National Jamboree

Justice and his scout troop had the once in a lifetime opportunity to attend the Boy Scout National Jamboree this past summer.  A very generous donation was made by a local business that paid for nearly the entire cost of the trip.  National Jamboree only happens once every four years.

The older boys on the trip that were already Eagle Scouts were fortunate that they got to experience a side of scouting they'd never seen before.  They went to jamboree as Venture Scouts.  Venturing is a world-wide, co-ed branch of the Boy Scouts.  This allowed the boys a little more freedom to enjoy their days at jamboree without having to go to the merit badge classes that the other scouts that weren't Eagle Scouts had to attend.  

But, this meant all new uniforms, and all new gear.  Venturing uniforms are green with grey pants, whereas Boy Scout uniforms are brown/olive.

Do you see all these patches?  I had to sew these patches on three different shirts!  It was nuts!

Let me just go on and tell you now that I was at the photograph-taking-and-sending mercy of Justice on this trip.  The pictures were few and far between, and sometimes awful.  So, once he got on the bus anything I received from him was sporadic and blurry.  With that being said, after the first few days I was just happy to get any pictures at all.  

Getting ready to board the bus.  He was gone for 12 days.  

This is the Venture Crew he went with.  Two leaders and four boys.

This is the entire group, both Venture Scouts and Boy Scouts.  

The first stop on the trip was somewhere in Kentucky.  They camped at a huge motorsports track and watched a monster truck show.  Boy Scouts will sleep anywhere, and I'm not kidding about that.  

And here is a pic of that leg of the trip.

Hahaha.  Just kidding.  No picture of that.  But he claims it happened.

After that, they went to DC and toured DC for a few days.  It was excruciatingly hot.  He has been to DC three times already, so he wasn't much excited about that leg of the trip.  

Look at all those sweaty boys.  Gross.  I bet they smelled fantastic.  

Joe and I have a very close friend that was also the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Reserves at the time of the Jamboree.  He works at the Pentagon, and Joe and I have known him for a very long time.  Joe called him and made special arrangements for the boys and their leaders to get a tour of the Pentagon.  They LOVED it.

They got to ride the subway to the Pentagon, Justice thought that was pretty fun.

Justice got to sit at the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy's desk.  He is clearly getting a kick out of that.  Ha. 

And this is our friend, CJ.  We have known him since before Justice was born.  It was so good of him to do this for the boys.  They had such a great time at the Pentagon.  We are grateful for long lasting friendships and people like CJ that are willing to go out of their way for other people.  Justice will not ever forget this moment.  And neither will I.  

After DC, they headed to jamboree in West Virginia.  

Now is a good time for you to recall me mentioning that Venturing is co-ed.  I was not nervous about this in the slightest.  The boys have good leaders, and they also have good morals.  I was actually excited about this opportunity for him, because the other Venturers would be from countries all over the world.  What a great experience, to be exposed to cultures from all over the world.  I hoped and prayed they would get to camp with people from other countries, and my prayer was definitely answered.  The Venture Crews they were partnered up with at camp were from Kenya, Ghana, and Pakistan.  I couldn't have possibly been any more excited for him.  It's hard to have any sort of multicultural life experience here in Tennessee.  This was an amazing opportunity.  It didn't take our boys long to figure out how fortunate they were.

When I sent Justice to jamboree, I sent him with probably around $500-700 worth of equipment.  He had good quality camping gear, a solar cell phone charger, a power bank, plenty of clothes, a nice sleeping bag, and just about anything you can think of.  Go back to the first picture, and you will see the bag he left with.  It was big enough to hold even a portable camping chair, and that bag was jammed to the top.  

The Kenyan's were not so fortunate.   They came to jamboree with nothing.  No camping gear, no multiple sets of clothing, no nothing.  Not even Venturing uniforms.  But you know what?  They were happy.  Justice said they were cheerful and glad to be there.  The boys gladly shared their gear with them.  

Here are the group of our boys plus the Kenyan Venturing Crew.  

Did I forget to mention they were ALL girls?  

Ok, the pictures after this point are sort of random.  I think I know what they are, but who really knows.  

This is a random photo of the boys waiting for the evening show to begin.  Several nights a week they went to some sort of program at night.  There was a concert, a comedy show, Inky Johnson was a motivational speaker (if you don't know him, look him up.  Great speaker!).  

This is the crap I dealt with trying to pry pictures from Justice.

Me:  "Please send me a picture!"

So what do I get?  A selfie of him blowing a duck-whistle.

To give you an idea of the sheer number of boys at Jamboree, this is an aerial view of the amphitheater where the shows and programs were held.  This is an 11,000 acre property in West Virginia.  I'm not sure what the number of attendees was for the 2017 jamboree, but in 2013 it was over 30,000.  Huge numbers of both scouts and leaders and other volunteers.  

The boys also had the opportunity to hear President Trump speak while they were at Jamboree.  He gave his speech at this amphitheater.  No matter whether you are a Trump fan or not, hearing the President of the United States speak live is a one in a lifetime opportunity.

And here is an aerial view of the entire camp.  This is not my photo, I got it from google.  Our boys tents were set up in the yellow section in the bottom right corner.  And did I mention that they had to walk everywhere?

There were so many activities to choose from.  Zip lining, water sports, gun/archery, motorcross, 4 wheel, white water rafting.  There are seriously just too many to name.  You want it, they had it.  

Rappeling

Obstacle courses and races

One of the days was spent doing service in the community.  They cleaned hiking trails.

Sunset over camp.

Random campsite pictures.

This kid is such a fool, I swear.

And these are my favorite pictures from Jamboree.  Of course I had to pay a professional $40 bucks for them, but whatever.  

White water rafting.  There's crazy-face in the very front of the boat, smiling like this is a toothpaste commercial. 

There he is again, in the front and having the time of his life. 

On the way home, they stopped at an amusement park.  They were all exhausted by this time and ready to come home.  They had no clean laundry left, and since they were responsible for cooking all of their own meals while they were at jamboree, they were ready for some food cooked by someone that knew how to cook well.  LOL. 

We were happy to see Bubba come off of that tour bus.  He was glad to be home. 

This was a busy summer for Justice, and nobody missed him quite like Jack and Bo.  They were both so happy to have him home.  

I am grateful for the generosity of the business that donated the money for our boys to go to jamboree.  He will have lifetime memories of this trip.  I love this little fool to the moon and back.