Troop 3 is excited to let everyone know that Leo Spadafino passed his Eagle Scout Board of Review recently. Many congratulations to him and his family, best of luck at UT Knoxville. Thanks to many boys and adults who help him with his Eagle Project building school benches.
Huzzah!
Few pictures from Shrews Backpacking Patrol. More stories and pictures to follow soon.
Today during feeding the hungry, Mr. Howard Allen talked with us about the homeless life. He is doing a documentary about homelessness and wanted to talk with us about our thoughts as scouts. We asked questions like “Where would you find a safe place on the streets?” and “Do homeless people without families have funerals when they die?”
Mr.Howard answered all of our questions, and what he had to say was pretty interesting. He said, “There really isn’t a safe place for the homeless to stay” and “There’s a cemetery at – where they have a part of the field for homeless.” While I was relieved to know that the people who die on the streets at least got a burial, it was sad to think of them being buried alone. Homelessness seems like a lonely way to live, and die.
I learned a lot from Mr. Howard and I’m glad we talked with him. I think it made us all appreciate what we have.
Although it was pretty hard leaving turkey leftovers and a warm bed on December 27, winter camp was pretty fun this year. It was my first time at Latimer, so it was nice going to a different place. Latimer was a different experience from Boxwell, which I liked.
I think overall we could say that the food, bath houses and classes were nicer than Boxwell. Since Latimer is only a few years old, everything seemed to be fresh and new.
Unlike our Boxwell experience, we spent most of our days in one single class. We had one approximately seven-hour class a day. When we weren’t at class we were generally at camp, hanging around at the dining hall, or at the trading post.
One notable class was Climbing. Climbing was pretty thrilling (to my standards at least). In this class we learned how to rappel, climb, and belay. The bluff was decently tall (about 60 to 80 feet). A couple of people decided that this wasn’t the sport for them, and went back to camp. I really can’t blame them, it was pretty scary having to trust someone you don’t even know to not let you fall off a cliff and onto your head! Those of us who stayed were glad that we had in the end.
(Although this isn’t a photo of the cliff, this is what it felt like!)
Over all, our experience was pretty great!
Troop 3 is happy to announce our newest Eagle Scout! Collin Thompson passed his Eagle Scout Board of Review with flying colors last night. Many congratulations to Collin and his family who worked hard to support him through this process.
Great News! We have pre-sold all 100 of the turkeys. If you would like to get on the waiting list please email turkey@nashvilletroop3.com
Thanks for your support 
To reserve yours, email turkey@nashvilletroop3.com with your phone number (use the best contact # for Wed. Nov 23rd just in case we need to reach you!) Fried turkey details:
This was a pretty challenging backpacking trip. We went long distances and we we had many creeks to cross. It was quite a trek.
At the start of the trip, Friday night, my patrol camped at Station Camp. After we got done with cracker barrel we were really tired, so we went to bed at about 10:30pm, knowing that we had to get up at 6:30am to get on the trail.
When we got up Saturday, we broke down camp and had ramen for breakfast. As the cook, I didn’t get to eat until my ramen was cold… Bad idea. The trail was pretty difficult, but we had no injuries or problems. We had a hearty launch of cheese and summer sausage wraps, Pringles, apples, and Oreos. Delicious! We got back on the trail and we had to change into water shoes a few times for the creek crossings without man rocks to step on. We passed the Whistling Otter Pigs about two miles before we settled down to camp for the night. That night we had pepperoni pasta for dinner with cheesecake for desert. We had our fire ceremony, got to bed and slept very well.
Sunday morning we broke down camp, had oatmeal for breakfast, and started back on the trail at about 7:20am. We wanted to get done earlier than the day before, so we pushed ourselves. The part of the trail we did Sunday was more level than the day before, so we were relieved that it wasn’t as hard as it had been. For lunch we were supposed to have trail tacos, but that didn’t work out because we didn’t have tie to collect water, pull out pots and start up camp stoves, so instead we had cheese and sausage wraps again since there was plenty left.
At the end of the hike everyone was nice and tired, we were looking forward to getting home!
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.