What was left of my tent. The only reason one side was sort of standing was because my cot was propping that side up.
I was honored to be able to take a trip to the Florida Caverns State Park with Scout Troop 77 this past weekend. A front came through early Sunday morning with high winds and rain. I got up for good when I awoke to one of the tent poles for my tent snapping and the whole tent collapsing on top of me. It got me to thinking that I can’t place this trip in even the top five wettest scout camp-outs I’ve been on.
Here is my list:
Number Five: A 1991 expedition at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. During one day of the trip, we had a hail storm that turned into rain. By the time we got to our next campsite, I was sopping wet and very cold. Because I was exhibiting signs of hypothermia, the rest of the crew encouraged me to get into dry clothes, filled me up with hot soup and beverages and stuffed me into my sleeping bag. I woke up the next morning ready for the rest of our adventure.
Number Four: An Appalachian Trail trip in the 60’s as a scout in Troop 24. We spent a week enjoying the AT in splendid weather. The night before we were to head home, we made camp next to the AT approach trail just outside Amicalola Falls State Park. We had been using army shelter halves for our tents. We set up on one side of a creek, with the adults on the other side. There were some bushes between the scouts and the adults.
While my dad and another leader took our filthy clothes to a laundromat in town, so we would have clean clothes for the trip home, we set up our shelter halves as leantos. The tents used wooden poles, with wooden dowels to connect the two halves of each pole. The heavens opened up that night. When Assistant Scoutmaster Bert Mann walked over to the scout side of the creek the next morning, there was nothing standing more than about six inches off the ground. The poles had snapped in half, every single tent was flat on the ground and there was no sign of any of the scouts.
He quickly roused the other adults. A search was started for the missing scouts. They found all 19 of us, wet and muddy, sleeping in my dad’s station wagon, on top of the formerly clean and dry clothes we were supposed to wear home…
Number Three: I was an adult leader with Troop 86. We were at the Sand Hill Scout Reservation on SR 50 for summer camp. This was in the middle of an extended drought and SWFWMD had mandated extreme water restrictions.
We got there on Sunday and the swim check was cancelled due to the thunderstorms that rolled through. It rained Monday. It rained Tuesday. It rained Wednesday. It rained Thursday. It rained ALL DAY Friday. I approached the camp director at supper Friday and told him I had some guys who were tired, wet, miserable, and wanted to go home. He suggested that I could send them home after that night’s family night campfire. My response was in the form of a question: “If all the adult leaders go home, who is going to watch the scouts?”
We went home at the regular time the next day, hopeful that SWFWMD wouldn’t connect our week at summer camp with the end of the drought and order us back to camp.
Number Two: <Cue the theme song from Gilligan’s Island> One February in the 60’s, our troop decided to have a campout on the south end of Anclote Island, near the lighthouse. We departed Korman’s Landing in the late afternoon with seven of us in my family’s 19′ bow rider. The rest of the troop members were in other boats. During the trip, the wind shifted and picked up. Because of the wind, the water was being pushed off shore. My dad cut the way around the north sandbar a bit too tight. Things went downhill rapidly. One wave picked the bow up and dropped it firmly into the sand. The next couple of waves came over the bow, completely swamping the boat.
We got out of the boat and walked to the north end of Anclote Island. We then walked to the south end, where Assistant Scoutmaster Bert Mann, an officer with the Florida Marine Patrol, picked us up in his Marine Patrol boat. He took us to the docks in Tarpon Springs, where we got warm with hot tea at the original Pappas restaurant while my dad called everyone’s parents to come and pick us up.
The boat and all of our gear was lost. A salvage company eventually found what was left of the boat and offered to sell it back to my dad. He declined.
Years later, I got my pilots license and flew over Anclote Island and the north sandbar. I noticed a bunch of dark shapes in the water. Yep, what we didn’t know as we walked to shore at dusk that evening was that the sandbar is a shark nursery.
Number One: The 13th World Jamboree, which took place in Japan next to Mount Fuji. We flew there and back in a stretch DC 8 as part of the largest civilian airlift operation up to that time. In what should have been an indication of things to come, the approach into the airport in Japan was a bit bumpy and a number of scouts in the back of the DC 8 made use of the barf bags. During the Jamboree, the weather started deteriorating. When we asked the Japanese host scouts about the forecast, the response we got was “No typhoon.” It was Typhoon Olive. We rode the storm out at the Jamboree site. We got up the next morning and stepped into ankle deep volcanic mud. After the storm passed, we were evacuated and spent a couple of nights in a Japanese school so the Jamboree staff could get things fixed up and for the Jamboree site to dry out. The white t-shirts we had were never white again. They were permanently stained from the mud.
In the grand scheme of things, a few hours of bad weather in the pre-dawn hours last Sunday were memorable, but not even close to the worst I’ve camped through.
During our side trip from the Florida Caverns to the Falling Waters State Park, we got a picture of my grandson and I that I’ll definitely cherish.
My grandson Koltin and I at Falling Waters State Park.
Have any of you had any weather adventures that you will remember for the rest of your lives? Feel free to post them in the comments.
Rob