Trail Talk – 2/16/26
Happy Monday Troop 244! Happy President’s Day! Wow, we had a great weekend this last weekend on the campout! The weather was absolutely gorgeous all weekend and we had a lot of fun learning about, exploring and earning the Exploration Merit Badge! We had a pretty good Turkey/Thanksgiving dinner as well on Saturday night not to mention and absolutely out of control game of Settlers of Cataan! Congratulations to Frederick Thurn for whomping all of us in the game!
Just so everyone is aware, you will not see the yellow trailer at the church right now! Don’t worry, it hasn’t been stolen! It was picked up yesterday by Eagle Scout Taylor Pobuda of Troop 244 to be brought to his place. He will get us an estimate of the cost to fix the trailer and get it road worthy again. Once I know that cost, I will let all of you know because we will need help with that cost! Taylor is not one who messes around. Check out below how he loaded the trailer up to get it to his shop! This was yesterday afternoon:
MSTR (MAKE SURE TO READ)
- Feb. Court of Honor and Dinner information.
- March Activity Event Information and Signup!
- April Campout Springfield, IL Lincoln Pilgrimage
- SUMMER CAMP 2026!!
IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:
FEBRUARY COURT OF HONOR AND DINNER – February 24th at 6:00 p.m. we will have our annual court of honor and dinner night! Dinner will once again this year be a Taco bar prepared by Jeremy Custer and our scouts. The cost for this dinner will be $10 to cover the cost of the food. After dinner, we will move into our court of honor where we will be handing out (as of right now) over 100 awards. WE WILL START SETUP AROUND 4:30 P.M. AND WE WILL NEED SCOUTS THERE TO HELP WITH THE SETUP FOR TABLES AND CHAIRS AS WELL AS THE PROGRAM! Any scouts that can get there as close to 4:30 p.m. as possible will be greatly appreciated! Last day to earn anything to be handed out at the court of honor is THIS Tuesday, February 17th.
COOKING MERIT BADGE – Help needed! Right now, Michele Clapp has at least 9 scouts in her Cooking Merit Badge class at troop meetings. They have been working on getting all of the paperwork aspect of the merit badge out of the way and are soon moving into the cooking phase of the merit badge. She could use someone to help her out with this merit badge! Michele will be the merit badge counselor for the badge; we just need some extra supervision to help her out with her scouts in the kitchen on Tuesday nights! If you would be willing to help out for about an hour on Tuesday nights with cooking merit badge, please come to the meeting or let me know!
WILDERNESS FIRST AID TRAINING – I will be putting out an email to adult leaders shortly on interest in a wilderness first aid and CPR training course. We try to offer this every spring, time permitted because it is a requirement for most high adventure treks. Wilderness First Aid training is good for 2 years from the completion of a course and then you have to get it renewed. Please be on the lookout for an email from me about interest and dates.
SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES – Do you need service hours at all? I was informed of a couple of service opportunities. Both of these are through the Michigan DNR Stewardship department. ON Saturday February 21st, you can volunteer to remove wood invasive species at Fort Custer. On Sunday, February 22nd, you can volunteer at Saugatuck Dunes State Park to help reclaim the dry sand prairie. Morgan and Mason Clapp and their parents are planning on attending both of these volunteer opportunities. They have room in their car for 1 more scout but more are welcome if you can get transportation. You can talk to Mr. or Mrs. Clapp or if you would like more information you can go to this link: https://www.michigan.gov/dnr/about/get-involved/volunteer-stewardship
March Activity – ALLEGAN EVENT. Saturday, March 21st at 2:00 p.m. INDOOR CLIMBING and other attractions. On Saturday, March 21, we will all gather AT Allegan Event, and we have reservation for 2 hours. We will be able to go in and climb, use their high ropes course and more from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. The cost for this event will be $24. If you wish to purchase food or use the arcade, you will need to bring your own money. Parents will have to turn in the Troop Permission Slip, like normal but there is also an Allegan Event Waiver form that needs to be filled out. This is filled out online at this link: https://waiver.roller.app/AlleganEvent/?ubid=609BeYO-gU2iK93fcKk3EQ This is not negotiable. No waiver, no entry. Sign up for this on Tuesday! I have to have a minimum of 20 people signed up or I have to cancel this!
APRIL CAMPOUT – SPRINGFIELD, IL LINCOLN PILGRIMMAGE – The cost for this campout is going to be $60 as of right now per scout and $30 per adult. This campout takes place on April 24 – 26th and scouts will have to get out of school EARLY on Friday, April 24th. Because Springfield is a 5-hour drive, we leave around 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon in order to make it down there in a timely manner. This campout gives you a chance to learn a lot about our 16th President Abraham Lincoln. You have 2 options for activities you can do. 1. You can walk 18.9 miles in the steps of Abraham Lincoln from New Salem, IL to Springfield, IL through suburbs, farmland and other streets taking about 7 – 8 hours to do this. OR 2. You can visit the Presidential Museum in Springfield, IL in the morning and the village of New Salem as it was back in Abraham Lincoln’s day in the afternoon! Both are exciting opportunities. I have done the long hike 13 times and the museum 2 times! I loved both of them! This trip however has A LOT OF PREPLANNING that has to go into it. I have to start signing scouts up for the activities NOW!! This is not something that is run by our troop. This is run by the Abraham Lincoln Council of Scouting America, so a lot of things are out of my control. Because I have to submit information to the council, I need you to SIGN UP NOW!! There will be a signup sheet and a permission slip available at the church starting THIS TUESDAY! THIS IS AN AWESOME OPPORTUNITY! SIGN UP NOW!
Meat Stick Fundraiser – MEAT STICKS! MEAT STICKS! Pick up your meat sticks to take out and sell at the troop meeting. This year, in order to get the most of the fundraiser, we are selling the meat sticks at a price of 2 for $3 instead of $1 apiece. This helps us to make more money overall for each scout’s individual scout account. You can see Brandon Beery at the troop meetings to get meat sticks to sell and to turn in the money from your sales!
Scouting America PHYSICAL FORMS! – Every Scout and Leader that goes to summer camp, Swampbase, Pictured Rocks or the mini-high adventure MUST have an up-to-date SCOUT PHYSICAL FORM with all parts of the form filled out, Part A, B1, B2 and C. You must get a new one for this year. No Form, No Trip. WE NEED ALL PHYSICAL FORMS TURNED IN BY MAY 1ST.
SUMMER CAMP 2026 – June 21 – 27th, 2026 PIONEER SCOUT RESERVATION! We are looking at the cost this year of $450/scout and $210/adult. I AM REALLY GOING TO START PUSHING SUMMER CAMP as of now!!! What I need parents and scouts to understand is that Summer Camp is something that has deadlines for various aspects of signup. WE HAVE TO HAVE CERTAIN SIGNUPs DONE BY CERTAIN DATES AND THEREFORE WE NEED YOUR HELP! In order for us to get the “early bird” price of $450 per scout we need to turn payments into Pioneer by the end of April. This means that we need your payment for Summer Camp by April 21st! Signups for merit badges for summer camp open on April 26th and therefore we will need to know what merit badges scouts want to take by the night of our Summer Camp Meeting. We will have a Summer Camp Meeting in place of our normal troop meeting AFTER spring break, on April 7th! This will be a time when we sign people up, collect forms, go over what is expected for summer camp and sign up for merit badges. Scouts, start thinking about merit badges now! Please remember that every scout that goes to camp must have an updated Scouting America Physical form. The physical forms are only good for 1 year. So, start thinking about this now and get your scout their physical form filled out Parts A, B1, B2 AND C. Adults attending camps or high adventures are required to have medical forms filled out as well!
Pictured Rocks Backpacking Trip – July 9 – 15th Cost is $300 due by June 15th. Still looking for a second female adult leader! I sent out a detailed information packet about this trip a couple of weeks ago. We will have an information and preparation meeting on SUNDAY MARCH 22ND AT 2:30 P.M. in the Fellowship Hall.
SWAMPBASE –As of Tuesday, every participant should have paid their fees for SwampBase in full! We have to make a payment to SwampBase by the end of this month. ALSO, EVERY SWAMPBASE participant will need to have a Scouting American Physical Form filled out in order to participate. This includes ALL parts, Part A, B1, B2 and C. Make sure you take care of this sooner rather than later! Please continue to look for information from your trip leader, Mike King!
Troop 244 Payment Portal – Zeffy. Our Zeffy page remains open for you to make payments or by troop merch! Wanna pay for the campout, Pictured Rocks, SwampBase, Registration, etc. Go to the following link: http://bit.ly/pay244. For troop Swag/Merch you can click on this link: http://bit.ly/244swag
Scoutmaster Minute – I was thinking a lot about leadership over this last weekend. It is really interesting to both observe leadership of others and to engage in leadership. As part of the Scouting America program, our job as leaders is to try to help train up scouts to be leaders. Will we be able to do this with all scouts? Probably not and in fact I can tell you a lot of scouts I have seen who the concept of true leadership never really clicks for them. However, there are a lot of scouts I have seen over the years that go out and are outstanding leaders in their field, whether that be in business, medical, education, the military and so on. Training scouts to leaders is a very subtle thing. A lot of people expect there to be more “direct” instruction and action when it comes to training and teaching leadership. To be honest, I have found that it is quite the opposite. Training leaders means empowering scouts to be able to lead, to make decisions on their own and then giving them the space to carry out those decisions. Training scouts to be leaders means trusting them, not just to lead but to FAIL as well and then you have to turn around and turn that failure into a teaching opportunity. We had a very small group of scouts on the campout this last weekend, but I was astounded over and over again by those scouts who just decided to lead. They didn’t need to be told everything to do. They just did it and that was a great thing. What makes the “training” aspect of that so important though is that I, as scoutmaster, and the other adult leaders have to be willing to let them do it. We can’t tell them, “wait until I tell you to do something”. We have to be willing to let them take the reins and lead. If they screw up, they screw up. Screwing up leads to the best teaching opportunities. If they burn the food, they will know better next time. Too often people think they are leaders because they hold some sort of position. “I am an assistant senior patrol leader, therefore I am in charge” is something I have heard over and over again for years and years. However, did that ASPL, really take charge or did they boss people around? Did they truly lead? I have a plaque on my wall that was given to me a number of years ago. It is a small, very subtle plaque but it simply says this “Leadership is Action, NOT Position” and I have believed in that to this day. From what I witnessed this weekend with the leadership that I saw, even in our very small group of scouts, we are doing a good job of raising up the leaders that will lead and teach the next generations of scouts.
“What Troop Does More!!” – 244!!!