Summer Adventures

Austin and Nathan spent last week at boy scout camp - located NW of Fort Collins, Colorado. I went up with them on Monday, along with Lisa's Dad, Carlos, who was kind enough to give up a few days of vacation to help out. Carlos and I were only there until Tuesday evening, but they were busy days. We had plenty to take pictures of - even in that short amount of time. On Monday, after checking into camp, Nathan started work on his Archery merit badge:

Austin, as an older scout, was able to skip working on merit badges this year and do High Adventure things instead. When I met up with him and Carlos, they were learning how to climb around in the tops of trees on an elevated obstacle course:
However, shortly before they really got going we heard our first thunderclap and had to come down from the trees in case of lightning. The rule is that once you hear thunder, you must wait 30 minutes before resuming the activity. While on the ground, the counselors came up with a variety of team-building activities. In this video, Austin is a blind boat driver looking for undersea treasure (tennis balls). He is led by the voice of the "lighthouse", who is given directions by the seagulls, on the island, who can only say "mine." It was pretty funny to watch:


After the game the storm got progressively worse so we walked down to the handgun range since it was under shelter. We were all allowed to take turns shooting a .357 magnum, .4o caliber, and .45 caliber pistols. (I honestly never appreciated how massive the .45 bullet is! It is pretty scary to think that most police don't use 9mm anymore, but .40 and .45 bullets instead.)

On Tuesday, Austin was able to do some rock climbing up a 70-80 foot cliff:

After Carlos and I left on Tuesday, the boys continued on with an action-packed week. Austin was able to do the tree obstacle course another day, do some mountain biking, rifle shooting, and some fishing. He came back very scraped up, but no worse for wear.
Nathan was able to finish his Archery and Pioneering merit badges, and only has a few things to do here at home to finish his Camping and Emergency Preparedness badges.
Nice work fellas! (By the way, there ~80 more pictures here.)