09/19/2009 – 09/20/2009
On a sunny Saturday September 19th, 18 kids and 6 adults arrived at The Scout Locker @ Deer Hill School at 7:00 in the morning. Our mission was to load up cars full of gear and bikes and proceed to the Sweetwater campsite in Brewster to ride the Cape Cod Rail Trail. The adults were Mr. Ackley, Mr. Thomae, Mr. Koropey, Mr. Marat, Mr. Clay, and Mr. O’Brien. The scouts were Evan, Julien, Greg, Brodie, Derek, Luke, Andrew, Jack O., John C., John N., Adam K., Nick, Sam, Dylan, Alec, Robbie, Kevin, and Jack T. Robbie had organized the trip so he took the lead in making sure everyone’s gear was placed into a car and that we had enough space for everything.
This bike trip is the first trip with our new patrol assignments. The Stag patrol and the Python patrols are the older scouts and the Hiking Moose patrol contains the new scouts and is led by Jack O’Brien and Andrew Leighton as ‘trail leaders’.
On the first day without much trouble we biked the 17 miles to Marconi Beach and had lunch there. Mr. Jackisch brought a Frisbee and a football. When we were rolling down the sand dunes somebody complained so we had to stop so instead we played football. Robbie managed to get battered by all kinds of things including a pig pile started by Andrew. After we finished up we started our trek home. We made it back around 5:00 pm and the camp became a frenzy of tents being set up and food being cooked. The Staggypython patrol experienced a wonderful array of Sloppy Joes and burnt garlic bread. The Hiking Moose patrol ate a fancy meal of pasta with meatballs and more burnt garlic bread. After dinner there was a series of basketball games; there was also an abundance of our favorite Boy Scout dessert: smores, which are always eaten while sitting by the fire. We all were in bed by about 9:30 pm. Sadly Andrew didn’t feel well that night so his parents drove down to bring him home.
On Sunday morning everyone packed up their tents and prepared breakfast. Breakfast was a mixture of egg burritos and bagels with cream cheese. Then we got most of the gear in the cars and biked down to the other end of the trail 7.5 miles away. At the end of the trail Mr. Jackish gave a bunch of kids with Mountain Bikes a little lesson on how to hop a log and then we were off again. We stopped at the general store about 2 miles from camp and the troop purchased everyone ice creams. Shortly after this we were in our cars driving away from Sweetwater campsite with a sense of accomplishment because we had just biked with, more than 20 people, 50 miles in 2 days and no one was seriously injured (not that we expected them to be!)
Respectfully submitted,
Derek A. Benson