Cub Scouts: First Hike!

Aaron and I LOVE scouting in the summer.  LOVE IT!  Winter in Utah for scouting is rough because you are stuck inside to work on all of the "sit down and shut up" activity pins.  It is hard for the boys and it is hard  for us to keep it interesting for them.

But finally SUMMER!!

On Saturday we had our first summer hike with the scouts!  We met up at the church and there was only one boy who showed up (out of 5).  We asked him if he wanted to still go on the hike even though it was just with Brother Reinert and I.  He said that he still wanted to go and so we brought our dogs to flush out our group a little more.  Pippen makes any group better.

We hiked up Taylor's Canyon.  It was amazing for Aaron and I to see the difference that a year made.  Last year everything was lush and green and the river the trail follows was full and coming up to the trail in some places.  This year, only a few spots had running water and they were ending pretty quickly getting soaked up into the ground.

Aaron helping Bambi to a drink of water from the only stream we could find.  The  dogs were pretty thirsty.

Another big difference was the amount of whining on this hike.  This boy does sports pretty much all year so he is pretty fit.  He talked almost the whole time but it wasn't whining.  We were actually talking about what we were seeing on the hike and different things that he had done so far this summer.

At one point, this boy nearly stepped on a snake and we all freaked out a little.  I don't want to be responsible for a kid dying....a weird thing that I'm particular about.  But the snake didn't move.  It was half way on the trail and it wasn't moving.  Our scout poked it with his foot and it still didn't move.  I decided that the adult thing would be grabbing its tail and dragging it off the trail.  I bent down to grab its tail and its tongue flickered out of its mouth.  After that, we decided to leave it alone and we kept hiking.

We went on a few side trails this time since this wasn't a very structured hike.   We had a lot of fun exploring and talking about "The Outdoor Code" of the boy scouts.

The hike was pretty uneventful but what is noteworthy is that we only had to take one break while we were on the hike.  And that one "break" was for talking about Cub Scout stuff that we have to talk about and exploring.  It was awesome that we could play around in the woods and not need a crazy amount of breaks to rest especially when we consider that it was the warmest June 23 on record at 101 degrees.

I'm so excited for our next hike and for day camp in July.  It should be pretty awesome.