Me and Howard weighed our packs. His was 55 pounds and mine was 65 pounds. These were without water. I only weighed 130 and he weighed who knows, and he was the one complaining.
We boarded the bus, which was a school bus that said Philmont on the side. It then took us to what was called the Zastrow turnaround. The rangers pointed out some really neat things to us everything from animals to the different mountians. I really enjoyed hearing about the mountian that I thing was called big round topp that was flat enough to land a 737 Boeing jet on. We then unloaded the bus and had a Ranger Training session. He told us about the terrain and refreshed us on map and compass skills. We were then told to say something we were thankful for and we drank a large sip of water. We did this until all of the water in one of our water bottles were gone.
We really couldnt find the start of our trek due to scale problems on the map and arguements from it. We finally figured it out and headed off. This was one of my favorite days there were many beautiful bridged streams to cross, and trees to see. The terrain at Philmont is so great, better than anywhere I have ever been and I have been around. It was much different terrain than most of Philmont. After a short hike to a camp called New Abreu, a staffed camp and a rest stop for us to get ready for more hiking. I think it was here where we learned not to take more than a two minute break or to take more than a twenty minute break because between these two times the lactic acid will come about and give you bad cramps. We then headed on to our camp Old Abreu, a short distance away. There were no bridges on the stream crossings here and Alex told us the proper way to cross a stream with our packs on. After that day we barely used that technique because it took too long to unstrap our packs and put them back on. There were too many streams to cross for this much work.
To describe the camps, New Abreu was staffed has a Cantina equipped with a root beer stand (John's favorite thing which he had been waiting for) in and adobe building, fishing, and an adobe building under construction in which the scouts and scouters could work on. At Old Abreu (our campsite for the evening), was unstaffed but not far away from New Abreu, many rocks and trees, and was right next to the Rayado River. I slept right next to it just to hear it rush during the night it was a beautiful sound which put me to sleep easily. It was very hot but at about 4:00 threatining skies came about.
We were then given more Ranger Training: it included first aid, how to set of the fly Philmont style, how to set up bear bags which I had personally never done before because there is no use in Ohio, The bearmuda (yes bearmuda) triangle which was the triangle between the sump, bearbag, and the fly. No tents were allowed in this area. and trash compacting. Lunch started out well Spreadables and crackers, not bad. Halfway through lunch we were warned to check our spreadables because the turkey had been recalled. Too late. Nothing ocurred due to it though. Thank God
Once lunch was over the scouts and some of the adults had root beer. When we hiked back we found a distressed trail crew. Their food had spilled. We help them gather their things and were given some canned fruit and donuts. Real food. We had to eat it because we couldnt carry it. Alexander tought us how to play "big bootie" a very fun game to see who got the extra donuts. We caught on quick and this became our regular troop game. Kerry Cheesman didnt like this game. He was no good at it and thought it was dumb.
Me, John, and Nate got our fishing license for .50 cents and got some fishing line and tried crackers to catch them. We got bites but no fish. After a dinner of whatever we had all put together, (who knows what it was), we went to New Abreu. The scouts did Burro racing great fun, even though the other team tried to cheat by jumping in front of it and scaring it to the other side of the trail. We still won. We were given free root beer for our prize. We hiked back to Old Abreu. We could see the stars so well it was so fascinating and I really enjoyed being able to see the Milky Way so well it really looks milky if you ask me.
I slept well and went to sleep fast. I love this place so much I said in my journal. I wish I could come back or live here I said.
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