Just came home from scout camp. It was incredible. We ran it on our own, and cost half the price of a normal scout camp. Plus, we did water skiing
. Every morning, we had a patrol challenge. Wether it tested basic scout skills, or taught you some new ones (like tree climbing. It's just like climbing a rope, only you have a rope attached to your waste and another one hanging down so you can put your foot in it. Both of those are on the main rope that feeds into the belay device). I got 5 new merit badges, including the motor boating and water sports merit badges. Plus, we did the mile swim while we were there.
Everyday, each patrol was graded on their campsite. We had to go out and find a place to place our site (We were in a camp with platforms for big 12 person tents that didn't have the tents on them at the time. Lucky us!) and were graded on cleanliness, gateway, campfire, ax yard, etc. including bribery (our leaders loved our cheesecake we made for them
) We finally made a draw bridge for a gateway. I don't know how long we have talked about making one for the troop. For rope, we used twine. I found a bucket with a big roll of it in there and we went crazy with it. It was so much fun!