Hi guys,

Believe it or not I finally uploaded the last days pictures, Colonial Williamsburg and the airport shots. Hope you enjoy them.

We will try and nail down a date for the reunion next month shortly. Probably late in the month. Probably a Thursday night.

Just to give you a heads up , at the Reunion we will offer some of the troop gear that was purchased for the jamboree at discounted prices for anyone that is interested in purchasing some lightly used gear. Some of the items that that would be include are the Carport Canopy, The Gott Coolers, The LED Lanterns, 5 gallon water jugs etc.

Stay tuned….

Here is the link to those delinquent pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day18#

I know it seems kind of anticlimactic to get an email with commentary about the last day now that we are already home but maybe you will catch something that the boys didn’t tell you.

There was a lot of chatter during breakfast about which roller coaster was the coolest. They were still wound up pretty good however, thought about seeing mom and dad were rapidly coming to the surface. “What time do we fly out? Are our parents going to be there? Where are they meeting us? We fielded a lot of questions about home.

They weren’t all that excited about seeing Colonial Williamsburg but we just could see not going there since we were staying 2 blocks from it so after breakfast we walked down there. If you haven’t been there it is like walking back in time.  As you walk farther down the block you come to the old craftsman homes where docents dressed in period clothing are working at their trades. They are very well versed in the history of the trades at that time. Russ, Chris and I were visiting the cotton/linen spinning craft house and were surprised how interesting making thread was…it wasn’t the thread that was interesting but what different clothing and colors of clothing meant about your status in Williamsburg society. How they redyed clothing to change colors and give them new wardrobe options, and on and on. I was surprised I got so fascinated with thread…Warlough was gawking over the Woodworking craft house which we never made it to. We didn’t see too many of the boys make it that far down the street.  They got sidetracked by the Cheese shop and the Chocolate shop. Imagine that. They were kind of toured out and we didn’t push them.

From there it was a 4 hour bus ride up to Baltimore. To avoid some roadwork that was clogging up Interstate 95 we took some back roads that turned about to be very scenic. In fact there is a parkway heading out of Williamsburg winding through the forest and down the coast of the James river/Chesapeake Bay that renting a motorcycle or convertible and driving that road has just been added to my very long bucket list.

We stopped on the way for lunch at Subway. Boys had script for that meal. Then on to the airport.

Getting through TSA is always met with some trepidation with a large group of teenagers…In spite of all the council to check their carry-ons for things we can’t carry on there was still a couple of knifes that ended up in TSA’s Christmas party fund. Woops! Actually they did pretty good and we got through fairly quick.

One of the things we tried to teach them on this trip is to “Minimize” their footprint on the landscape/environment/natural resources and all that kind of stuff and on other tourists and people around them. First inclination for most people is to see a large group of teenagers, especially Boy Scouts, has a huge imposition to whatever they were trying to do. The boys got pretty consciences of other tourists at the hotels and events and often were found getting a small family and directing them in front of us in line. This always resulted in some great conversations and questions with these people. In keeping with that the patrol leaders would hold their boys in their seats in the airplanes and make sure other passengers got off first so they weren’t waiting behind 40 scouts. When we landed in SLC this tested their resolve to the core. Those boys wanted off that plane and see Mom and Dad! But to their credit, and it took everything they had, they did it!  You all have great boys and it was an honor to be with them.

Thankyou for all the kind words at the Airport and all your support.

Here is the link to Busch Garden pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day17#

I’ll get Day 18 “return home pictures” uploaded this weekend.

We will send an email out as soon as we have the bags in hand and you can pick them up from Russ’ home if you live in S.Jordan or W.Jordan, or at Dane’s home if you live anywhere else.

We’ll plan a reunion sometime in September.

Keep us posted on Eagle Courts, Missions, College Grads, Weddings. We would love to keep track of what these boys are doing with their lives!

More pics coming soon!!!

Hi folks!

I just noticed that Outlook just barely sent out the email that I sent last night. I wish I knew enough about Outlook to have some idea of why it didn’t go out when I pushed the send button. Sorry to give you two back to backers.

Today was a very unique day. No touring, No camping, No cooking, No Museums, just exhilaration and adrenalin enhanced fun. We even got to sleep in a bit for a change. Boys got up at 7:30, ate breakfast buffet style at the hotel and headed off to Busch Gardens at 10:00. It was another hot muggy day so rides that drenched you in the process were regularly interspersed throughout the day. We were just wet all day! For those of you that haven’t been to Busch Gardens, this is a theme park that has these great little recreated villages complete with restaurants and shops that are so well done and cute you almost forget there is these monster roller coasters in the background of each of these seemingly docile villages. Apollo’s Charriot is the tallest ride in the world. The Griffin is the only ride in the world that sends you over a vertical drop cliff, and on and on. We have 4 or 5 boys that don’t do coasters but found plenty of other things to do. The food at this park is excellent and with the stipend they were given for lunch and dinner, they were able to purchase great ethnic foods in these villages. The German FestHaus had great entertainment while you were eating. The grounds of this park are immaculate and thick with a combination of native hardwood forests and manicured ornamentals. It’s a pretty amazing place.

The boys ran in packs between the rides and mixed and matched in different groups all day. There was lots of sweat, lots of smiles, and of course, they thought this was the funnest part of the trip…imagine that!

The day was cut short unexpectedly by a storm cell that moved in after dinner, complete with a great lightning show and some microburst winds and heavy rain for about 15 minutes. There was an accident related to that on the big Griffin ride. A balloon (apparently made of plastic and metal) atop one of the buildings in the French quarter blew off the building and got lodged on the track of the Griffin just below one of the big loops. They were unable to shut the car down in time that had already been sent and the car struck that object full speed. The balloon structure became lodge up under the car and some how in the process injured almost all of the 30 people on board. Luckily there were no scouts on board which was a bit surprising given that ½ of the park visitors today were scouts. They hauled quite a few people out in stretchers. The rain continued a drizzle the rest of the evening so we worked our way towards the front gates sooner than the 9:45 originally intended. Inspite of the weather I think everyone had a really good time. Everyones worn out so I’m sure they will sleep good tonight….again….

It’s hard to believe the adventure is coming to a close. The boys are looking forward to seeing families again. Their thoughts are now turned that direction. We are going to try to pull their attention away from home one last time for about 1.5 to 2 hours tomorrow morning by walking the old town of Williamsburg and let them see some of the old shops and craftsman there. Then we are off to Baltimore for a 4 hour drive. We fly out of Baltimore on Delta at about 5:50 Eastern time. We’ll stop for lunch somewhere on the way. We’ll plan on seeing everyone at the airport!!!

Here is the link to yesterdays pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day16#

Well we said Goodbye to AP HILL for the last time today.  2010 is the last time the Jamboree will be held at the site that has hosted us for 8 of the last 17 Jamborees. We are now at Williamsburg Virginia getting settled in to unwind after a long trip!

Monday was the last full day of Program at the Jamboree. I think I commented about the implications of that to the boys in my last email. The last picture upload included that day.

Tuesday, we had another of a long line of early starts. Our ticket time for the Order of the Arrow (OA) sponsored “Mysterium Compass” was at 8:30 in the morning. This presented some challenges that resulted in some fast scrambling.  The program capacity could not handle the entire Jamboree so each troop received 18 tickets which left everyone in the uncomfortable position of having to choose which boys could go and which not. In PLC the boys decided they wanted to try to get everyone in even if we had to go standby, etc.

We had a bus arranged for to pick us up and take us to that end of the Jamboree in time for the event. The boys did a great job of getting breakfast on and cleaned up and all 40 were at the bus stop on time. The buses weren’t on time however. They were about 5 minutes late and these school bus drivers could not be hurried. He took his time getting out of the staging area, drove about as slow as he could and got us there 5 minutes late. Luckily we have Chris and Russ on our team. They instantly transformed into a barracuda and a shark, gave the OA event staff a protocol adjustment and got all the boys on the two succeeding sessions against all odds. The kids loved it. You’ll have to ask the kids what it was like because the scoutmasters weren’t allowed…..however they did have “the Vault” right next door for the Scoutmasters to hang out while the boys were being taught and entertained by the OA. The Vault was one of the most amazing collections of scouting memorabilia I have ever seen. Yes, I went a little crazy with my camera. So if scouting memorabilia pictures dull your senses just skip that part of the upload tonight!

The boys ran from there to get the last couple of events in before we had to be back to break camp at 1:00. By 4:00 we were ready to load the trucks with our gear.  This loading of our gear the night before we left presented some interesting dilemmas.  First we had we still had to fix dinner. Luckily the trucks were late so this gave us an extra hour to hurry and squeeze in dinner before loading. But the real concern is, without gear we had to sleep under the stars in high humidity with a chance of rain. The boys used those ground cloths that everybody wondered why we brought and rolled out their fleece bags on them.  We held back the gateway panels (tarps) for a covering if we got some rain. Sounded like a good plan.

About 3:15 in the morning I heard the base loudspeakers squawk something. You never really know what it says but usually it is weather warning related. I sat up looked around. Nobody in our camp was stirring, nobody in the camps adjacent were stirring so I thought I was just dreaming. The next thing I remember is a couple of Army MP’s banging on my cot saying “you have a thunderstorm 5 miles out coming this way. You have 15 minutes to get all these guys into shelters”. You know how hard teenagers are to wake up in the middle of the night. We finally got them all rousted. They had to get dressed quick, roll up all their gear, pack their bags and get over to the camp HQ. We were just about ready to go and looked to the next camp over and nobody was stirring their yet. We woke them up and headed for HQ. The problem was there is only very limited shelter there. So for the next 4 hours we either sat at tables, curled up on the asphalt floor or stood around waiting for the rain to stop. The boys were amazingly patient through it all and caught some cat naps here and there but ended up with a short nights sleep. We had decided the night before to go ahead and load all of our gear on the trucks just in case it rained, we wouldn’t have to deal with that too. That turned out to be a good call. Many troops didn’t do that and couldn’t get things gathered up quick enough and had a lot of drenched gear. We were lucky.

We finally got the buses through the traffic jambs about 10:00 and got on board into nice air conditioned seats and headed off for Williamsburg. Mark Rueckert and J.D. Smeltzer were asleep on the bus in about 15 seconds, The Scoumasters were not far behind them.

We had lunch at Jimmy Buffets “Cheese Burgers in Paradise” restaurant. The boys enjoyed the first meal they didn’t have to cook for awhile. We had some time before we could check into the hotel so we decided to see if we could catch Jamestown on the way there. Jamestown was the first English settlement in the Americas established in 1607. There is some great history there and is considered by some to be one of the miracles that set the stage for establishing a country based on religious freedom.

I’m not sure the boys were too excited about anything that resembled another tour. With the time available we thought we would give it a shot. They have an amazing new visitors center at Jamestown complete with a recreated fort colony, a native American village, and a shipping yard. We were hoping to take a walk around the village but the entrance fee was prohibitive. We walked down to a marina to see if we could get a view of it down the coast line but couldn’t see it. A gentleman was at the marina and offered some great advice. He said to have the bus driver drive a few blocks farther down the road to where the road meets the James River. There is a ferry crossing there that takes 30 cars at a time, including buses, at no cost across the James River and pass right in front of the recreated shipyard and village. So that’s what we did. The bus driver got a kick out of pulling his bus on that ferry too. The boys were able to hop out of the bus and go up to an observation deck above as we crossed the river. 
They really enjoyed it. The boys caught the attention of one other passenger on the ferry who came up and talked to Russ about the boys. He was so impressed by them that he handed Russ $45 and said to make sure we take them out for ice cream. Treats are always on the agenda.

We had a great buffet dinner here at the Williamsburg Hospitality House, This boys got to unwind in the pool and after a short PLC here we are! We get to hit the sheets at a reasonable hour for a change and Busch Gardens doesn’t open until 10:00 so we should get a chance to eat into the sleep deprivation a little!

Here is the last two days link to the pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day15#

I owe you day 16 still…..

Yah, I finally caught up on picture uploads!!! Here are the links for the last couple of days:

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day13#

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day14#

We also added quite a few pictures to day 11/12. The most recent adds are always towards the end of the file. If you sign up as a fan of the album it will automatically notify you anytime we add pictures to it or create a new album. Some of those that have been getting these emails forwarded to them may be able to get updates that way. Just an fyi….

It’s hard to believe that today (Monday) was the last full day at the Jamboree site. The boys were almost frantic trying to get the last few things done on some merit badges they were working on or get to some places they hadn’t seen yet. They are also trying to figure out how to get that elusive patch or complete that patch set they’ve been collecting.

This evening we were invited to a Family Home Evening put on by the Young Men General Board. The boys had fun there and of course there is always treats!!!

Tomorrow is going to be pretty crazy. We have an early start to get up to the other end of the Jamboree by 8:30. We were able to get a bus to come pick us up in the morning.  We’ll be seeing the Mysterium Compass production put on by the Order of the Arrow. It’s supposed to be an incredible production. Briton Limburg’s uncle and grandfather are involved in producing this event. Hopefully we’ll get some preferential treatment there. From there some of the kids are racing to get a few meritbadges finished up. Some are heading over to the mountainboarding hill to see if they can meet Shaun White, the Olympic Snowboarder Multi Gold Medalist. Hopefully we’ll have some pictures of that. We have to start breaking camp at 1:00 and loading trucks at 4:00. We have to rough it tonight without are tents and tables etc. so hopefully we won’t see any rain. The buses pick us up Wed morning at 9:00 am to make our way to Williamsburg VA where we’ll spend the night. Then on to Busch Gardens and Friday flight back home.

Just a reminder that we will have each of the parents plan on picking up their son at the airport at 8:30 Friday evening. Plan on meeting us at the Delta Baggage claim area. They will be excited to see you!!!

Our flight is Delta Flight 1189 arriving at 8:39 p.m.

More uploads and emails to come. We appreciate your support! You have some great sons and it has been an honor to accompany them back to this historic event!

Jamboree 603 Scoutmasters

I’m only one day behind now.
Here is the link to Saturday’s pictures.

More to come

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day12#

Hope everyone had a great Sunday. We sure did at the Jamboree!!!

Below is the link to the lastest picture uploads, many of them were from Day 11 which the previous email described.

The highlights of day 12 would be taking a backstage tour of the giant arena stage where the previous Arena Event was staged as well as Saturday’s 100 year celebration Shining Light Across America event was staged. It was pretty amazing to see what it took to put on these productions. The guys got some sneak previous of what to expect in Saturday’s show. Just enough to wet their appetite. The actual details were held pretty tight to the chest and only various rumors were going around as to what was or was not going to happen Saturday.

We had admission tickets in the afternoon for the Technology Quest exhibits. The boys that weren’t too involved with Merit Badge Midway accompanied us up there. There was some really great exhibits. NASA was there, Rockwell Collins was demonstrating some of the new GPS technology as well as flight simulators and range finder binoculars etc. University of Michigan had doctoral students there with some really cool exhibits kind of like a mini Mythbusters. Kids came away with solar powered minirace cars they built. Capsules of their own DNA, etc. Aaron Pyper was filmed by a TV camera crew building his car so we have a new reality star in the troop!

We had a surprise Birthday party for Briton Limburg in the evening. His birthday isn’t until the 3^rd (the day we leave camp). Based on the birthday party thrown while we were on tour we knew he would be expecting something if we did it on the 3^rd, so we snuck one in early on him. We had a great cake ordered in and delivered, with some help from the commissary we had a great party.

The boys all wrote a letter to you folks on day 12. Pictures of them authoring those epistles are in the upload. We made up some commemorative envelopes of the Jamboree and stamped them with the new 44c Boy Scout stamp that was just issued this week. Some of the boys stood in line at the post office and were able to acquire a First Day cover commemorative stamped envelope that could only be obtained from the Jamboree. The post office here was kind of overwhelmed by the demand for these first day covers. It’s hard to believe that the post office had to be persuaded to even issue this 100 year commemorative stamp. Hopefully sells of these will get the post office in the black this year…ya think?  You may want to save the envelope and letter mailed this week for a keepsake! It is always a hoot watching this generation trying to write a letter and address an envelope. We had several that didn’t know there zip code, one that didn’t know his address, a good portion that didn’t know where to write what, and one that was trying to find what to peel off to seal the envelope…no you just lick it…Hopefully we just preserved a piece of our old way of life?

Now for the part beyond where we have the pictures uploaded…(we’ll get those posted tomorrow)

Saturday  we followed many of the boys around trying to bet pictures of them out doing things instead of just around camp. That is actually harder than it sounds. This place is so big and there is so many things to do that if were not tailing them you couldn’t find them to get a picture. Should be some great picture uploads from that coming.

Hopefully many of you got to see the Shining Light Across America on TV Saturday evening. It was amazing. The boys were just spellbound the whole time. Great entertainment. We got to see a clip from President Obama. The whole thing was fast moving and action packed. Huge fireworks display towards the end in the background with other productions going on all the way through it. We were pretty warn out at the end. It took awhile to get over 70,000 people out of the arena. I was really proud of our guys, while they were waiting they cleaned up the litter from empty water bottles etc over almost the entire Western Regions portion of the arena. Nobody asked them to do it, they just didn’t want to leave it that way and jumped in and did it.

Sunday breakfast had to be cooked in a hurry so we could get off to Church services. A couple of boys went to the Catholic Service. I understand it was pretty cool. Most of the boys went to the LDS Sacrament service. It was presided over by Elder Robert E Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve and conducted by the General Young Men’s Presidency. It was a great meeting. It is always breathtaking seeing 36 Priests and 72 Deacons prepare and pass the sacrament. Michael Tyler and Addison Dishman were asked to sing in the Choir, Drew Roberts was selected to pass the sacrament so we had good representation there from the troop. Elder Hales was thronged by the boys on the way out.

This evening we did a split with a Troop from New Jersey. We sent about 12 of our boys and 2 leaders to their camp and we had 12 of theirs as guests in our camp. It was a great experience. The boys invited them right in and shared dinner with them. Within minutes they acted like they were just part of the troop and didn’t want to leave.

I need to send this before I run out of battery again. I still owe you a couple of days of pictures. Hopefully you will see them tomorrow.

Till then…

Yours in Scouting,

Jamboree Troop 603 Scoutmasters

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day1112#

We just found out that the Arena show at the Jamboree tonight celebrating 100 years of Scouting will be broadcast nationwide on BYU-TV, available in most basic cable packages. It is also being broadcast in the Salt Lake REAL’s Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, also available via streaming at www.byutv.org or www.ustream.tv/shining-light  or on the Shining Light section of the BSA’s Facebook page. Hope you can turn in. Who knows you might even see one of troop 603’s smiling faces…..

Hi Folks WiFi problems here so the last morning and evening I haven’t been able connect and upload pictures. Turns out a few Scoutmasters were trying to do a good turn and created their own little WiFi networks that just happened to be broadcasting on the same frequency that ATT big network here is broadcasting on and was crashing the network. Sounds like they found the culprits and fixed the problem.

I have to correct a previous email. The Jamboree city is not the 14^th largest city in Virginia, it is the 4^th largest City. There is a lot of people here. The logistics of running this are almost incomprehensible to me. It’s pretty amazing how well coordinated it is.

The boys have been busy.heading out to events, meritbadges, activities, and so on. Several have accumulated some pretty impressive patch collections which they are always quick to show off back at camp. Yesterday’s highlight was the big ‘Arena Show. Many of the pictures I uploaded tonight were from that show. The show has featured Secretary of Defense Gates, Miss America, A famous broadway performer (I’ve already forgotten her name, shows how cultured I am) The Army’s Golden Nights Jumpers, and was MC’d  by one of the finalists of Survivor and one other Reality show star that the boys all knew and I had no idea who he was…Later in the day Chris Allison secured some backstage passes and we were able to go on a tour of this massive stage that all this was performed on. It was pretty interesting.

We had some pretty good rainstorms yesterday. The kids have commented about how different the storms are here that at home. The net effect of the storms is that it has finally cooled things down a bit. Today was in the mid 80’s with a bit lower humidity and a slight breeze. Just about heaven. However, the kids definitely have a lot more energy when it is cooler….

We ran into Cody Sirstens dad in the Genealogy Merit Badge booth yesterday. He came over and visited our campsite. Many of the kids were visiting the Genealogy booth and the Family Life merit badge booths toi fulfill requirements for the George Albert Smith award. This is a really cool award and many of the kids are pretty proud about it.

We have been hoping the boys would feed us back pictures doing some of the activites they are out on. They get fairly spread out during the day and we have a hard time getting pics of them. We haven’t got many of those fed back to us. Today we went with them to Technology ‘Quest and got some good pics there I’ll upload tomorrow night.

The kids have been getting along great and having more and more fun together. You’ll have to ask them about the Star Spinning game they were playing tonight. It was a hoot and they got themselves pretty wound up about it right before bed time. They have been so tired every night, they go to bed on time and sleep great!!!

For those of you who have asked for status reports on patches, they have all been filled finally. The Council even threw in some extra patches because of the delay.

As I’m typing I’m hearing someone in the tent behind me sleep talking. It’s pretty entertaining… We even found out we have a couple of sleep walkers in the troop!

Here is the link to the most recent uploads for your enjoyment!

http://picasaweb.google.com/100869686042495152805/Jamboree603Day910#

More to come