Surrounded By the Colors of Fall

Amidst the splendor of Fall colors, James and I spent our weekend backpacking with the Boy Scouts. This month’s campout was at Pilot Mountain State Park in North Carolina.

The theme for this camping trip was Backpacking. This was to be James' first backpacking experience, and my first in over 25 years. We had spent the previous two weeks preparing for this trip. We had older scouts present proper gear to bring and how to pack our packs. We took a practice 5 mile hike with weights in our small packs to simulate what we would be going through. We even had to bring our packed packs in to a meeting to be reviewed to make sure that we weren’t bringing unnecessary gear along for the trip.

Despite all of the preparation, the only way to know for sure if you are ready is to just do it! We had 16 boys and 10 adults go on what was supposed to be a 5.5 mile backpacking hike. We left early Saturday morning and drove to the park. We dropped off our packs and gear at the beginning of the trail and then spent the next 30 minutes shuttling the cars to the campsite at the end of the trail.

Once everything was ready, we started our hike. The temperature was in the 50’s at the start of the hike and moved into the 60’s during the day. The weather was perfect. We were surrounded by the color filled forest as we hiked along. About the halfway point, we stopped and had our lunch by the trail. At this point, everyone had been keeping up and doing pretty well.

After lunch things got a little tougher. The packs seemed to get heavier and each successive hill was a little more difficult to climb. The group started to get further spread apart. It was also becoming evident that the trail was longer than advertised.

James, like many of the other boys was struggling during the second half of the hike. I moved his tent from his pack to mine to lighten his load by about 6 pounds. This helped a little, but not enough.

Finally, I took his whole pack, as well as mine (50 lbs total), and allowed him just to hike. We probably did this arrangement for about 2 miles or so of the hike.

Our 5.5 mile hike, end up being our 7.5 – 8.0 miles in length, but everyone made it to the campsite!

One we reached the campsite everyone set up their tents and relaxed a little before it was time to prepare dinner.

The boys had to chop up the vegetables for their dinner, while I lit the charcoal for them to cook over. Once the charcoal was hot and ready, the boys prepared their individual foil packs with a sirloin burger and their choice of: potatoes, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, and spices. They placed them on the coals, flipped them after 10 minutes and let them cook for 10 more minutes.

They turned out great and the hungry boys really enjoyed them.

Now it was time for desert. They boys had peeled and cut up some apples into small chunks. They then took a ½ of a pre-made pie crust, added apples, cinnamon, white sugar, and brown sugar to it. Folded the crust in half and sealed the edges to make a sealed pie. They wrapped it in foil and put it on the coals for 20 minutes, flipping once halfway through.

The apple pies turned out great! It was a recipe that I had invented earlier in the week and had tried it out on the family at home to make sure that the boys would like it.

As night fell, we spent some time looking at the numerous stars in the sky and enjoying the peacefulness. Then we moved to the campfire for warmth before retiring to our tents for the night.

The temperature dropped below freezing overnight and a frost developed by morning. The boys hurried to get a fire going to get warm as soon as they woke up.

After breakfast, we packed up our gear and patrolled the campsite to make sure it was as nice as we had found it. Then we held a short church service there in the wilderness.

Finally, it was time to head home after another wonderful camping experience.