We visited Prairie City Landing, a senior home in Folsom, to sing Christmas carols at 1:00 PM on Saturday. From 2:00-4:00 PM we took a tour of the Folsom train museum and blacksmithing shop (https://www.folsomhistory.org/). Next, we were honored to visit the new Chick-Fil-A restaurant owned by our own Lt. Younger, located at 2436 Watt Avenue, Sacramento, CA. Finally, we took a walk in the “Fabulous 40’s” neighborhood of Sacramento to view the Christmas light displays.
We took a tour of Black Chasm Cavern in Volcano, California, and hiked the nearby Miner’s Trail. This is located about 1 hour, 15 minutes from St. Stephen’s, directly east, in Amador County.
10:00am Cave tour
11:00am Short hike at Miner’s Trail
12:00 noon General Meeting covering patch requirements
12:30pm picnic lunch
For several years now, our troop has hosted a booth at our parish’s All Hallow’s Eve party. Our leader, Cpt Pratt, has experience running “The Catacombs” booth, so this became our troop booth this year. It’s a lot of work to setup and takedown! Thank you, Captain Pratt and helpers!
We pick up a bunch of large appliance boxes in the weeks leading up to the event (thank you, Zajic’s Appliance!). We set up a couple dozen of these on the grassy field behind the church in a maze for the kids to crawl through. At the front of the catacombs, an EZ Up tent serves as the official entrance, and another popup tent in back of the catacombs is the official exit (where the candy resides). This year, the tent in the back became a “laser swamp” where kids crawling through the catacombs could find candy. The fog machine added just the right atmosphere to this spooky, fun adventure!
We camped at Park Creek Bible Camp, near Jenkinson Lake, returning to this camp for our second year. The campout started Friday night and ended Sunday morning.
February Event – Iron Mountain Snow Park
Hey troop, the second Saturday is coming up in a week, and we have a snow day planned for the troop at Iron Mountain, located in Kyburz (about 2 hours from St. Stephen’s).
This is a public state park and a snow play permit is required for the day for $15 (https://secure.cloudwisesolutions.com/app/products.html).
To get to Iron Mountain, you’ll need to drive up highway 88 towards Kirkwood Ski Resort (about 50 miles from Jackson), and turn left on Mormon-Emigrant Trail Road. The snow park will be on the north side of the road.
https://ohv.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=23062
Iron Mountain used to be a ski resort, which is now defunct but there is still some infrastructure remaining in various spots. It’s a great place for sledding, cross country skiing, snow shoeing, and snow play in general. Thus far the winter has been light on snow in the mountains but hopefully this current storm will bring some fresh powder.
I propose the following schedule:
– 10 AM: Meet at Iron Mountain park (7 AM mass at St. Stephen’s prior if possible).
– 10-12: Snow play for the troopers
– Break for picnic lunch (possible hot lunch with portable grills, if we can do something simple like hot dogs or ramen?).
– 1 PM: Short Troop business meeting to go over future events (FYI, no Wings Over Solano air show being offered in March, so we’ll need to think of something else).
Let me know if you’re interested in coming but don’t have any snow gear. We have a lot of extra snow pants and boots that I can bring for most sizes up to 12T.
Also, if we can incorporate any patch skills requirements into this event, that would also be great. Let me know if you have any ideas.
Due to poor weather for December’s event, I had to postpone our ziplining and rock climbing trip to Quarry Park Adventures to January. Thankfully, the weather for January 11th appears to be favorable thus far, so hopefully we can keep our reservation.
The good news is that all of our tickets are still payed for and valid for next Saturday at the same time (9 AM – 11 AM). The bad news is that our waivers appear to be expired and need to be redone here: https://go.theflybook.com/manage/YQVRBX#/lite
If anyone needs to change their availability for this month’s event, please let me know. I can still add/remove tickets to our reservation up to 48 hours before the event date.
Cancelled due to weather
| Father confirmed that the classrooms are likely available this Saturday morning and made sure with the organizer for the Woman’s Day of Recollection that we can use classrooms 1, 2, and 3. Here’s a tentative plan that I’m thinking for our woodworking event: 8:30 AM – Mass 9:30 AM – Meet in classroom 1 with the troop – Flag ceremony (I can bring a flag) led by senior cadets – Prayer invocation led by religious director9:45 AM – Troop Business – Discussion of events for next couple months: November (Hunter Safety Training), December (ziplining, climbing) & Christmas caroling at senior home, January (woodworking), February (snowshoeing, sledding, snow play @ Iron Mountain)10:00 AM – Tool demonstrations (perhaps we can split this up into groups of 3 or 4 dads, where each dad takes a group of similar tools and discusses them with the troop) 11:00 AM – Building projects: stool, nativity manger, etc. 12:00 PM – Concluding flag ceremony and closing prayers |
| When Saturday Nov 9, 2024 ⋅ 8:30am – 12pm (Pacific Time – Los Angeles) |
Angel Island Trip
Events, I’m starting a new post here to help plan our next trip out to Angel Island this Saturday, October 12th. Below are some of the most important pieces of information that I gathered from the ferry website (https://angelislandferry.com) and Angel Island State Park website (https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=468).
This was our first troop camp out for the new season, which was booked at a private site called Park Creek Bible Camp, located on 13 acres in private forestry land in the Sly Park Recreation area, about 4.5 miles from Jenkinson Lake. This was our first time using this camp, and it was developed years back to be used by Christian youth groups. The camp was well developed and in a private location of the forest, right next to Park Creek. The site itself was built with a full kitchen, dining area, 3 full sized cabins (with about 20 bunks each), along with a medium sized cabin, and 2 small cabins. There were several fire pits (with ample fire wood available), a playground, basketball court, and several bridges for crossing the creek.
We started the camp on Friday, September 13th in the late afternoon. The itinerary was as follows:
On Saturday our itinerary was as follows:
Sunday morning started with prayers from the office of divine readings, then a community breakfast, and cleaning up camp.
