Chance troops through a week of scout camp

Chance excited "on approach" to camp.

Chance is a fainter.  Who knew?  On the second day of scout camp, Chance started feeling under the weather so he retreated to his hammock, and laid down.  Then he threw up.  Realizing that he was now officially sick,  Chance pulled himself out of his hammock and found his Scoutmaster.

"I feel sick."  He stated and then fell right into his Scoutmaster, passing out.

The Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmaster then helped a limp Chance walk to the First Aid station where Chance slept for 3 hours.

In Chance's words:" I slept for like 3 hours and then got up and I felt fine!"

The camp's official flagpole and amphitheater

The diagnosis was heat exhaustion.

Chance is the trailblazer on fainting in the family as none of  the rest of us have ever done it.

With with the exception of the fainting/sleeping episode, Chance had a very productive time at camp.  He earned 6 merit badges, cooked some meals, and had a great time with friends.

Around the camp fire one night, the boys were asked to talk about something that they liked.  Chance has a friend who is on the autistic spectrum and he wasn't talking when they asked him what he liked, so Chance offered,'He likes to tease me about girls."

A view of the scenery from camp

At this point, his friends eyes lit up and he outed Chance telling all of the boys the name of the girl that Chance thinks is cute in our neighborhood.  Her dad happens to be Scoutmaster so he now knows too:)  Apparently, Chance caught some teasing about this girl for the rest of the camp and it didn't work in his favor when the cars pulled up in front of her house to unload their gear when they got home.

Chance is taking it all in stride though.  He just smiles when he tells the story.......and kind of smacks his forehead.  Rumor has it that she thinks he is cute too so at least she won't be completely horrified if the rumor gets back to her.

Chance's shadow - just for fun

Chance got to participate in several water activites while he was at camp including canoeing, sailing, rowing, and fishing, getting merit badges for the three boating activities.  The camp staff was wonderful working with Chance around the water.  Chance's dad headed up to camp to help out for the last two and a half days of camp and got to see first hand how great the camp staff was.

Chance would get to the water and the staff would explain the day's events, then Chance would hand over his implants and the staff would place them in a box, inside of a box, inside of a box.  How is that for protection?

They all knew that Chance could not hear at this point and just worked around it.  Chance didn't feel left out, he just put his incredible lip reading abilities to work and the boys in his boat worked with him.

5-star lodging, right here !!!

On the last day of camp, the boys had to demonstrate that they could dock their boats. To get to the dock, they had to row the boats from their beach around to the dock - about 150 yards.  There was a wind blowing against them and several of the boys were unable to get the rowboat upwind.  Chance just hopped in, and guided his boat around to the dock without a problem to the amazement of the other boys.

Chance also shared his feelings around the campfire about how much he enjoyed camp,  and how he knew that with God, we can get through any of the difficulties in our lives.

Growth, learning and bonding with the other boys, and merit badges.  Sounds like a successful week at scout camp.