Trudging Throught the Rain and Mud

The camp out I went on a little over a week ago was an amazing reminder of why I love scouting: it rained. A lot.

Almost two months ago, I turned eighteen and aged out of Boy Scouts, though I decided to devote my time to Venture Scouts as a replacement. This past weekend, both I and the only other scout in Crew 111, Katie, teamed up with a one-member crew from Selma and Troop 111 on a hiking trip at the Wehle Nature Center in Midway, Alabama. I took the two hour drive down foggy highways and back roads on my own Friday night, and had a great time with all of the other scouts who met me there.

We were scheduled to depart on our ten mile hike the next morning at 10. Mother Nature had other plans. For comparisons, I went back and took photos from identical locations to show how badly it was raining. What you see is not fog -- it is rain. Torrential rain.

Here are a few pictures of the trail:

The rain had let up about 30 minutes into the hike, but everything was still pretty damp.

In many places, there were long stretches of standing water. To get past while staying relatively dry, we had to walk along the sides, where the trail wasn't as worn down. The only downside to this was the thorns and stickier mud. I nearly lost both of my shoes multiple times, and only managed to keep my balance though use of a walking stick










 In other places, the water wasn't so much standing as running some sort of marathon. Needless to say, we did not cross it.


After we got back from the hike, we decided to do some sight-seeing in the area around our campsite.




We found both a taxidermy exhibit of several kinds of animals that inhabit the area, as well as a petrified tree that hasn't done so in the past 70 million years















Before the sun went down, we made sure to visit the covered bridge at Wehle. This bridge was made in Summer 2000, and is the second longest covered bridge in the State of Alabama. The bridge has only one problem -- vehicles pulling trailers or construction equipment cannot cross due to its apparent lack of linearity. In other words, it's not wide enough for some things to get past a couple of the sharper curves.











After a long day, we finished it with dutch oven desserts -- apple cinnamon and Black Forest cherry cobblers (minus the alcohol of course).

After getting all hyped up on sugar, however, many of the scouts had to wear themselves out during the campfire that followed, singing songs, performing skits, and telling jokes. Even I participated, leading the adults -- who rarely participated in skits -- in a skit about a mad scientist who has designed door-to-door salesmen removers (killers is now too "violent").