Dallin and Alec's Service Project

Dallin and Alec are doing a service project for their Citizenship in the Community merit badge. They put bags on doorsteps and people would fill them up with non-perishable foods, just like Scouting for Food. Then Alec will take the food and take it to a food bank in Concord. Then Alec will go pick pears, or something.

Mt. Tam

About a month ago, we went on a camp out to Mt. Tamalpais, or Mt. Tam for short. Brother Spencer, Brother Jackson, Randall Diamond, Brother Carver, Alec Viera, Chase Carver, Rick Patterson, Dallin Earl, Jaren Garff, Jeremy Glenn, and I left on Friday, June 26, 2009. Dallin, Rick, and I went in Brent Spencer's car, and we got a little lost around Richmond. We had to go across several bridges, including the Richmond Bridge. Finally, we got to Larkspur, where we became reunited with everyone else at a Togo's, where we had dinner.

Then we drove up to Mt. Tam. The place we were going to camp at was all taken up, so we camped at a tent/RV place. We then played Hide-and-Go-Seek Tag and told riddles around the fire. Then we went to sleep. Since we only brought, oh, I don't know, about three tents, Dallin, Jeremy, Jaren, and I slept on a tarp. Jaren and I looked at the stars, and saw a big ball of light flash across the sky. It was too big to be a shooting star, and it was faster than a comet (we saw it for about a millisecond). Was it...a UFO?

Then we woke up and made our favorite breakfast, Sunrise Stew. We sauteed it this time, so it was better than last time. Jaren took about 1/3 of the whole pan and had about one normal serving left over! In other words, he learned a valuable lesson on "seconds".

Then we started our hike. We took a wrong turn, so we were hiking downwards instead of up. Then, it started getting hotter. Jeremy and I only packed jeans, so we were really, really hot! The hottest it got was 104 degrees Farenheit! Dallin had brought a squirt bottle so he kept squirting us (and trust me, it felt great in that weather!). When we stopped outside the Westpoint Inn, the hotel on Mt. Tam, Dallin squirted my shirt, my back, even my armpits!

Rick started having, um, some hyperventilation problems, but he didn't complain once! Nice job, Rick! Nice job!

Finally we got to the top! We had frozen pizzas and nectarines. We had an awesome view of the Bay Area. We could see all of San Francisco. We could also see all four bridges Dallin, Rick, Brother Spencer, and I went on!

Then we started our hike down. We stopped at a snack shack near the top and got colorful popsicles called Itzakadoozies. Wow, they were good! Randall became obsessed with them!

When we finished our hike, we were all tired. Dallin, Jaren, Jeremy, and I went in Randall's car. On the way home, we stopped at a 711 and got Slurpees.

This hike was the hardest yet. It was 8 1/2 miles! Usually our hikes are about 5 miles. Also, it was a Rimrover hike!

Bike Ride

Today, me, Dallin Earl, Alec Viera, Kyle Makaiwi, Jaren Garff, and our fairly new scout, Rick Patterson, went on a bike ride to Downtown Danville. First we took the Iron Horse Trail into Downtown and rode over to Mountain Mike's Pizza. We got the All-You-Can-Eat Lunch Buffet! The TV there is kind of weird. It's always on the same channel, so when you change the channel, it would skip each channel until it got to the same channel!

Next, we went to the "At the Candy Shop", right next to the Clock Tower. There's a hole lot of candy there! Jaren kept looking at mint tins with pin-up girls on them. I had to remind him that a scout is clean! Dallin got some gummy Mexican food candy stuff. It had gummy chili, gummy corn, gummy jalapeno peppers, gummy tacos and stuff! He also got "Booboos", which are gummy band-aids with red stuff on them. I only got some Pop Rocks.

Then, we rode to KRV, a board riding place. We checked out the surfboards and the other things there. There was was this one shirt with a pickle with buck teeth on a skateboard. Dallin and I thought it was goofy looking. We offered the store clerk some Booboos, but he just wanted us to buy stickers.

Apparently, we didn't. But that's okay! Yeah, and there was a bikini sale there, so Dallin asked us how he'd look in a bikini. I had to say he would look really disturbing (no offense, Dallin, but save them for the women)!

Then, we went home. Yeah, we all had a fun day.

Muir Woods and Point Bonita

Left to Right, Top Row: Randall Diamond, Chris Glenn, Brother Spencer, Brother Jackson

Middle Row: Travis Neal (me), Teddy Wright, Jeremy Glenn

Bottom Row: Alex Wright, Kyle Worley, Kyle Makaiwi

On February 21, 2009, our troop took a day trip. The scouts that went were me, Jeremy Glenn, Chris Glenn, Kyle Worley, and Kyle Makaiwi, and Alex Wright. Alex is in a wheelchair, so he usually doesn't go on scout trips, but it was good to have him on this one! Teddy, his brother came to help Alex.

Anyway, our leaders were Randall Diamond, Brother Spencer, Brother Jackson, and my dad came as well (he took all of the pictures on this trip).

Our first stop was Muir Woods.

The trees there are really really old! We saw the inside of a tree and all the lines inside. A thick line means a year of good growth. A thin line means a year of little growth. Plaques labeled the different lines from different events in history.

Yeah, and we saw lots of ladybugs!

We also found a banana slug. Some of us kissed it for good luck. I did, but then Teddy shoved it to my mouth!

We then decided to go on a small hike through the woods.

After our hike, we wanted to ride in the back of the truck, but we found out it was illegal here in California.

Next, we went to Muir Beach. We ate Cup Noodles for lunch on some picnic tables. And some people gave us free chicken, tri-tip, and ribs. We wanted to give something back, but all we had left were some clementines, so they said, "No thanks!" Oh, and Kyle Makaiwi found a live lizard in the creek!

The beach was nice. There was a good outlook up on a hill.

Then we went to Point Bonita. On the way there, Kyle Worley, Kyle Makaiwi, and I rode in Brent Spencer's car. Whenever we passed a biker, Kyle Worley would roll down the window and yell, "I like your bike!" to them. Well, we saw one guy standing with his back to the road. Kyle asked if he was okay. Well, it turns out the guy was taking a whizz.

After a short drive we got to Point Bonita. Point Bonita is in Marin County, above San Francisco. There are many army barracks there with great views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Kyle, Kyle and I found an open rusty door that led to some dark caverns underneath the barracks. We didn't go to far inside because it was all flooded. Jeremy, Kyle, Kyle, and I ran around pretending to shoot down Russian invaders. We found a hidden barrack that had a small trail leading up to it. There were narrow stairs on the outside of the barrack leading up to the second floor of the barrack. The staircase had no rails on it and the steps were really narrow. The second floor had lots of dirty words graffitied on the walls, so we tried to cover them up.

The trail ran alongside some cliffs. I'm glad we didn't lose any scouts!

We walked down the road to the Point Bonita lighthouse.

The road went right through a tunnel in a humongous boulder. There was some random wagon thing there so Kyle and Kyle made me pull them through the tunnel in the wagon.

Then we got to the lighthouse. There's a rickety bridge that leads to the lighthouse. Only Randall, my dad, Kyle Makaiwi, and I went across the bridge because Kyle's never been to the lighthouse and I like going to it anyway. The ranger guy conducting the bridge gave strict rules (and told us about Point Bonita cabbage). A yellow fighter plane flew right next to the bridge. Everyone thought it was cool, except forthe ranger guy. What I thought was funny was the leader of the park service, but his jacket had a "Volunteer" patch.

We couldn't go inside because they discovered toxic lead paint inside. So we wasted about 20 minutes.

Then Kyle, Kyle, and I rode in Randall's car and listened to some sweet songs.

Pinnacles

Left to Right: Chris Glenn, Randall Diamond, Brent Spencer, Jeremy Glenn, Dallin Earl, and Travis Neal (me)

Back in March, our troop went to Pinnacles National Monument for a camp out. Pinnacles is a place full of hiking trails, caves, rocks, and other cool stuff. We left to go on the Camp Out on a Friday. The only scouts that went were Travis Neal (me), Dallin Earl, Jeremy Glenn, and Chris Glenn. Our troop leaders were Brother Spencer and Randall Diamond. We stopped at In-N-Out for dinner and had hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and milkshakes (I think Dallin had a lot of milkshakes)!

Then, we ran out of gas. We were stopped on the side of the highway for a while. Luckily, a lady named Linda lived nearby where we were stuck, so Randall went with her to go get a jug of gas. The bad news was it took a while. The good news was that we could see the sunset!

We waited and waited. Dallin started getting hyper and started to run out in the middle of the street, so I had to stop him. I think it was from all those milkshakes. Finally, we got enough gas to get to a gas station to fill up more gas (we had the jug in the car with us, so it smelled like gasoline inside). We wanted to be nice, so Jeremy made a card that said, "Linda, you saved our bacon!" and he drew a plate of bacon on it.

Finally we got to our campsite and made peach cobbler. Oh and then Dallin and Chris heard some guy fart really loud in the bathroom, but that's a different story! Yeah, and we were too tired to make a tent, so we slept on a tarp.

The next day, we woke up and made Sunrise Stew (Chris made up its name), which is hash browns mixed with eggs, bacon, sausage, and peppers. It was pretty good! Except, we made it in a Dutch oven, so there was a bunch of left over liquidy stuff.

Then we went on our hike. We stopped to explore some small caves. They were pretty cool, but not as cool as the ones we were going to see!

We hiked a while until we got to Bear Gulch Caves. These caves were awesome! There were waterfalls you could actually reach out and touch!

We hiked through the caves and found a small canyon-like crevice with a giant boulder that looked like it was going to fall on you!

We explored the caves and followed the arrows painted on the walls until we got to a stream. There were no stepping stones and it flowed right in front of our path. Also, it flowed right through a narrow hole. That hole was our only way through to the other half of the caves. Only Dallin, Jeremy, and I could fit through, and we all had our packs on (and remember, we had those big packs, not little day packs). We were about to turn around and go back, but Chris had an idea of hauling all our packs through first, then start climbing through.

So that's what we did. Chris hauled the packs to Dallin and Jeremy, and I told them where to place them. Finally, we all made it through, and we stopped in a huge cave to eat some beef jerky.

Then came the harder part of the hike. We hiked up to a reservoir with a bunch of weird rock formations around it.

Then we kept hiking and looking at the rock formations. I remember one looking like a baseball glove, and one looked like Snoopy at one angle.

Finally, we got to the top! We ate cold pizza for lunch and then we hiked down.

We hiked 5 miles! And the great part was that Pinnacles is a Rimrover hike! The Rimrover, or Rim of the Bay, are six mountain hikes around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sunol

Left to Right: Randall Diamond, Aden Hales, Chris Glenn, Jacob McKay, Jaren Garff, Travis Neal (me), Dallin Earl, Jeremy Glenn, Alec Viera, and Brother Spencer

Whoa, Sunol was a long time ago! But still, it was fun! We left to go to Sunol Regional Wilderness on a Friday after school.

Then we drove over to Sunol. Then we hiked with our backpacks up to our camp at J.B. Ranch. We camped by a creepy abandoned barn. We got there by nightfall, and we planned to make a fire. All the firewood was in the stables of the barn, so it was even more creepy.

Anyway, we had a dinner of fajitas and then we set up our tents.

The next day, we had breakfast, cleaned up the camp, and started our hike back down to the parking lot, only this time, we took the long way!

We hiked a while until we stopped and took a break at a bunch of boulders. Most of us climbed around on the rocks.

Oh, and Jaren had a little trouble with his sleeping bag.

Yeah, and we found a dead lizard along the way.

Then we forced Jaren to eat it (just kidding).

We kept on hiking and hiking (and avoiding cow pies) until we got to Little Yosemite (I'm assuming it's called Little Yosemite because of the giant granite boulders lying around). We stopped and climbed around for a while.

Then we kept on hiking (here comes the montage part).

Then we drove back home. Yeah, so that's it in a nutshell.