A later morning for the leaders but some of the Explorers were up at 5am to go to the Big Zip and get in the queue early.
After breakfast and spending some time sorting out camp ready for packing away we set off, we popped into the Trading Post and picked up the rafting photos for those that took part.
Almost everywhere you turn at the Jamboree is an activity for the Scouts, we went into a tent that I’ve probably walked past 20 times in the last week but didn’t realise it had stuff in. One of the activities was to find small safety pins in a bowl of rice, there were 30 in the bowl and I only found 1 pin in the 2 minutes time limit, the idea is that this simulates the loss of feeling some people have in their fingers.
Then we went into one of the buildings running some science projects. Some really interesting stuff going on, including robotic hands made from card and plastic
There was all a TV Studio and a IBM AI project.
Around the corner there was Amateur Radio
And Cryptology including a 3D Laser Printed versions of the Enigma Machine
I then went to find an old Scouting friend Gareth from Taiwan who I worked with in 2007 at the WSJ in the UK. Gareth has been working in the reception area. It was great to catch up, you forget how long 12 years is, Gareth has married and had 2 children, and of course my family has grown up massively.
On the way to meet the others for lunch I came across a group from Korea performing some music in traditional dress to welcome other contingent leaders to the Korean reception.
https://www.alastairandrews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/img_1305.movAfter some lunch we went round to the woods to finish off some of the activities me and Gareth did a few days ago and for Chris to see them.
On the way I spotted these spider webs, they are quite impressive and you see a lot of them in the trees, I’m not sure how big the spiders are though🕷🕷.
We then walked back past the lake on the board walk as we were meeting the Explorers in the Food houses fo dinner.
At each Jamboree countries are invited to have a food house serving food from that Country, as leaders and I think many of the Explorers have already visited these but our plan was to buy them all dinner from a food house of their choice.
Myself, Chris and Gareth were still full from lunch so decided on maple syrup pancakes and maple syrup iced coffee from the Canadians.
We sat down and enjoyed dinner together.
The Explorers then all left to carry on meeting friends and socialising whilst myself Gareth and Chris went to enjoy an alcohol free beer or two in the German tent.
Then we heard the thunder and another amazing storm passed over, we decided to stay and wait it out, meanwhile everyone’s phone in the tent buzzed at once as the local area had pushed out a warning to all mobile phones about a flood warning.
We then had a message that one of the Explorers was off to visit the hospital for an X-ray so me and Gareth headed back to Camp and Chris went up to the Hospital.
We stayed up to wait and Chris and the Explorers came back, some strapping and paracetamol but thankfully nothing serious.
