Evan's Last Bear Adventures

Sadly, Evan's Cub Scout year as a bear has come to an end.  If he chooses to continue on in this journey, he will have two more years as a Cub Scout Webelo before graduating to a full Boy Scout.  He got to enjoy several more fun events the past few months although he missed a couple of big events too.  He missed their Spring camping trip because the weather that weekend was a wash out and would have made camping a miserable experience.  Some of the other scouts and parents were brave enough to try it though.  We had something planned for Sunday at church that weekend so Evan would have only been able to stay Friday night anyway.  He missed a couple of regular meetings because of baseball games that conflicted too, and he will miss the summer trip to Grandfather Mountain in June because of our traveling with Daddy for work.  However, we may be including a stop at Grandfather Mountain in our travels to make up for it.  Besides these few disappointments, Evan really had a lot of fun.

This was Evan's first time competing in the Pinewood Derby race.  He did win a third place trophy for his F-15 Thunderbird car's performance.  We actually did feel a little bad about receiving this trophy because Evan's new Cub Scout pal's car actually did perform a little better in the race.  However, before the races, the cars are all weighed and have to fall between certain weight criteria.  Evan's car was underweight, but he obliged and added some weights to his.  His friend had bolted some metal weights to the bottom of his car to make it weigh more before he got to the competition, and those weights didn't give the car the required clearance on the track.  He didn't want to remove the weights to make it official because it would mess up his design so he chose to not have his car count in the official scoring.  The rules are very confusing, especially for kids who work hard on building their cars to compete.  

The kids got to "judge" their fellow scouts' cars for the creative design award.  I probably would have picked the hot dog car as most creative, but the boys picked a car that had been built using a kit you can purchase.  I think that is the downside to allowing the kids to judge.  

Of course, some of the parent and sibling cars were really creative although they didn't compete against the scouts.  I love the doughnut car which did look good enough to eat with real sprinkles on it.  

At the last Cub Scout meeting Evan could attend, they made bottle rockets to launch.  It was raining so I tried to photograph his rocket from inside looking out.  

The annual Blue & Gold Banquet was fun.  This troop uses the Banquet as the special ceremony honoring the oldest Webelos' graduation to Boy Scouts.  We get to eat yummy food and these fun desserts.  This troop didn't have a cake baking competition like our old troop in Charlotte, but I think this campfire cake could have been a contender there.  I just loved the homemade cinnamon candy used for the fire. 

Evan and his buddies Jake and Charlie pose with their pack leader, Charlie's mom.  This lady is so amazing and has done such a great job leading the boys this year.  She is a single mom of four young children (not by choice), a middle school teacher, and she has taken these boys on numerous adventures this year.  

The boys got to be young scientists at the Natural History Museum one day.  Brody loved using the microscope.  

We got to check out some animal and rock specimens like this huge piece of gorgeous quartz that I believe was found here in NC.   

The boys were watching a video, and Brody loved checking out these bones.  Yikes!

They have a special light table where the boys can place animal specimens on the table and it tells them lots of information about it.  

Someone capture a shot of me (and not my husband) with the boys.  I loved these Redtail Hawk and Bald Eagle specimens, and I love the shot of the boys in the big tree.  It reminds me of the big redwoods and sequoias we saw in Yosemite that we could stand inside.  It also makes me think of the book "My Side of the Mountain" where the boy living in the mountains made his home inside the hollow of a tree. 

One of our last trips was to see Guilford Courthouse National Military Park which is one of our states National Park Monuments.  The Revolutionary War battle fought hit was a huge turning point in the war that led to our ultimate victory against the British.

Here's the blurb from the website:

On March 15, 1781. the largest, most hotly-contested battle of the Revolutionary War's Southern Campaign was fought at the small North Carolina back county hamlet of Guilford Courthouse.

Major General Nathanael Greene, defending the ground at Guilford Courthouse with an army of almost 4,500 American militia and Continentals, was tactically defeated by a smaller British army of about 1,900 veteran regulars and German allies commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis. After 2 1/2 hours of intense and often brutal fighting, Cornwallis forced his opponent to withdraw from the field. Greene's retreat preserved the strength of his army, but Cornwallis's frail victory was won at the cost of over 25% of his army.

Guilford Courthouse proved to be the highwater mark of British military operations in the Revolutionary War. Weakened in his campaign against Greene, Cornwallis abandoned the Carolinas hoping for success in Virginia. At Yorktown, seven months after his victory at Guilford Courthouse, Lord Cornwallis would surrender to the combined American and French forces under General George Washington.

Evan and the boys had a scavenger hunt to find in the museum.  

They all loved this cannon. 

My little hiker just had to have his walking stick as we took a hike around the grounds. 

These boys all looked like little militia soldiers with their sticks gathered around the statue of Major General Nathanael Greene. 

The boys mostly enjoyed running around the beautiful wooded grounds and playing together. 

One of the most important parts of the trip was that we finally got our National Park Passport book to start getting stamped.  We have visited so many National Parks and Monuments already that I was sad we didn't have stamps for those visits.  I went back and searched for pictures of the stamps online so that I could draw them as close to the original as possible in our books with the dates of our trips.  It may be a while before we can revisit places like Yosemite National Park in California and Haleakala National Park in Maui, Hawaii.  If we do, we will add those trip stamps then.  It will be a fun adventure collecting our stamps in the future.  If you want to get your passport book, you can order them here.