2014 Joshua Tree Reflection

-- Daniel H., Second Class, Nov. 2014

On November 14, 2014, about 65 people went to the Joshua Tree. In Joshua Tree there was a lot of large rocks that we could climb up. It was a great opportunity to get advancements done, hiking, and climbing rocks, which was extremely scary.

Matthew K. and I took a seat in Mr. Hong’s car. There was heavy traffic, so Matthew taught me how to play magic: a card game. It was a bit difficult to learn, but it was really fun. After we arrived at our campsite, most of people in our troop had arrived. We built poles with ropes and stakes for the flags. I slept with Darren and Tony in the tent that we pitched.

On the next day, I woke up and prepared for troop’s breakfast. I cooked eggs and bacon for my patrol. After eating breakfast, we assembled together and did flag ceremony. All the scouts did a compass course, and the rule of the compass course was that each team is given a paper that has information about other paper that they had to find it and write down what is written in the paper. My team members were Kush, Tony, and Ronnie. It was really difficult to find hidden paper under the sun. We had to count our steps accurately and measure it with compass so that we could find paper easily.

After hours, we were finally done with compass course! We found all the papers and we wrote it down. We went back to the campsite. It was almost about 1:00pm, so we ate sandwich for lunch. After that, we went to large rock to climb. Half of the scouts went to hiking and half of the scouts stayed there for climbing. There were two ways to climb the rock. First choice was just simple: climbing with rope and no safety equipment. I would say it was not that hard, but scary. Second choice was extremely hard rock climbing with safety equipment, and Mr. A helped scouts how to do it. For second choice, climbing up wasnot hard but climbing down was difficult. I was really scared when I climbed down because I had to lean back and jump a little.

After climbing rock, it was dark. There were so many stars in the sky. We went back to the campsite and cooked dinner. I cooked spaghetti with delicious meat ball. All people enjoyed having dinner. Someone started campfire so we started to eat marshmallow. I went back to the tent and slept in the warm sleeping bag. While sleeping, our tent was extremely shaking so I thought someone was shaking our tent but it was really strong wind and it was cold.

Last day, everyone woke up and Mr. A cooked Dutch oven which was delicious. After eating breakfast, we did flag ceremony and Mr. A taught some scouts how to measure the height and width of designated item. Later, I played hide and seek on the rock with Darren, Aaron, Tony, Matthew T. and Matthew K.. It was fun to play on the rock because there were so many places to hide.

When it was time to go back to home, Matthew K. and I took a seats in Mr. Hong’s car and everyone went back safely.

Gallery 2014 Joshua Tree Outing