Boy Scout Troop 648 Scottsdale, Arizona

Hello all,

As we look ahead to this week I wanted to let you know that we have a busy week coming up with the following schedule:

6 pm on Tuesday, December 3rd – PLC Meeting

7 pm on Tuesday, December 3rd – Troop Meeting

7 pm on Tuesday, December 3rd – Committee Meeting (next door to Troop Meeting)

5 pm on Friday, December 6th – Mayer Base Camp Outing

Our monthly outing is now going to be a base camp outing that will be held near Mayer, AZ and will be a skills outing.   We had planned a snowshoeing outing in the Flagstaff area but the lack of snow led us to switch to Mayer (we plan on doing the snowshoeing outing in March).  Mr. Traynor is the adult in charge with Mr. Kramer the scout in charge.  Unless the leaders have other plans, we typically meet at 5 pm in the Blessed Sacrament parking lot to load up the Troop Trailer for the trip north.  This trip to Mayer will be “cooler” (although not nearly as cold as last October).  Slight chance of rain next weekend with highs in the upper 40s and lows in the lower 30s so plan accordingly!  Each patrol will need to organize, bring and prepare their own meals for Saturday and Sunday (two breakfasts, one lunch and one dinner) so plan accordingly through your patrol leader.

The Iron Chef competition was rescheduled for December 10th during our regular Troop Meeting.  Each patrol should be prepared for this event.  Contact your patrol leaders with any questions and be prepared to sample some top flight cuisine!!

Mr. Turner

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and is enjoying the weekend. Just a couple of quick announcements:

1) We will hold our quarterly Committee & Parent Meeting this coming Tuesday, Dec 3, 2013. The meeting will occur next door to the regular troop meeting, so please plan to attend; we will aim to begin shortly after 7:00pm.

2) Recharter 2013 is complete and turned in to Council; thank you to everyone for getting your dues turned in on time. It has been a big help.

3) In case anyone missed it in the newsletter or in one my announcements, we have scheduled summer camp 2014 for the week of JUNE 14-21, 2014. Please save the date; this is a going to be a great summer camp at Camp Geronimo; I hope that everyone can attend. More information on costs, merit badges, etc. will occur throughout December.

Thanks!

Mr. Benyi

I thought I would share this piece that aired on KTAR today about the Miracle League of Arizona (http://bit.ly/17IVflh). A few of our scouts have taken advantage of the opportunity to serve MLAZ and earn about 1 1/2 service hours each Saturday that they volunteer as a “buddy” to one of the special needs athletes.
If you’re looking for service hours, this is a great opportunity and although the fall season ends this Saturday (3 seasons per year and 8 weeks per season), the winter season will be starting up on January 11th (www.mlaz.org).

See me or Mr. Turner the younger if you’re interested or have any questions.

Mr. Turner

This week Troop648 has had yet another most excellent addition to our Eagle lair.  Young Mr. Dahlmann has been one of our most effective troop guides, and a terrific Senior Patrol Leader.  Recently he began the development of a very ambitious Eagle Project.   This fall, the largest group of scouts, adult leaders and family in recent troop history completed a massive vegetable and fruit garden complete with sprinkling system for St Vincent de Paul under his direction.  It was clear that the beneficiary organization was extremely grateful and pleased with the on-premise addition to their food programs, as well as now having another place for their clients to work, benefiting other homeless and underprivileged families through their labor in weeding and harvesting the garden.  This week, the council reviewers agreed that this is one exceptional scout, and Young Mr. Dahlmann passed his Eagle board of review.  He is now number 42 on the honored list of Troop 648’s Eagle recipients.  Many congratulations!!

Dear T648,

I write this as the sun is setting and footballs games are wrapping up on another beautiful Sunday afternoon in Arizona.   It was a wonderful two nights of camping at a spot in a grove of mesquite trees about 1/2 mile from the Agua Fria River, which I didn’t realize is a 120 mile long river whose headwaters are located about 20 miles east-northeast of Prescott ending at Lake Pleasant.  Although it was a short hike with our backpacks Friday night it was probably just perfect for our four newest scouts who seemed to have a great time running around looking for and finding treasures and bugs and beetles and spiders and who knows what else.   Mr. Gingrich headed up around noon on Friday (thanks Mr. G!) to secure our spot and was waiting for us as we descended en masse upon the campsite about 8:30 pm.  Soon after there was a fire blazing in the pit and boys running around putting up tents and hammocks.  A few showers fell Friday through the night but not enough to deter a couple of scouts from sleeping under the stars (and then under trees!).  Saturday was for some nice day hikes down to the Aqua Fria River where there was water running and boys jumping from rock to rock as we worked our way upstream.  Some beautiful petroglyphs were just above the river and all of this some 50 miles north of Phoenix.  After lunch another group of us headed out for a long hike to see some old cattle corrals and a silver mine that was abandoned in the 1930s.  As the sun set another fire was lit and our Assistant Scoutmasters buckled down for over 3 hours of First Class Boards with two scouts, Mr. Yu and Mr. Galvin passing with flying colors.  We broke camp and loaded up for the short drive home but not before stopping in Rock Springs for some well deserved homemade piece of pie!  Seemed like we had lots of satisfied customers as we finished the drive to Blessed Sacrament arriving a little before noon today.   Thanks to those who participated in this fine outing, including all of the adult leaders who give so graciously of their time to support this fine group of young men!

Have a wonderful week and see you Tuesday night at Blessed Sacrament for our regular troop meeting!

Thanks,

Mr. Turner