts, but then called it a night at 2100 – we were all bagged. 

 

It rained A LOT on Saturday night, with some real winds whipping it around all night long.  By Sunday morning, all the snow was gone from the trees.  We had a good breakfast, a scout’s own and due to the logistical problem of our planned departure time (the cadets had two buses that were going to be in the parking lot at noon!) we opted to load up and get out of dodge without having lunch.   A wise decision. 

 

All in all, I’m really glad we didn’t go the weekend before – the dangerous roads just were too much, although  I WOULD have liked it if it had been a bit colder and stayed SNOWY the whole weekend while we were at camp.  C’est la vie, I suppose!

 

Cheers!

Camp Log – Golden Ears Provincial Park

As promised, here is the camp log from one of our scouts…

Friday October 12, 2007.

As usual, I got off school early on Friday so I got home, took a bath and finished off some homework. The time passed so quickly that it was time already to head to the Scout hall. I happened to be there on time so I started to help out pack up for the camp. I ended up going into Scouter D’s truck with Tom Dick and Harry. We headed off first to McDonald’s for dinner. I ordered a Big Mac Meal and it was supposed to be a normal sized meal but for some reason, they gave me everything super sized. I was happy about it and since there was the Monopoly Prize game going on, I won a free Root Beer. I saved it for later because I was already having Root Beer as my super sized drink. I was superbly full after that tremendously sized meal. I got back into the car and Scouter E was leading the way this time so I just sat and rested a bit before arriving at camp. At camp, the Scouts, Recruits and Venturers were unloading the truck while Harry and I worked on the lanterns. When I finished doing that, we took our tarps and started setting up for our shelter. Our shelter was the partially the most important thing for us in this camp because it’s the thing which we are sleeping under. I was the almost the last one to sleep that night. That night it was kind of cool so I wore sweatpants, a long sleeve shirt and a long sleeve fleece to sleep. I was so warm. Before that, Tom and Dick said that the tarp was too low so Harry, Joe and I went to help fixing the tarp. Harry decided to throw his knife up the tree but he wasn’t too smart about it. He threw the knife up the tree and then the knife got stuck. It twisted around the branch three times. It took us about ten minutes to get the knife back down. Scouter D was looking at us do that and he said the knife was going to be stuck in the tree and it happened to be that he was right. I helped Joe tie up the rope around the tree and then suddenly, Harry said the tarp was still too low. Unfortunately, Joe and I had to untie the tarp again and pull it up then tie it again. Something happened to the knot I tied. It was a dead knot. Harry, Joe and I couldn’t untie it so we used some of our knives’ tools but none of them worked. I took out the screwdriver and gave it to Joe. It took some time before we could get the knot untied. I set my watch to 7:00 in the morning along with some other Recruits too.

 

Saturday October 13, 2007.

Today, I got up late because my watch wouldn’t ring, in fact, none of our watches rang. No one knew when to get up so we just kept sleeping and sleeping until Joe awoken and started shouting, wake up at all of us. We started boiling hot water when we got out of our shelter. Harry and I went to look at the Scouts cook their meals so we could make sure that they were doing what was right in safety measures. I had eggs and bacon for breakfast today and one thing that wasn’t nice was that TMan was cooking eggs for us and he was making scrambled eggs and he let go of the frying pan, then he dropped all the eggs except three left. Everyone who didn’t eat yet got really irritated including me. Afterwards, Scouter D brought us to our shelters and taught us how to fix it. It took us some time to do that. When that was finished, we had lunch. Lunch happened to be better than our breakfast. We went on a hike after that I think. When we came back, we worked on the fire making for that night’s campfire. I found it amusing because I had nothing to do. I got up later on and started making dinner by boiling water and then boiling potatoes. We had an awesome dinner that night. We had barbecued pork, vegetables, and some potatoes. I ate so much that I was over satisfaction. We had sometime to clean up after and because we finished off pretty quickly, I was ordered to set up the lanterns. After, I went to Scouter D and his camera. They were doing something very unique. They were drawing with lights on a picture. I tried it too and I wrote my name. I looked like a ghost in that picture. We had a campfire after that and that campfire was very small. We had a game after that but no one really wanted to play because they were really tired. I was kind of tired too. I was beginning to get cold and then when we ended the game, we went back to the camp site and everyone went to bed as soon as possible. Joe wanted my help and I was willing to because this job he gave me was fun. We had to pile all of the wood onto the campfire and turn it into ash. We piled all the wood at once and the fire grew so hot it was amazing.

 

Sunday October 14, 2007.

Today I woke up on time and started to make breakfast. Two of us made breakfast while the rest of us went to pack and take down the shelter. I was feeling weird today. I had two sausages for breakfast. I had to go to the washroom after I packed up. I had a stomach ache. Then Tom called fall in and I was done already, fixing up my belt inside the washroom. I was late sixty two seconds so I had to run lap after we broke off. We went on a hike around the park and it was very relaxing. We learnt some stuff about the trees. We went back to the camp site and then we had lunch. I was somewhat eager to go back home. We had Scouts Own later on and so we left our knives at the table and headed down to the beach. The road was pretty long comparing to the other roads. I was bored so after the Scouts Own, I threw rocks into the water. I found this huge odd looking rock after which looked like a flat piece of rock, around 20 inches wide, and two inches thick. I threw it into the water and splash! There was the piece of rock spinning on top of the water. I was surprised a rock, so heavy could spin on the water like that. I found some clay and wrote my name on the rock. I dried later on and I liked it being there. We left pretty soon after that to the Scout Hall. I was happy to go home after that. 

 

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