This summer, Troop 581 packed up and headed for North East, MD for a Summer Camp adventure at the Del-Mar-Va Council’s Camp Rodney. Camp Rodney provides a summer camp program that easily accommodates a troop of our size – 49 Scouts and 12 leaders attended. One of the unique things about this camp is that Scouts are encouraged to bring their bikes to camp due to the distance between program areas. The Patrol Leader Council chose this camp to attend because the troop had attended it back in 2017 and the Scouts had such a blast that they wanted to return.
Camp Rodney offered a spectacular first year “Brown Sea Island” program for our first year Scouts. The Brown Sea Island program focuses on new Boy Scouts attending their first Summer Camp. It provides a chance for Scouts to learn the skills identified in the ranks of Tenderfoot through 1st Class Scout and to accomplish many of these rank requirements. Troop 581 highly encourages all new Scouts in the troop to go to summer camp and attend this program as it really accelerates a Scout’s progress.
For the older Scouts, there were plenty of opportunities to work on merit badges. Similar to other Summer Camp locations, Scouts could chose the merit badges they wanted to work on ahead of time. Fifty nine merit badges were offered including Archaeology, Climbing, Geocaching, Lifesaving, Oceanography, Space Exploration, Weather…the list goes on and on.
Situated at the northern tip of the Chesapeake, Camp Rodney also offered an unparalleled aquatics program. It allowed our Scouts (and adventurous leaders) to try their hands at small boat sailing, water skiing, motor boating, jet skiing, swimming and high-adventure sailing just to name a few.
Summer Camp is always an adventure with Troop 581. For the summer of 2020, we will be headed for West Virginia to take part in the James C. Justice National Scout Camp which is co-located with the Summit High Adventure base. It promises to be epic.