It was a several hour bus ride from La Junta to the Philmont Scout Ranch's Gates in Northern New Mexico. Yes, those are used hiking boots that you see hanging from the sign. After a bit of a wait, we got our ranger assignment, Curt Hayes. Exiting the bus, we found it was not as hot as La Junta. Curt led us to our tent assignments in tent city and told us to grab our maps, rain gear, and water. Rain gear? It was a bright sunny day.
First we went to logistics but there was a long wait there. There some of the scouts saw the first female rangers, and they quickly noticed that their legs were muscular and, yes, hairy. Sorry guys. Unfortunately, we couldn't get into logistics before lunch. While we were waiting we learned that Curt went to the Air Force Academy that we had just visited on Colorado Springs. He had a choice of either teaching the new cadets or being a ranger at Philmont. He thought that being a ranger would be more fun. When he graduates he is planning on attending dental school.
Lunch was served cafeteria style. After lunch, Curt went over map reading under the entrance way of the cafeteria. Why there? It was pouring! I guess that's why we needed that rain gear. The thunder echoed between the canyons and it would sustain itself for a good fraction of a minute. After lunch our crew leader, Jon got into logistics. We went over to medical where we waited forever, about one and a half hours. What do you expect when there are 110 people that all arrive at the same time? When we were finally called, all the advisers in crew-1 passed the BP test without problems. After that, we picked up our crew gear and tents from Philmont services and brought them back to tent city to pack them in our back packs. Yep, that's the sun and a nearly cloudless sky that you see in that picture. The afternoon rains often last only an hour.
In the evening there were religious services and an opening camp fire that told the history of the Philmont Ranch and the local area. Unfortunately, it was hard to hear most of it from the back. There was also an advisor's meeting that included a humorous letter of a husband and wife advisor team and their adventures, some safety information covering bears and some of the common reasons that people have to leave the trail - dehydration and sprains. At some point we met our sister crew that would be hiking the same trek as crew 1 was. They were from Texas and the advisors included Lee and Bill.
Out of clean clothes, I did a load of wash so that I would have some clean class B uniforms for the return trip home. I also found the adult showers, some in tent city with a single knob and some in the advisor's lounge with TWO knobs. I tried the the ones in the advisor lounge even though it was a longer walk. They were ICE cold. I later heard that the tent city showers were warm. Next time.
Hey, this is July 4. No fire works! There was a fire ban anyway because of the lack of rain for the prior 3 months. We didn't miss them. We were too busy waiting trying to get everything done. We would have to do our crew picture and our equipment shake down the next day. With an 10:00 bus pickup time, there didn't seem to be any way to get to the advisor picture.
