It was a great weekend at the Philadelphia Encampment.  Thank you to everyone who came out and we hope you all had a great time on Saturday.  There were many really fun things to do such as Archery, BBs, Knot Tying, Pioneering, Cooking, STEM as well as several other non specific areas that were not only exciting but may have touched on other requirements if you visited those areas. (Please see important note below, about requirements).

This year’s encampment had a Civil War camp set up, a Philadelphia Scouting history tent that showed the history of Philadelphia Council, Treasure Island, and the Order of the Arrow.  We had the emergency helicopter from St. Christopher’s land on the field for the scouts to see, The fire department came out with an engine for the scouts to check out, the police department brought in a swat vehicle, highway patrol, mounted police and bicycle police.  The 24th district was even so kind to offer a special gun safety course which we also used to cover range safety and range rules before the scouts were allowed to use the BB rifles. Cub Scout visitors also got to spectate various Troop/Crew competitions such as the pie eating contest, bike relay, and more.

Finally, the scouts had a chance to see how the things they do in Cub Scouts will be built upon in the Boy Scouts. For example, after knot tying they were able to go to Pioneering and get a taste using those knots along with lashings to build some really amazing structures and got to traverse the monkey bridge, ride the the ferris wheel, and make their way through an obstacle course; all of which were built right there, on site, the night before.

As a bonus, the cubs who spent the weekend even earned a “frost point”, in Scoutbook, an unofficial count of nights spent tent camping at or below freezing point of 32°F.

Once again, we hope everyone enjoyed the day and had a great time.  As you made your way around the field you should have seen many familiar faces. First and foremost you should have seen Mrs. Karen, our Assistant Cubmaster and one of our Wolf Den Leaders who kept the Cub Scout Program running smoothly and watched over the BB range — at the cooking station we had Mr. Luis, one of our committee members, and Mrs. Gladys, one of our Wolf Den leaders — at the Knot Tying station we had Mr. Mike (not Mr. Mikey) one of our Assistant Webelos Leaders, and Mrs. Anna, one of our Assistant Den Leaders — at the rock climbing wall we had Mr. Tom, our Cubmaster, Ms. Avery, our Pack Assistant, and Venturing Crew 1776.

Requirement Notes:

Each cub scout received a lanyard with a badge holder containing a card with their program schedule. Please put your scout’s name on the card and have them bring it to scouts with them so that we may give them credit for what they covered. If there were any stations visited that were not part of his specific program please let us know what station (you can simply describe the station and what was there) and we will then correlate it back to any requirements it may cover.