Troop 54 made our first trip to Rotary Scout Reservation in Averill Park , New York. This makes 36 Scout camps since 2006 for the Troop. A Wood Badge class had most of the camp, so we selected the Mohawk site from among the available sites. This site had a fire ring with nice benches, a hard shelter with solar powered lighting, its own latrine with tap water, tent platforms and a lean-to shelter. The Scouts set up their tent (minus the rain fly) in the lean-to.
We had three Scouts and three leaders participating on this trip. Once again, a couple of departure day illnesses reduced the size of our group.
During the day on Saturday, we traveled to Herkimer Diamond Mines in Herkimer, New York. We all tried mining for Herkimer “diamonds” (actually, a clear form of quartz crystal). Getting one of these required a fair amount of digging and then splitting open large rocks. Some of our participants managed to get a few of these.
At the camp site, the Scouts cooked one meal in a Dutch oven and another meal on a grate supported by a tripod over a camp fire. Lunch at the mine was cold cut sandwiches, and they cooked their remaining meal on a propane camp stove. As a result of our somewhat late day on Sunday, we had decided to eat lunch at a fast food restaurant on the way back.
This trip included a lot of driving as the camp was about 2 hours 20 minutes from Epworth, and the mine was about 1 hour 45 minutes from the camp.
The weather was great. We had unseasonably warm temperatures and no rain.
This was our 189th consecutive month with at least one overnight camping trip.
Page updated 10/2/24
J. Froimson
