Taking place ever four years, Troop 1 Katonah had the thrill of attending the adventurous Spring Camporee from May 2nd to 4th. Being a council-wide event, the Troop was able to participate with around a thousand other scouters in Croton Point Park for the Camporee. Once arriving, the troop was able to explore the activities of the program throughout four main areas. These four divisions of the camporee consisted of the Mountain, Arctic, Desert, and Jungle themes. Having a different district run each area, the four areas contained various programs and activities that not only tested the skills of our scouts but also proved to be a blast. Each of these activities could correlate to the theme of the area of which it takes place. Ranging from 4-7 activities, scouts could do favorites such as the mountain themed climbing wall, the arctic cardboard box igloo construction (the program had to provide a sufficient material due to the lack of snow in spring), the desert monkey bring (testing the scouts not to fall into the "snake" infested pit below **assurance that the snakes were in fact rubber**) and the jungle rope swings (challenging scouts to prevent water from pouring out of a soap can or falling in general while swinging to the other side of an invisible cliff). Revolving around group-based work, the scouts had to work together to complete each activity or they would be forced to restart if a scout was not able to succeed (talk about leaving nobody behind). On Saturday night of the event, the scouts were further given wonderful entertainment by a professional hypnotist. With approximately 15 scouts being "hypnotized", the man of talent was able to make these individuals cry, sweat, fall asleep, and dance in front of hundreds of people. Since these scouts were claimed by others to never perform these types of actions if they were not hypnotized, the hypnotist did not only reveal his talent to be anything but a hoax, but was able to receive agreements from the hypnotized by having them say "He's the Man" whenever the man's name was mentioned 15 minutes after the performance. After reluctantly returning home after a splendid event, every scout in Katonah Troop 1 as well as all the other troops can honestly say that thinking that the Spring Camporee was a cool event would be a massive understatement.
On Thursday April 16, 2009, Troop 1 Katonah visited the Campfire Club of America at their private camp in Chappaqua, where we were taught about conservation and preservation of the world's wildlife. When we arrived, we were introduced to the two men in charge of the club. They told us a little bit about how the club was started back around the turn of the century. Among their famous charter members were Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest Thompson Seton (the first Chief Scout), William Hornaday . The Campfire Club treated us to an amazing dinner which consisted of homemade burgers, hot dogs, french fries, and some deserts. After dinner, we walked around the lodge and observed the different trophy animals that were displayed all over the club. One room was dedicated to North America which consisted of examples of many animals from across the continent. In the other room, there many examples of wildlife from Africa. It was pretty cool. Who would have known there was that many animals in Afric...