Saturday, July 29, 2017

2017 BSA National Jamboree - Day 11 - July 27, 2017

This was it … our last day at the Jamboree.

As predicted, we woke up to gray skies, and the weather was definitely looking bad. After breakfast, I set out for the Summit Center to purchase the last “Patch of the Day” for the Jamboree. For those who aren't aware of this, each day of the Jamboree, a daily patch was made available for sale in the Trading Post. I had decided on the second day to “go for it”, and purchase each of the daily patches … what an adult scouter won't do for a patch!!!

At this point, it looked as though the rain would be starting any minute, so I walked back to our camp as quickly as I could. Just as I arrived, the leading edge of the storm came through. There was heavy rain and some lightning for about 45 minutes. Finally, the rain let up a little and the lightning stopped.

There wasn't much to do at this point … it was still raining lightly, and the activity centers would be closing down shortly in preparation for the Closing Show, which would be held in the evening. We were hanging out under our dining fly when one of our scouts asked whether we had picked up our “Day of Service” patches. Unfortunately, we hadn't, so I walked back to the Summit Center with one of the other adult leaders to get them. Of course, while we were walking, the heavy rain started again. We got to the Summit Center, picked up the patches, and then walked back to our camp. I had rain gear on, but neverless, by the time we got back, I was pretty wet and my boots were completely soaked!!!

We were supposed to leave for the show at around 5:00, so we decided not to bother cooking dinner in order to avoid all of the clean up associated with cooking. Instead, everyone just ate whatever food we had accumulated over the past week, including peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, tuna salad, chicken salad, fig bars, fruit cup, bagels & cream cheese and whatever else was in our “pantry”.

We also started packing up some of our gear, particularly all of the camp kitchen. We would be getting back from the show pretty late, and we were scheduled to board our buses at 6:00 am on Friday morning. We weren't going to have much time to pack up our camp, so we really pushed the boys to get a lot of the clean up done now.

At 5:00, we got everyone together and headed out to the stadium for the show. We got to the stadium and had to wait almost two hours for the show to start. There was a lot of excitement in the air, as the rumors were circulating that the headline entertainment would be the band Imagine Dragons. Unfortunately, a lot of the boys were disappointed when it turned out that the headline band was the Plain White T's. Many of the boys had never even heard of them. Nevertheless, they put on a good show and afterwards, there was a really big fireworks show!!!

At that point, everyone headed back to camp. We wanted to do some more camp cleanup so that we could sleep a little later in the morning. We took down the dining flies and broke down most of the tables and as much other gear as we could. The decision was made to wake up at 4:00 am so that we could finish packing and be on time to board the buses at 6:00 am.


Tomorrow was going to be another long day!!!

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