U. P. well represented at Boy Scout Jamboree
By Jaime Bedard, 16, and Kayley Elmblad, 8.

One hundred years of Scouting in the United States was celebrated July 26 through August 4 during the Boy Scouts Centennial National Jamboree. Held at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, the huge gathering attracted over 43,000 scouts from all 50 states and several foreign countries. Among the crowd were 67 Boy Scouts and leaders from across the Upper Peninsula. Wes Matteson, fifteen, of Harvey, who is a member of Troop 372; Andrew Virch, fifteen, of Marquette, who is a member of Troop 309, and Michael Edwards, fifteen, of Harvey, who is a member of Troop 360, were among the local Scouts who made the trip to the National Jamboree.

8-18: What was your favorite experience?

Andrew: I’d have to say the closing ceremonies for the Jamboree were pretty awesome because you got to see Mike Rowe (of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs ) and see a bunch of different bands show up, and hear how long Scouting has been going. It was just really cool.

Michael: The closing ceremony was the best because it was the biggest thing I’ve ever been to. Seventy-five thousand people in one square mile are a lot of people.
Wes: So many people in that one area. At one point, Miss America was up on stage giving a speech. Whoever wrote that speech must not have liked her or us. She said, “It’s nice to see an organization of all these young ladies, I mean young men.” At that point all the Boy Scouts decided that they hated Miss America.

Andrew: I was going to the bathroom at this point and I turned around to hear what was going on and I looked at the big screen, and I her big face smiling saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

8-18: What was your first thought when you got to the Jamboree?

Michael: Very big.

Andrew: I’d have to say that I thought it was going to be a little bit boring. I didn’t think they were going to have as much stuff as they did.

Wes: Thirty-five thousand Scouts are going to fit here? No way!

8-18: Describe a typical day there.

Wes: A lot of running, going from place to place. Very busy; no time to sit down, except at dinner, lunch and breakfast.

Andrew: We woke up. Somebody would go out and get the bin for the food. I’d normally cook it. Then we’d bring the bin back, sit down and eat breakfast, get everything ready, clean up camp a little bit, and head out for our day and do whatever you felt like walking to.

Michael: As soon as breakfast was over the adult leaders would say, “Leave and don’t come back until 5:00,” because they didn’t want to see us around camp. So we’d just go off in any direction and do what we wanted to do for the whole day.

8-18: What were some activities that you did that you wouldn’t have had a chance to do anywhere else?

Michael: Lots of scuba diving, snorkeling, rappelling, mountain boarding, rock climbing. There were big pools that were about 4’ deep and about 150’ long.

Wes: Navy divers were there filling the oxygen tanks for scuba diving. There was a Navy diver in one of the tanks and you could talk to him through a radio.

Andrew: Another thing they had was a merit badge midway where they had every merit badge that you could get there. You could sign up for a class. Say you wanted to do something like nuclear science, which you can’t get here, you could go off and do that. There was an Indian Village there that was really neat. Took you back in time and showed you a bunch of ceremonial dancing.

8-18: What were your least favorite experiences?

Wes: All the safety. On the BMX track, you’d go around and you couldn’t hit any jumps. They were right in the middle of the track. You’d hit them but you couldn’t get any air or they’d make you stop and stand there for a minute and a half. Everybody would stop and stand there for a minute.

Andrew: I’d have to say the buddy system for going everywhere. If you even wanted to go to the bathroom, which was a couple yards away, they said you needed a buddy to go to the bathroom. That kind of got annoying because you’d have to walk from tent to tent asking, “Anybody got to go to the bathroom?”

Michael: The weather was very humid. It was 90 or over every day. The water thing (hydration guidelines) was very annoying because they told us to drink water every five minutes. Then it rained a couple days and destroyed our campsite.

8-18: Do you really mean destruction?

Andrew: It was a horrible storm. I was right in the middle of it holding everything down, so I had to run from rain fly to rain fly trying to hold them down. Some of the dining flies I watched go flying away, I saw poles go from straight to bent in half in a matter of seconds. Poles were different shapes and snapped in half. It was amazing what that wind did.

Michael: A 100-foot tree would be bent at a forty-five degree angle. My tent poles just snapped in half. As soon as we got back every rain fly had moved about five feet and every pole from every rain fly was bent in half and wouldn’t come out, so we had to change every rain fly.

Wes: We had to get different tents out and trade everything. Had to cannibalize them. It worked.

8-18: What was it like meeting Scouts from all over the nation and around the world? What are some things that you learned from them?

Andrew: It was really cool to see that Scouting has gone that far. I met some kids from Costa Rica and Korea. Somebody said there were some kids from Afghanistan, too. I met some kids from Australia. That was really cool.

Wes: It was interesting to see how many Scouts were around and how far they had come. There were about ten percent of all the Scouts in the nation there because a lot of them couldn’t afford to go. It was worth every cent of it. Interesting to find out who all was out there.

8-18: Why do you think Jamborees like this are important?

Andrew: To show the rest of the nation how big Scouting has gotten from such a small organization that Lord Baden-Powell made to something massive that’s going across the country and now across the world.

Wes: Seeing as this was the 100 year anniversary for Boy Scouts this is going to go down in the history books. Nobody’s going to forget this.