Scouting has become a part of my life again

Yes, I was a Boy Scout once. A mildly successful one. I got the badges, heck I even got THE badge, but soon afterwards I got married (sounds weird to put it in perspective like that) and I dropped teenagerishness like a hot potato and moved on, or so I like to think. Anyway, it has been fun to get re-involved with Scouting. I am a leader for a group of 11-year old scouts, and Collin is now a Bear Cub Scout. Logan is just dying to be a scout and wants to do all of the cool stuff that Collin gets to do, so I see scouting pretty solidly in my future. And so far it has been nothing but fun.

So here are a few pictures from some recent scout hikes.

My first caveat: I shot all of these pictures with my G1 (cellphone.) Thus the acceptable, not exemplary, quality. So obviously we went and found some petroglyphs on our first hike. There were hundreds of them in this canyon, which made us wonder what was so special about this canyon? I think it was a sign yard. You know, the place where your local city or county construction crews keep their construction signs? When the prehistoric business owner needed to leave a message for passersby, why spend weeks chiseling it out of rock, when he/she could just run for a day through the desert barefoot, and come back the next day with a 200 pound rock already engraved with their message. Brilliant. Not to make light of a different culture, but I dare you to comment with your best guesses as to what these prehistoric billboards say. What about the picture above? Obviously it means Help Wanted: Dancer with Maracas and Fringy Outfit. Duh.

This is the popular holiday warning sign: Don't Use Christmas Tree for Ashtray. These are so intuitive. I bet they put the best-sellers right down by the trail. Trenton and Logan got to come on this hike because it was a family hike. Heather educated me on the fact that "Family Hike" and "Father/Son Hike" are in fact synonymous, so she stayed home with Taryn. The boys were true to their personalities. Logan was only happy if he was in front of EVERYBODY, and Trenton was tired and wanted to go home and watch TV as soon as we got to the trailhead sign 100 feet from the car.

Lizard Roadkill Ahead? This one is slightly less obvious.

Tie Your Goat To A Tree By The Tail Only? Don't Pee on the Cacti? Bighorn Sheep Should Use the Second Port-a-Potty From The End? Ok, I give up on this one.

And here are the boys. Collin in the uniform, Logan up on the rock, Trenton with the hat. Nice. That is all for that hike.

So this was a different hike. Again I'm shooting with my camera phone. The sun is so harsh in the desert that pretty much all of these pictures are washed out. Oh well. This one is a natural arch. The cool thing is that the arch is only about 8 inches tall. You could totally put miniature people on it and make a believable scene. It was cool.

Here is Collin sitting on another natural arch. I let him come on this hike even though it was for my 11-year old Scouts. He was hyper the whole time for some reason and was all over the rocks. He was the youngest one there and the first one back to the car.

Well, this has been another make-up posting. Another one bites the dust.