Troop 3 had some hiking to do this past weekend to finish up some merit badges going into their Court of Honor next week. They did great as always.

The weekend campout began Friday night with a drive up to Shady Lake campgrounds just west of the Albert Pike Recreation Area in Arkansas. It's a beautiful campground with fantastic trails for hiking, horseback riding, four wheeling areas and more.

Troop 3 had several boys that needed the 5 mile hike to complete a merit badge and several others that needed a 1000' elevation change to complete their badges, the trails at Shady Lake gave them an opportunity to do both with in one hike up Tall Peak. So after the Saturday morning breakfast dishes were cleaned up the hike began, my son James and I hung back to keep an eye on the camp. Here's the funny part, since we had three boys working on their cooking merit badges, they asked us to meet them at the top of Tall Peak for a backpack lunch. We said sure, after being told we would have to park at the gate and walk up about "100 yards" to the top of the mountain. That 100 yards turned out to be 2.1 miles uphill. Not a big deal other than the fact we didn't have hiking clothes on, or hiking boots, or water bottles, and I'm fat and slow. We had allowed ourselves 15 minutes to walk up that last bit to make it to lunch on time which ended up taking a solid hour. Obviously we made it to the top of Tall Peak, James was fine, I was wheezing. It's all good, I certainly needed the exercise.

The trail quesadilla was terrific, the extra water the scoutmaster had on him was amazing and the view was beautiful.

#scouting #camping

More From Kicker 102.5