Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Trip to Carolina Beach State Park


Scouts!

Get ready for an exciting weekend at Carolina Beach State Park. Go here to visit their web site.

Our campsite is nestled under the many long leaf pines present on an old dune line in the park. Many trails crisscross through the park and we will travel a few during the day and even a night hike is planned. There are lots of wildlife...alligators, deer, squirrel (gray and fox), raccoons, and turkeys.

On Saturday we will first visit the North Carolina Aquarium at Ft. Fisher (see web site here), one of the highlights is a rare albino alligator, Luna, seen below. Parts of the TV series, "Surface," was filmed here, and the main tank contains 235,000 gallons of sea water!!! As way of comparison, our South Carolina aquarium's great tank holds 15,000 gallons of sea water.




After lunch we'll head over to North Carolina State Historic Site, Fort Fisher (visit their well done site here) and relive the largest naval bombardment and amphibious assault of the Civil War on 18 January 1865, which closed the port of Wilmington and ultimately cut off the last line of supplies to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Some of the troops who protected Fort Fisher were a troop of 800 teenagers (the 4th, 7th and 8th Battalion) in the North Carolina Junior Reserves, who actually camped very near where our campsite is located. Our campsite is just above and to the right of Sugar Loaf on the map below.


After dinner, we will take a short night hike using the troop's GPS receivers and then free time...

Sunday morning after breakfast the troop will hike to Sugar Loaf, which is the most historic sand dune in NC, even more so than the one at Kitty Hawk...

On our return Sunday we will ride the ferry boat from Fort Fisher to Southport and continue home...











Troop 20 had a great time on this trip 1.5 years ago, so don't miss out on this one...Sign up no later than 14 September...

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Freestyle Music Park in Myrtle Beach!

Nine brave scouts braved the threatening weather and rode roller coasters for most of the day at Freestyle Music Park in Myrtle Beach. Notice the fun filled faces in the picture below as the scouts experience the biggest, fastest coaster at the park, the Time Machine (formerly known as the Led Zeppelin)...




Top Time Machine riders were David Hall, Michael Hall and Waring Hills who rode the TM an impressive 8 times with only a few side effects from heavy positive, zero and negative "G" forces upon their bodies.

In between killer rides, scouts had a showdown at the "Not" OK corral, where air compressed nerf balls smoked around the arena, SM Hills and Advancement coordinator Mr. Hall had a tough time dodging the multitude of pot shots taken at them. Notice the artillery piece below used in the unequal duel between scouts and scoutmasters...


A few of our scouts were so disoriented from the heavy dose of coasters, they ended up making a wrong turn and found themselves on Abbey Road..."Hey Jude, don't make it bad...and anytime you feel the pain, hey jude, refrain..." My apologies to the Beatles...