Trail Talk – 5/18/26

Good Morning Troop 244! Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend. I certainly missed going on the campout this weekend but from all of the people I talked to, including my own daughter, it sounded like an absolutely awesome weekend. The weather was beautiful and the scouts/leaders got a lot of work done on cleaning up our campsite for Summer Camp!

IMPORTANT AND URGENT ITEMS!

PORTAGE MEMORIAL DAY PARADE – Memorial Day, May 25th! THAT IS NEXT MONDAY!! We will once again be marching in the Portage Memorial Day Parade. We will pretty much be meeting in the same spot as last year. We will line up at Crossroads Mall, either in the JC Penney parking lot or what used to be the “Sears” parking lot, but I believe is now “Zap Zone”. I will be receiving more information about our specific spot in the parade later this week and when I do, I will communicate it out to the troop. We will meet at 9:00 am to line up! The parade starts at 10:00 am and should take about an hour. We will finish at the Portage Bandshell behind Police Station so please plan to pick up your scouts there. Please remember, we don’t simply walk in the parade to walk down Westnedge Ave. We walk in this parade to honor all of the men and women who have served this country and DIED to protect our freedoms! You and I are very lucky in that we can live in a country where our freedoms are protected by a Constitution and that men and women have worn the uniform, fought and died to protect that Constitution. Please get yourselves out of bed next Monday morning and come march with your troop in the Portage Memorial Day parade

JUNE PENTWATER CAMPOUT – June 5 – 7, Cost is $45 per scout and $20 per adult. This campout is only 3 weeks away and so we need people to sign up for this now! The permission slip is attached, and you can sign up on Tuesday night! THIS IS OUR END OF THE YEAR CELEBRATION! School is out and it is time for summer to begin in full! We have been going to Hill and Hollow Campground in Pentwater for over 30 years now as an end of the school year celebration for all scouts! Hill and Hollow Campground is a great place to camp! They have a pool, basketball courts, and beach volleyball and are attached to AJ’s Fun Park which has Go-Karts, an Arcade and mini golf. Scouts must bring their own money for anything at AJs! The cost of Go-Karts, mini-golf or Arcade are NOT included in the cost of the campout! YOU MUST BRING YOUR OWN MONEY FOR THE FUN PARK – GO KARTS, ICE CREAM, MINI-GOLF, ARACADE, ETC. This is a great time and place to spend with your fellow scouts and just unwind! If the weather is nice, we will go to Lake Michigan Beach for a little while! I would like to start getting people signed up for this campout as soon as possible so we can start planning/preparing! THIS IS ONE CAMPOUT YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS!

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

SAFEGUARDING YOUTH TRAINING – If you are an adult leader who has not updated their Safeguarding Youth Training yet, this needs to be done by the end of the month. The original YPT training will no longer be valid as of May 31st. Every adult leader will have to have completed the SYT training by the end of the month if they haven’t already. Scouting America is being very serious about this. They will remove you from the Troop roster(suspend you) temporarily until the training is done. You will no longer be able to help out our youth. Please login to my.scouting.org and complete the new Safeguarding Youth Training if you haven’t yet!

EAGLE SCOUT PROJECT HELP – Hey all! I’m Phinn Cornwell Wood and I am working on my Eagle Project. We are collecting donations of toys, books, and games for Woodland Elementary students. If you have a donation, I have donation drop off boxes at the church (Pathfinder), and at the Woodbridge Hardings. I will hopefully have another at the Hardings on Stadium soon, but I’ll send an update if I hear more about that. The goal is to get these donations to the school before June 3rd, so please drop any donations off sooner than later. And no electronic items please!

Thank you all!

POPCORN!! POPCORN! POPCORN! – Do you like popcorn? I know I do. We have some popcorn leftover in the scout room from last year’s popcorn sale. We would sure like to get rid of it. You can purchase popcorn from the troop at a reduced cost of just $10 per bag! That is a 50% discount! Stop in on a Tuesday night and help us get rid of the leftover popcorn so we can clean the clutter in the scout room! You can see Sherry to pay the $10 and get the popcorn!

UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES AT SUMMER CAMP – Ready to take your outdoor skills to the next level at summer camp this year? Troop 244 is looking for Scouts to step up and lead the way in conservation and woodsman skills!

Whether you want to master the art of the axe or become a guardian of our wild places, we have two awesome opportunities for you:  Leave No Trace & Tread Lightly and Paul Bunyan Woodsman.

HELP NEEDED! – We have been contacted by a couple of people from Pathfinder Church who need some able-bodied young people to help with some yard work around their house. One family needs some wood moved around. Another family needs some help with general yard work including weeding, raking and maybe mowing. This second family is willing to pay if you want to earn some extra cash! The first family would be a family to help out through service! You could earn service hours for the first family, and you could earn service hours for the second family IF you did not accept payment! PLEASE CONTACT EITHER ME OR MRS. BALDWIN IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN HELPING OUT WITH EITHER OF THESE TWO OPPORTUNITIES! This would be a great way for our scouts to give back to members of Pathfinder Church who support our troops in many ways!

**SUMMER CAMP 2026!! June 21 – 27th, 2026 PIONEER SCOUT RESERVATION. This is coming up so fast!! Hearing the scouts and leaders talk about cleaning up Klewer campsite this last weekend and also about them going all around Camp Frontier, made me get very, very excited for Summer Camp. As of me writing this trail talk today, we have 34 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes and 30 seconds until Summer Camp! That is crazy! It is almost here! Make sure you know what merit badges you were able to get for summer camp. If those merit badges have PREREQUISITES FOR THEM, GET THOSE PREREQUISITES DONE! For those of you who have not paid in full, please do your best to get your payment as soon as possible. PAPERWORK! PAPERWORK! PAPERWORK! If you have not turned in the troop permission slip for Summer Camp yet, it is attached to this email.  Fill it out and get it turned in. There are quite a few people who haven’t! There are also several people who have not turned in the Pioneer Scout Reservation(PSR) Release form yet! You can get this from Sherry at a troop meeting. Please get that turned in. Please also make sure that everyone is working on getting their Medical Forms for Summer Camp. This MUST be the Scouting America Medical Form, and it must be the ENTIRE form: Parts A, B and C! Turn these in as soon as possible but no later than the end of May! BOTH ADULTS AND SCOUTS must have medical forms. Paperwork is a giant hassle, but it must all be turned in and taken care of.

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 AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

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 most out 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!

Pictured Rocks Backpacking Trip – The trip itself is July 9 – 15th Cost is $300 due by June 15th. PREPARE! PREPARE! PREPARE! Make sure you get your Scouting America Physical Form completed and turned in. This includes Part C. Once June hits, I will begin planning in earnest about the Menu, Food shopping/organizing and getting the Troop gear together for this trip! Just like you, I need to get through this school year!

SWAMPBASE – July 9 – 18th Please stay up to date on all information for this trip.  Get your Scouting America medical form filled out! Prepare! Prepare! Prepare! Please see Mike King if you have any questions about this trip!

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  – EAGLE REQUIREMENTS – Last week I talked about the first part on the trail to Eagle Scout, that of the Tenderfoot – Second Class – First class Rank Advancements.  As I mentioned last week, often getting to 1st Class is considered the “halfway” point on the trail to Eagle, because mathematically, you have “half” of the ranks completed. However, once you get done with your 1st Class, you now have a steep trail in front of you that winds for many more miles. There is a lot of work yet to be done that will take you a little longer than it took you to get to that rank of 1st Class. Now, as a 1st Class scout, you are going to start working more earnestly on Merit Badges. You are going to be required to hold leadership positions and give more service in terms of service hours. This is now where the “rubber meets the road”. The next rank you are going to work towards is that of the Star Rank. The Star Rank is an interesting rank because it is somewhat of an intermediary between those “early” ranks and the more formative ranks ahead. For Star, it is your responsibility to hold a leadership position for a period of at least 4 months although we typically have our scouts in leadership positions for 6 months at a time. Here is where you have to ask yourself a question about leadership. Is leadership a “position” to be held or is it “action” to be carried out. Often, I believe that scouts think that they go into the concept of leadership as holding a position but that they learn throughout the time in that position, that leadership is more about action. You can be a leader without holding a position at all. You have to ask yourself during this time, “is there more I could do in my position to contribute to the troop”. Working towards Star also means giving more service in service hours. You must now complete 6 hours of service towards your community in some way. This is more hours of service than you had to do for all of T21. We start to get a better idea of what doing service for others really means. MERIT BADGES! Merit Badges are probably the most visible sign of working towards the rank of Star. They are certainly the ones we think of the most. In order to earn the Star Rank, you must earn 2 “non-required” merit badges and 4 “Required” merit badges. The “required” merit badges come from that list of 13 merit badges that you MUST earn in order to earn the rank of Eagle Scout. The “non-required” badges, the other 100+ merit badges in scouting that might interest you as a hobby, a fun activity, a possible future career or just simply an interest. Working towards these merit badges can take time and A LOT of effort, but you must continue to be diligent to complete them and to make sure you aren’t getting any PARTIALS! For the Star Rank you must also go back to a requirement from the Scout Rank, which is to review the videos on personal safety awareness. There are a few additional videos that you must watch for this rank as well, especially because you are now older than you were and you will face some more trials that are specifically targeted at your personal safety. Finally, to earn the rank of Star, you must be ACTIVE in your troop for a period of at least 4 months as a First Class Scout! What does “active” mean though? Do you show up to meetings? Do you go on campouts? Do you come to summer trips such as summer camp, mini-high or other high adventures? There are no set “criteria” for what active means so you must define that for yourself. If you go 4 months without showing up to a single troop meeting, do you think you have been an “active” member of your troop? I certainly would question that! Being active is an important part of being a Scout and being in Troop 244! You must always do your best to be as active as you possibly can! This will lead you to earn that Star Rank and move along the path towards Eagle!

“What Troop Does More!!” – 244!!!