Florida Caverns

[your_comforting_company]

Took a trip with the venture scouts down to the Caverns. We did some cleanup and worked the floors over with limestone, as the caverns had recently flooded and everything was pretty slick. The day of the duties we started with a little physics in the basic practical application of being human. I did not take the pictures, but did get permission to repost them.
Interesting bunch of folks. Everyone brought a different personality and different strengths to the group. I was a little surprised that the leader of the "Boy Scout Venture Crew" was a girl! These are older people, between 17 and 22 (I think), and some of them live out on their own, working AND going to school. I was even more surprised that folks living out on their own would still be in scouting!
Everyone was very excited and attentive, and couldn't wait to get their hands on some rocks and bones. I gave some basic instructions and explained the physics and then let them have at it, assisting when they had questions.
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I won't bore you to death with "breaking rocks"... moving on..

We moved on to braintan, which was brief but equally as interesting. We might do a class on just that, by itself, next winter, but a few of them won't be in the group due to age, enlistment, and college, but I offered the tutorial here, and videos.

After lunch, we got into fire resurrection, with both the hand drill method, and the bow drill. I explained the fire triad, the notch, and molecular decomposition, followed by a demonstration.
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then I let them have a go!
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Thanks for tuning in to our little adventure! It was quite the weekend! Special thanks to the Crew. Sharing with those folks was fantastic!

[hunter63]

That sound like a fun and productive week end.....
As far as age goes...I find that interests are shared but a very large range of people.....Kind of like gardening, and make no difference.

Very cool.....

[Wildthang]

Looks like good times man, I wish I could have been there!

[Batch]

Real cool!

Is that locally harvested chert?

[WolfVanZandt]

Heh. I was in scouting in my 50s. And I was living on my own. Actually, I got out when age, finances, and more primary goals forced the issue. I was in Venture Scouts long ago and we were in an electronics group. I'm glad to see that the Venture groups are going strong.

Florida Caverns is a great place but you have to have a group to go into the undeveloped levels on a spelunking tour and I've never been able to convince any friends to go crawling with me.

[crashdive123]

Looks like a great time for them and you. Well done.

[kyratshooter]

My only comment is that I hope your group of young folk were quieter at night than the group that camped across from us at last year's jamboree!

Looks like you had a great time.

[crashdive123]

My only comment is that I hope your group of young folk were quieter at night than the group that camped across from us at last year's jamboree!

Looks like you had a great time.

Judging from the debris that was left behind I'd say that noise was alcohol induced or aided.

[gryffynklm]

Great pics thanks for posting

[WolfVanZandt]

O.o

Boy Scouts drinking??!?!!

Oh, wait. I guess there were Boy Scout leaders there also........

[your_comforting_company]

It is local Coastal Plains Chert, Batch. Good eye!

We all stayed up kinda late, they were an hour behind my time, so at 1:30 we all started making our way to the tents, and we all pretty much got up at the same time, too. Of course, while they were struggling with the coleman cooktop, I stuck my coffee can in the coals and made coffee. Noise was negligible except for a few snores and farts hahaha.

I wish you all could have been there. What an interesting group they are! The overseer of the caves is trying to commission opening a few other tunnels for spelunking, but is having the red-tape problem. She said that in 6 months to a year, she hoped to have it worked out so that experienced cavers could go in, but would require an "apprenticeship?" with at least 'so many' hours before going in. There were still several flooded caves while we were in there at around 50 feet deep, so there's no telling how deep some of them go!

I'll post a couple of our cave clean-up pics if you guys are interested? There were some neat formations, I especially liked the rim-pools (sorry, I forget the technical terms).