Last weekend, 4 adults and 4 scouts decided to brave the great outdoors during the cold. We knew that rain was in the forecast with snow predicted for Sunday morning but the start from the church had no indication of that weather. In fact, not until we got near R-C was there a hint of rain.
We made it in darkness to our site after I overshot it and the scouts picked their spots with the knowledge that they didn’t want to be anywhere that the rain might gather. Tents were put up with minor sprinkles at worst and we were able to get to our tents relatively dry. Once in the tents, though, the weather had enough of waiting and decided to dump on us all night. A good bit of the weather was small hail/grauple in addition to rain which made for a nice drumming on the tents.
Saturday morning had a bit of a respite so that the pop-up tents could be put up. One picnic table was able to be covered so that it could be used in the rain. Our scouts learned how to play a fun variant of liar’s dice as well as playing Uno and some Chess. This reporter noticed that the scouts didn’t seem to like calling each other liar and instead said “cap” when they thought someone was bluffing. Chants of cap, cap, cap could be heard now and again from the picnic table.
That was the good news. The bad news was that the constant rain/grauple overnight seemed to saturate the ground and it didn’t take much walking to have mud puddles everywhere. The ground was pretty sticky and we were lucky someone didn’t lose a boot!
In the afternoon the weather let up enough for us to hike to the box canyon area of Christopher Creek.
We also traveled to the springs of the creek and passed the big Sycamore that in warmer months marks crawdad fishing country.
Saturday evening, discussions of potential snow were had before bed. Sunday morning, we woke to some scouts wishes being granted.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t cold enough overnight to freeze the mud puddles, so packing up was a bit tough and many trash bags were used to avoid tracking mud into vehicles.
The snow came down heavy as we gathered to wrap up the outing. A nice ending to a tough but fun outing.
