While the sun shines brightly outside of my office window, it is distinctly cooler outside and we are getting more rain than we have in the last month or so. I love it. So much better than the heat and sweat of the summer…
In other news, while my son joined the Boy Scouts back in February of this year, I have made the plunge and submitted my application to be an Assistant Scout Master. Now, the politics of the Boy Scouts versus Gay rights aside, (I personally have no problems with gay/lesbian rights I am very much a live and let live sort of person and the Scouts appear to be shifting their own stance), at the personal level the Scouts have really helped my son mature quite a bit and teach him a lot of outdoorsy stuff. After I got married, my wife was such a city girl that we never went camping and always felt the kids were missing out.
Since joining the Scouts, I have been on several camping trips (my first in almost 20 years) and even my daughter has been able to come along on a few. Its been grand fun and in the last year the garage has been getting filled with a proliferation of tents, sleeping bags and other camping related items. I have also been introduced to a fantastic new (to me) way to cook using cast iron dutch ovens. Other Assistant Scout Masters in the troop have made some unbelievably great meals using nothing but a dutch oven set into the coals of a camp fire…
A couple of weeks ago we also made my first backpacking trip since 1990 on the Na Pali coast on the north shore of Kauai. In the middle of a PNW rain storm we hiked the trail at Barclay Mountain. A short two miles to the lake at the base of the cliffs with a backpacked stuffed with a four person tent (I am totally going to REI to get a lighter two person), sleeping bag, food, backpack stove and other accouterments. It’s that last part I am going to work on because that shit was heavy…
This weekend we are going up to another campsite to help the owners chop firewood. Fortunately we are not backpacking that one because carrying a 10 pound axe plus a backpack does not sound like fun…
Lets get through the rest of August and September without melting and the rest of the year is starting to shape up…
