This was started on Tuesday the day after we arrived at the Jamboree. Last night I tried to finish this after the youth leader's had a campsite meeting at 10:30 pm once everyone was back in camp. It was after our Trek to Garden Ground Mountain which round trip was probably a nine plus mile hike. Needless to say sitting in a chair instead of laying on the cot didn't help either.  I am sending this as some of you may not of heard from their Scout.

Hello to everyone 

Yesterday we arrived at The Summit for The National Jamboree.

We were a little apprehensive when we were getting closer and started seeing the line of buses. We were slightly ahead of schedule for our 10:00 arrival time.  

The Jamboree staff did a great job of moving the 800 or more buses and we arrived at the Troop's campsite first.  Scoutmaster Phil had to check the Troop in and they kept our bus there for about 45 minutes before they let the Troop get off the bus and head to their campsite hauling their gear. It may have been another hour before Phil completed the checkin process and he was able to go to  the campsite.

Then our Venture Crew was taken to our site and we were all immediately allowed to get off and grab our gear and move it to a staging area. From that point we were faced with quite an uphill climb to our campsite.

We were fortunate that they trucked our gear up to the top.  That may have been because of the heat index. For the boyscout troop it looked like their trek to their campsite was level grade with some downhill.

As soon as the Venture reached the top we went to our campsite where we met two of the three other Crews that we will be sharing the campsite with. It was nice to put faces with the names and voices. The other three Crews are from Southern Shores - Ann Arbor area, 

President Ford - Southern 1/2 of our council & Bucks County Council from Pennsylvania.

I then went to check our Crew in and although I had to wait in line things moved pretty quickly and I didn't have anything that slowed me down like Phil experienced.

The three Venture Crews that were there pretty much had camp set up when I got back from checking in. It was around 2:00 so I took advantage of that and ate the lunch that they gave us while the busses were arriving.

Our 4th crew from the Ann Arbor area arrived late afternoon they were delayed first by a flat tire and then later a compressor failed and they ended finishing the trip in 15 passenger vans and they had a limitless trouble with the luggage being loaded into two trucks as some of it didn't make it to the jamboree at the same time and some of the gear ended up mixed between their troop & crew campsites.

For our crew it was nice to put faces with the names and voices as we had to coordinate responsibilities amongst the forty of us as the Troops do except ours was done by email and conference call. We are fortunate to have excellent group of scouts & leaders as things went very smoothly.  I have talked with leaders from other campsites that told me there has been bickering and they couldn't agree on anything.

I will try to keep sending information more frequently.

Dennis