Trail Talk – 10/20/25

Wow! We had a great campout this last weekend! The weather was great on Friday night, perfect sleeping weather. On Saturday we had a blast with our trip out to Gull Meadow Farms. Scouts and leaders alike had chances to do a corn maze, bounce on the big bouncy pillows(it is harder than it looks), go in the corn pit, shoot apples out of an apple cannon, shoot some paintball shots at some different targets, and many more things that were available! We also ate some great apples and donuts! The only negative to it was the rain on Saturday night. It started raining around dinner time, stopped briefly around 8:00 and then proceeded to rain all night. I also almost lost my tent! A big gust off the lake almost blew my tent away! It was crazy. Despite the rain, everyone survived and was in great spirits on Sunday morning!

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

SERVICE OPPORTUNITY! IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ THIS AND LET ME OR CHRISTY KNOW IF YOU CAN PARTICIPATE! SO FAR, I HAVE ONLY HEARD FROM 1 SCOUT WHO IS ABLE TO HELP WITH THIS SERVICE PROJECT! I NEED TO KNOW BY THE END OF THE SCOUT MEETING TOMORROW IF THIS IS SOMETHING YOU CAN HELP WITH! THANK YOU!  At Pathfinder Church! In October we will be filling Blessing Bags for Midwest Mission. The bags have rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a vitamin packet. One bag will feed hungry people, and they are sent all over the world. We will be setting up assembly lines with 10 people per line to fill the bags, weigh them and seal.  We will be running 4 lines for probably 3 hours. We wondered if perhaps the Scouts might be interested in helping to set up, tear down or fill the bags. Set up will be on Friday, October 24 around 6:00.  Saturday, October 25 they will be filling the bags of rice in two different shifts, 10 – noon and 1:00 – 3:00. They could use some help with cleanup and tear down around 3:00 on Saturday.

IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! TROOP SHED CLEANOUT WORKDAY! – WE NEED YOUR HELP! SATURDAY NOVEMBER 1ST – OUR TROOP SHED AT THE CHURCH HAS NOW REACHED THE POINT WHERE WE CAN’T EVEN GET INTO IT TO GET ANYTHING. IT IS IN DESPERATE NEED OF CLEANING OUT AND CLEANING UP! I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A WORKDAY ON THE SHED  ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 1ST, BEGINNING AT ABOUT 9:00 A.M. AND GOING UNTIL EITHER ABOUT 4:00 OR EARLIER IF WE FINISH EARLIER. THIS WILL COUNT AS SERVICE HOURS! THIS IS SOMETHING THAT DIRECTLY AFFECTS YOU AS A MEMBER OF THE TROOP AND SO WE NEED YOUR HELP TO DEAL WITH THIS! PLEASE PLAN ON COMING OUT TO THE CHURCH ON NOVEMBER 1ST AT 9:00 A.M. TO HELP CLEAN UP THE SHED! If the weather is bad, we will reschedule it to a different day. I will buy pizza for lunch for everyone that comes out this day!

November Campout – NOV 7 – 9TH!! AT CAMP TAMARACK (Woods Lake Scout Reservation). The cost for this campout is $45, and the permission slip is attached.  Payments and permission slips for this campout NEED to be turned in by TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28!! This is because we do not have a troop meeting on November 4th! We will be camping there with Troop 287, and we WILL HAVE CABINS! Each boy troop will have their own cabin, and the girl troops will be sharing a cabin. Our Senior Patrol Leaders plan to come up with some fun things for us to do as a troop and for us to do with Troop 287. This is the Portage Scouting Campout! You can pay this to Sherry and turn in the permission slip THIS TUESDAY! IT IS IMPORTANT THAT I KNOW WHO IS GOING ON THIS ONE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

Registration – DUE TUESDAY DECEMBER 9TH!! It is that time of year again! As you may or may not know, when you sign up for scouts and you “register” you fill out an application, and you pay a fee. Your registration is good for 1 year. At the end of that 1 year, you have to “reregister”. Thankfully, it does not involve filling out another application. Since you are in the system, we can just reregister you right in the system. However, it does involve paying a fee for the next year of scouting. The fee for the next year of scouting amounts to $210 per scout and $100 per adult. The breakdown is like this $85 National Fee, $85 Michigan Crossroads Council Fee, and $40 Troop fee. The $40 troop fee goes to pay for things like all the 400+ awards that were handed out at the last court of honor, and it also goes for things like equipment, fees and if possible, to help reduce the cost of some of the campouts.

The way that we want this to happen is for you to pay the entire $210 per scout or $100 per adult to the troop and we will in turn pay the council and national fees. Scouting has it setup so that you can pay those fees directly, but it is a HUGE hassle, and it is much easier for the troop to do it directly. Registration is what allows your scout to be able to attend meetings and do troop activities.

If you intend to re-register your scout for another year of scouting, please start paying your registration fee to Sherry or on Zeffy. You will pay $210 if you are reregistering a scout and $100 if you are an adult registering or re-registering.

Please keep in mind that for scouts or adults to attend activities that have to be registered paying members of Scouting America. We are not allowed to have scouts attend activities if they are not a registered paying member of the organization.

Every year we have to hassle people about paying the registration fees and we would rather not do that. It is tiresome for us. Please take care of this matter as soon as possible!

SwampBase Participants – SWAMPBASE MEETING TUESDAY OCTOBER 21ST AT 6:00 PM, prior to the regular troop meeting. THAT IS TOMORROW NIGHT! ALSO, I HAVE 1 OPENING RIGHT NOW FOR SWAMPBASE IF SOMEONE IS INTERESTED IN GOING!! PLEASE LET US KNOW ASAP! So far, SwampBase participants have paid $300 of the $1,100 fee. I am now asking for $160 per month starting this month until the month of February. If you are not sure whether you are interested or not, come to the meeting this Tuesday at 6:00 about Swamp Base with Mike King! Mike King hopes to get things rolling and impart some information to the group going on this trip.

Philmont 2027 – UPDATE!! UPDATE!! WE HAVE A SPOT FOR 2027!! I received the results of the selection process last week and we now have a confirmed spot for Philmont 2027. I need to have some time to sit down and write out an informational letter to all the participants going with the information that I now have. That will be forthcoming once I get a chance to do that and I will send that in a separate email! What I can tell you so far is that our TREK dates, the dates we are on our Philmont Trek will be July 8 – 20, 2027. This does not include travel dates yet!! If you are signed up and haven’t paid your $150 deposit yet, we need you to do that because we have to pay Philmont by December 1st. I still have 3 Spots available for this Philmont trek as well so if you are still interested, please sign up and pay the $150 deposit with Sherry!

Tuesday, November 4 – no troop meeting due to election day at church. All church activities are cancelled, and the building is closed except for the election.

December Movie Event – We are hoping to do a troop movie at M-89 theatres in December. This is where we rent out an entire theatre for the troop at the cinema and watch a movie together. We are still trying to nail down a date for this. Currently it will be right around Dec. 14th. The cost will be about $10 and will include entrance, small popcorn and small drink. We are going to take a vote at the troop meeting between 2 movies: Zootopia 2 and Wicked 2. We are still working on some of the details like time and so forth and that will be more forthcoming as we know it. This is something we have done in past years, but we didn’t do it last year because of my dad’s passing. This has always been a ton of fun, and we want to try to do it again this year. Put it on your radar and start thinking about planning for this. Once we have all the details figured out, I will put a sign up for it!

Scoutmaster Minute – Perseverance. I may have talked about this topic already, but this last weekend made me think about addressing it again. Perseverance is continuing to do something despite difficulty, or it is a delay in achieving success. That is what I get when I look it up on Google. The reason that I bring this topic up is because of the rain on this last weekend’s campout. With the amount of rain that came down from Saturday evening until Sunday morning and with all the stuff that got wet, it is very easy to get down and to give up. However, in a situation like this, we don’t give up. We need to persevere. We need to learn that rain, snow, thunderstorms, whatever is all a part of the experience. These things happen when you go camping whether that is with the scouts or with your family or another group. You must learn to persist! If I had given up on camping because of adverse conditions, I would never have continued in scouting, and I certainly would not be an Eagle Scout or a scout leader right now. I would never have continued camping outside of scouting either. I would have missed out on all the good and awesome things on all the camping trips I have gone on because I gave up when something uncomfortable came along. I would never have completed 12 backpacking treks at Philmont or worked out there and had the time of my life! It rains every single day in Philmont! Our society tells us these days that if you aren’t comfortable, then just give up. Take the easy way out. Our society has moved away from the idea of “deal with it” or persevere through the difficulties. Camping is only just one example of perseverance. You can apply this throughout all of life and all of scouting…learning knots, first aid, being a good citizen, swimming, canoeing, backpacking, hiking, school, academics, sports, music, drama and so on. Yes, you may find that you go to do something, and you just plain don’t like it. There is a difference between not liking something and persevering through something. Personally, I don’t like long distance running so I choose not to do it. However, I choose to do other things instead, like swimming. To persevere is not to give up. The next time you are on a campout, and it rains like it did this last weekend, just remember…if you get wet, eventually you are going to dry. If you get cold, eventually you can get somewhere warm and warm up. If your stuff gets wet…IT WILL DRY!! The next time you are confronted with something that makes you uncomfortable, try to keep the big picture in mind and push through it. That is what makes an Eagle Scout an Eagle Scout!

“What Troop Does More!!” – 244