Author: admin_xnrdk3

This was a fantastic trip for all of the scouts. It was a challenging trip but yet not too challenging to prevent less experienced scouts from having fun.

DAY 1

We met up at the church around six in the morning and hit the road around at seven. However much we all wanted to kayak, we would have to spend two full days driving there. We stayed at a lodge that night and got to enjoy not having to set up tents.

  

Day 2

 

We headed out from our cabin for another day of driving. But when we stopped for lunch, we all got to stretch our legs and played some hacky sack. When we got to our campsite, some of the kids went on a hike to see some cool waterfalls that were close by.

  

Day 3

After we left camp, we arrived at our outfitter out in Bayfield. They assigned us guides for our trip, who then took us through a safety course. After the course we were out on for our first day on the water, which was a nice ten mile paddle. The weather wasn’t great, it was raining but luckily no thunder. The real challenge was when we had to do a channel crossing that took about an hour of non-stop paddling to complete. Despite this challenge, we reached our campsite and were given a lovely sunset to reward our efforts.

 

Day 4

   

Our officially second day of paddling, had very little of it. We decided to take the day off from paddling and go for a hike to explore the Island we were staying on. Then we paddled to the other patrol’s campsite.

  

We spent about an hour and a half on their beach socializing with them, skipping rocks, collecting rocks, and just having a good time.

   

   

   

Day 5

  

On our third day of paddling we, headed out to our next island and along the way stopped at a lighthouse for a little while before continuing our journey.

  

Right before we got to our campsite however, we went to see the sea caves. They were really quite fantastic, they had many tunnels you could explore and check out while in your kayak. Another cool thing, was that the water was completely red next to our campsite due to tannin in the water.

       

Day 6

  

On our forth day on the water, we were forced to skip breakfast and leave camp early to head for the mainland due to a storm that was approaching. Thankfully we were able to miss the storm and arrived ashore before any bad weather came through. Once ashore we cleaned and loaded the boats, ate breakfast, and departed for our campsite.

 

200 meters away from shore however, my boat, named the Sweet Sixteen, with a crew of myself and Reaf, had an epic race against Mike’s boat, which had no name, with a crew of Mike and Raphael. And as expected, the Sweet Sixteen came out on top, though Mike had a never ending stream of excuses as to why they lost. However, to be fair, we did lose a race to them once before where they, um….., totally cheated, we had bad paddles, and didn’t stretch properly before it. But the Sweet Sixteen won the race to the end, so therefor we won the whole thing. Debate settled Mike.

  

And I must give a special thanks to our guides, Ally and Ian, who helped us with, gear management, kayak maintenance, scaring away bears, and much more.

   

Day 7

   

On our way back to Nashville we stopped at a place called Heightened Adventures where we did high ropes courses and zip-lines.

  

It was loads of fun, but unfortunately couldn’t stay more than a few hours due to our schedule.

 

We then after, stopped at the world’s largest Culvers, oh yeah. We then arrived to our cabin during a storm. We were thankful for having a cabin that night because setting up in the rain would have been a nightmare.

Day 8

It being our last day, everyone was tired, and most everyone slept in the car the whole day. But when we got back we had to actually do work and unload. Trust me, it was a dramatic change in physical excursion compared to sleep. But all jokes aside, this trip lived up to being a true High Adventure Trip. To me a High Adventure Trip is one where the boys are challenged, some even pushed to their limits, but in the it is a trip that no one will forget. And everyone can go home with stories to tell and plenty memories that they’ll always have.

We are scouts, we were confident that this could get done due to our innumerably amassed cache of merit badges. We arrived confidently at Percy Warner, and the younger scouts soon departed on their own, smaller trek. We were going on a longer trek since we are older and far more experienced in the ways of hiking. We made it over the first big hill over by the horse track feeling victorious. We knew how to do this, we’re Troop 3, after all!

                           

Then…. we got lost and couldn’t find the rest of the trail we supposed to be on. We’re all so conditioned to eat a mandatory banana that Mr Reuben was fishing around in his backpack for the bananas and we missed an important sign (this might not be why we missed the sign). Later after we crossed Old Hickory Blvd. we finally found the trail again.

Later on, we had a good meal of bagel sandwiches, Pringles and Oreos for lunch and ate it at the Edwin Warner Nature Center. After that, we had an easier trek back to where we parked. The younger guys were waiting for us in a pavilion when we arrived in shame (but with several more miles than planned under our treds). We got back into our assigned cars and returned to the church.

The weather on this trip was not the most delightful, high winds atop of cold and dry yet moist air. As the fist day progressed, the whether gained my interest in the most profound way. The weather suddenly changed and was quite the delight.

    

Since we got to camp before dusk, we had lots of time to spend on recreations of our own. Before you knew it we had settled down for a fire, and retired for the day.

    

The next day was filled with inclement weather which was inconceivable. Once we got back to Percy Priest marina we had lunch, did capsizing drills and scurried into the cars to head home.

       For this trip, as some of you may know, we split into three groups. My group, the Honey Badgers, went on the suck creek rout where we enjoyed the occasional swim. I hope all of the other groups had as much fun as we did. Even though 15 miles can be tough, especially with a pack on your pack, we had a fun time.

   

  

   

The trip was overall fun and exiting. We did two crawling tours. Caving was a little slow because there were so many people there, but other than that it was adventurous. We slumbered in the cave where there was a luxurious concession stand, bathroom, and Gaga ball court. I wouldn’t even say the fun part was the actual caving, but a giant box of mazes to crawl through.

  

We were blessed by Mother Nature with great weather this winter camp, all had a good time.

  
We hiked back (very slippery) to the falls which were very cool where we found tons of bright orange salamanders. I dubbed it salamander city as I have never seen so many in one place.