07/22/2012 – 7/28/2012
Camp Squanto is an Old Colony Council Boy Scout camp located in Plymouth Massachusetts. This is where a ton of troops come to camp for a week and have the opportunity to earn a variety of merit badges. This year, Troop 28 attended Squanto during week four. Week four at Squanto was from July 22 2012 to July 28 2012. During the day at this camp, your troop (or group) is encouraged to participate in a couple of fun games such as stock and camo, war canoes, and even troop swim! Almost every night in the evening, scouts had an activity called open areas. At open areas, you were free to roam around and participate in a wide variety of activities like free swim, canoeing, sailing, rowing, kayaking, archery, shooting at the shotgun range and doing sports.
Every year, Squanto has a different theme. The theme is really important because each troop has to design an entrance to their campsite fitting the theme. This year, the theme was Prehistoric Squanto. Our troop built for our entrance a dinosaur and a time machine. Squanto eventually has a night called theme night. On theme night, everyone dresses in costumes to fit with the theme. After evening colors, there are a variety of games that your troop can participate in. In one of them, you had to tie a knot to carry logs through an obstacle course and see who could sweep up the fastest time. That night was really fun.
There were 2 other fun nights at camp. The first activity that happened was the Apache Relay. On that evening, the camp hosted a gigantic relay race. This year troop 28 did really well. We came in 4th place. The second fun thing was the opening and closing campfires. These campfires happened at night on the first and last night. During the camp fires, the camp staff would act out very funny skits. The other thing they did was encourage everyone in the audience to stand up and sing songs like “The Turtle Song” These were very fun because it was entertaining and had a lot of audience participation.
My second final thing that I want to talk about at Squanto this year is the new mess hall. Last year, after the last week was over, the camp wanted to renovate the mess hall. Unfortunately, the old mess hall was built in the 40s and was in very bad shape. It was such in bad shape that, they decided to build a new one. That is what they did. Inside the spring time the construction workers got to work tore down the old one and started building that new one. It was a very hard change to go from the old mess hall to the new one. It was hard for most returning scouts because for almost 7 different centuries a lot of scouts were served food in that mess hall. It was sad to see an old historical building torn down and replaced with a new one. But then again at least the new one is greener than the old one. With the new one, they have reusable trays and silverware. Also in the bathrooms, those have blow driers instead of paper towels to dry your hands.
My last topic that I would like to talk about is the weather while we were at Squanto. The weather was ok. It was crystal clear at some times but at others, we had thunderstorms forming. Like for example one day that we were there, we had four thunderstorms in one day. We had thunderstorms at night, thunderstorms during the day, and thunderstorms on theme night, we had a lot of thunderstorms. Another weird thing about weather is that the week before our week (during week 3), there was a very big and bad thunderstorm that rolled through camp. This thunderstorm was so bad that they get runners to run around and escort all of the campsites over to the mess hall. During this process in the campsite we stayed in 2 years ago before our troop got too big for it (In Delaware) a bolt of lightning hit one of the trees. After hearing this really freaked me out. At least no one got hurt in this awkward thing. Overall, summer was great at Squanto and I would love to come back next year because not only do you enjoy yourself but Squanto also gives you an unforgettable experience every year.
Respectfully submitted,
Adam Koropey, Troop 28 Historian