Cub Scout Campout! But without the camping, or Scouts.

This weekend was supposed to be the Cub Scout Family Campout for Logan's scout pack. Well, it was, I guess. We weren't planning to do any camping yet, but I was going to take him down to the campground for some of the activities going on during the day.

Apparently, a scout family camp weekend is far less organized than I expected, although based on pack meetings I'm not sure what I should have expected. We never actually found any of the scouts, so it turned into an impromptu Father-Son Hiking Day. Which was, arguably, even better.



The campout was down at Klondike park, a newish park in St. Charles county in the heart of Missouri wine country. It's built in the midst of an old sandstone quarry, and there's silica sand and huge bluffs all over the park. There's a central lake left over from mining days that we walked around, and I took the opportunity to try to teach Logan how to skip rocks. It was sort of tough, because there weren't many good skipping candidates, but I managed to find a few. I tried to explain what to look for, telling Logan to look for flat rocks that are smooth on both sides. I showed him some not-so-good rocks.

"See, these are more square and kind of chunky. They're not good for skipping."

"What do you mean, 'chunky'?"

"You know, they're not flat. Sort of chunky-looking, with jagged sides."

"I thought they looked more like rectangular prisms."

Uhh, okay.



We hiked a few other trails around the park, walked through a birding area, had some snacks, and found a lone swingset to enjoy for awhile. It was nice just having the one son to share time with for a change.



At one point I asked Logan if he liked having some time with just the two of us.

"Yeah, it's fun."

He thought for a minute, then said "I wish Liam was here, though."

"Why is that?"

"I just know Liam would really like hiking with us."



He never stops surprising me.