Pohick Bay (March Outing)
By James Y.
We left St. Francis Church early in the morning for the trip to Pohick Bay Regional Park, in Lorton, Virginia. When we arrived, the ground was covered in snow, and took some time to finally get into the campsite. After arriving, we set up our tents and gear, and some of the scouts started playing with the snow, making snowmen, piles, igloos, and snow forts.
However, after a while, we were called in for a competition for making snowshoes, while the winners received 50 donut holes and first lunch servings! Lunch would be a sandwich, with different choosing’s of meat and cheese provided by the Old Goats patrol. After the winners were decided and lunch was finished, everyone went back to whatever they were doing with the snow, and some of them had already started snowball fights.
We were called again to start our hike, trekking about 5 miles through the forest, sometimes getting lost or going the wrong way. When we got back, some of the stuff had melted slightly, while someone naughty may have demolished the snow fort. However, after too many bad things going on with the snowballs, we were banned from throwing snow, which meant that some of the older scouts couldn’t go creep up on the younger scouts with snow, as some of them planned, and some of the younger scouts were talking about the snowball fight war until the ban.
After a while, we started making dinner. While we made our dinners in our own patrols, the Old Goats patrol offered everyone soup, chili, and rice. When we finished our dinners and cleaned up, everyone gathered by the fireplace for skits, jokes, and songs before bed time. Then, we crashed into our warm sleeping bags for the night.
We woke up early in the morning again, this time, losing an hour of sleep because of daylight savings. Besides our patrol provided breakfasts, the Old Goats patrol once again generously offered hot coco to everyone. Once we finished our meals, we packed up our gear and picked up the trash in the area.
Once we finished our duties, we sent near a place around the campsite to do religious services. Somehow, when the person up front was about to speak, someone threw a snowball at him, scooped from beside the benches. Everybody forgot the snowball ban that second, and the person up front was bombarded with snowballs. The younger scouts suddenly dashed forward and hid behind trees, trying to hit people with their snowballs, followed by some older scouts. Because a bunch of the scouts were too busy throwing snowballs, it took a long time before we could get started again.
Finally, we were done, and we got our bags and put them into our cars. We came back into the Great Falls Library at about lunchtime, where most of us got picked up. It was a pretty fun outing with some hilarious events, especially the snowball outburst at the end.
