Winter Camp at Camp Men-O-Lan

Quakertown, Pennsylvania

9-11 December 2005

        The troop held its annual December winter camp at Camp Men-O-Lan during the weekend of 9-11 December 2005.  Men-O-Lan is a church camp run by the Mennonite Eastern Conference, of which the troop's sponsor, Zion Mennonite Church, is a member.  As a result, the troop gets charged a reduced fee for using the camp.  The troop has been camping at Men-O-Lan during the month of December for more than forty years.  

                        While at camp, the Camp's dining hall (above left) served as the troop's centre of operations.  The dining hall includes a fully-equipped kitchen and dining/activity area.  There is also a fireplace in the activity area that is perfect for a winter Saturday night campfire.  There was a nice snow cover in the camp for the weekend requiring the warm clothing.  It also provided a great venue for a game of night snow football under the lights.  No matter what colour clothing the scouts wore at the beginning of the game, it was certainly white when the game was over and they returned to the dining hall to warm up and for snacks and hot chocolate.

Our quarters while at Men-O-Lan were quite comfortable for winter camping and consisted of heated cabins that included bunks with mattresses.  Each cabin had space for 16 persons and our group filled two of them.  We also had the use of a heated shower house and latrine (white building in the middle of the photo above left).  The quarters we were assigned this weekend were on the girls' side of the camp.  Usually, we stay in cabins on the boys' side of the camp.

Food preparation is an important part of any successful Scout camp.  If the food at camp isn't good or there is not enough of it, everyone is on edge.  On the other hand, if there is plenty of good food available, everyone, Scouts and adult leaders start things off right.  Getting meals ready is made much easier when you have a professional kitchen at your disposal.  Setting up a "make your own sandwich" line (above right) is a very efficient way of getting a group of Scouts fed!

Every year at Men-O-Lan, the troop offers Scouts a chance to earn a merit badge in a compressed session led by one of the troop's registered merit badge counselors.  This year, ASM Andy Cowles offered the Scouts the chance to earn the Computers merit badge.  While the Scouts were busy on Saturday morning competing on an orienteering course set up by SPL Chris Kulp and ASPL Dave Pulli, Andy Cowles was busy setting up his computer laboratory for use after lunch during his Computer merit badge session.  This was the second year that Andy Cowles has taught Computer merit badge at Men-O-Lan, setting up a computer network for the scouts to use at camp to complete the exercises needed to earn the merit badge.  Andy's computer network included four workstations that were networked to a fifth computer that worked as a server.  Andy had also wrote a self-paced Computer merit badge program that allowed the Scouts to work at their own pace to complete the requirements.  Andy also managed internet access throughout the network. 

The Men-O-Lan weekend is one of the troop's more well-attended camps and was enjoyed by all who attended.  The chance get into the outdoors during the winter with snow on the ground is a real treat when you have a warm building in which to thaw out in and to sleep in at night.

This page last updated on Sunday, 25 December 2005