Alex Gets the Priesthood

Alex Wright was ordained for the Priesthood today! We are all proud of him!

Also, Aden Hales moved up to the Priest Quorum today. We'll all miss him!

Advance Camp

Well, today, we embarked on another journey. Only, it wasn't as far away as Scout Camp over in the Toiyabe National Forest Area (a.k.a. Hoover Wilderness). We only went over to a place called Advance Camp in Antioch, California, which is only 30 or 40 miles away. What is Advance Camp you ask? It's some place where Boy Scouts from the Contra Costa County can pass off several requirements for just about any merit badge!

Jaren, Jeremy, Aden (who's now a teacher), and I met at the Church at about 7:00 A.M. Nobody else seemed to be coming, so we all started driving to Advance Camp in Jeremy's dad's car, while the bishop picked up Alec and Rick. On the way to Antioch, Jaren and I took some pictures of the scenery rolling by.

After about 30 minutes of driving, we got to Antioch, but it looked more like the outskirts of Las Vegas more than a town in Northern California. It was really dry, hot, and there were lots of palm trees.

(No, that's not us in that picture. It's some other Boy Scout Troop). Anyway, we walked across the parking lot a ways and across some wooden bridge that looked like it could be some Eagle Scout project. We saw an advertisement on a car for donating your old cell phones. It showed a lady with a phone from the 1980's. It was pretty big, and Jeremy called it "a brick with numbers on it". As Jeremy's dad got us registered in, we just sat around.

And Jaren tried to get into a small wooden shack, but there were nails nailed in front of the door, so he couldn't get in.

Then, Jeremy's dad came out of the registration building with a bunch of green shirts that said: "Advance Camp: Honoring 100 Years of Boy Scouts of America" (as you can see Jeremy was really thrilled)!

As we waited some more for Alec, Rick, and the bishop, we looked at all the other Boy Scout Troops. A lot of them didn't even have scout shirts. They just had t-shirts with their troop number on them. Then there was Troop 485 who had some pretty snazzy Russian hats.

Then there was Troop 236 who had girly flowers and their t- shirts.

Finally Alec and Rick came, but there was only one shirt left. They fought for it, and Rick won, but it was too small, so we tried stretching it out. Then we got another shirt for Alec.

We walked over to the grassy field and waited for the flag ceremony.

We watched the flag ceremony, and then we went to pass off some requirements for merit badges. Rick worked on the Music merit badge, Jeremy, Jaren, and Alec worked on the Chemistry merit badge, I did the Emergency Preparedness merit badge, and Aden did the Citizenship in the Community merit badge (shown as listed below).

A lot of the merit badge stations were inside a bunch of warehouse buildings. All the educational merit badges, like Emergency Preparedness were in Building #3. At first, I couldn't find the Emergency Preparedness merit badge station, but I did find some pretty cool merit badges like Aviation and Nuclear Science! I did eventually find the Emergency Preparedness merit badge station. It also got really hot outside, up to about 100 degrees! All the doors were open (but that didn't really help).

For part of the merit badge, I had to go outside to learn about signaling for help. Outside, I saw a giant UFO somebody made. Anyway, we worked on merit badges until noon, and then we got to eat lunch. The camp made us barbeque sandwiches, and they weren't that bad! We talked about what we did in the merit badge stations. Jeremy, Jaren, and Alec made slime in Chemistry. Rick made a banjo out of wood, wires, and a tuna can.

Anyway, we got to eat lunch for a while, and since we already payed for Dallin and Jason Bromley's lunch, (because we thought they were going to come), we got to get extra sandwiches and chips!

Then we went back to working on merit badges. Jaren and I worked on Family Life in Building #3. Alec and Jeremy worked on Emergency Preparedness in Building #3. Rick worked on Communications, and Aden worked on Citizenship in the World (shown as listed below).

When we were done with merit badges, Jaren didn't believe there was a UFO outside, so I proved that there was and showed him the badly silver-painted UFO out back. Then, we all left early because we really didn't want to see BMX show the camp had. I thought they just hired some Weblo scouts to bring their bikes and do figure eights around and around (then again, I'm sure that's worth something for the Cycling merit badge)! Aden, Jaren and I walked back to the bishop's car. On the way, we saw a big teepee!

Then, on the way home, Jaren kept taking video of me from Pittsburg to Walnut Creek. Luckily, we deleted all the videos. But today, if you combine all the merit badges we worked on, you'd get a giant variety of badges!

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.