Sand, Sun, and... Boy Scouts

Hello everyone! This is a "guest post" by Terral. I'm giving Mary a break from her daily blogging.

I am the Deacon's Quorum adviser/Scoutmater/2nd counsellor of the Young Men's program in our ward. We have a pretty small group of young men so we don't split up for activities. Today we met at the church at 6:30 am and headed south for a day of hiking and exploring in Snow Canyon State Park. If you have never been there it is worth the trip. The park is located just north west of St. George. It costs something like $5 a vehicle to enter so make a day out of it. There are a lot of family friendly hikes as well as some more advanced hiking. You can explore caves, hike trails, scramble around on the petrified sand dunes, or go play around in the non-petrified dunes!

When we got there we decided to do a trail called Three Ponds. I was skeptical that there would actually be ponds but I was proven wrong.

Brother Bishop standing at the bottom where the trail meet the ponds. 

The trail was only 3.5 miles so we had plenty of time to explore and play along the way. We had a shot put throwing contest with boulders.

I picked up a large rock and started carrying it along the trail. Why? I guess because on a scale of 1 to 10 (one being a skeleton and 10 being the incredible hulk) my arms are somewhere about 1.5! I thought I could get a good arm workout that was more functional than just sitting and doing the same thing over and over. It also was a good workout for other parts of my body and became a good balance builder! Eventually the rock thing became a competition between myself and one of the older boys. He won because I threw my rock into the water. I couldn't help it!

We found a sandy hill and we began jumping over bushes.

When we were done with the hike we went to the picnic area and ate lunch. After lunch we decided to head over to the sand dunes to play and explore. We thought that we would go find some caves if we had enough time but we ended up at the dunes until it was time to come home. A few of the older boys hiked out further into the dunes with me to find good places to jump. We ran and jumped over and over and over. We did tricks, jumped over each other and did flips. Eventually we went back for water and the rest of the scouts joined us. Even the less adventures boys were joining in with the fun. We probably jumped around at the dunes for two or more hours. Finally we were all pretty much pooped! One boy mentioned that he wouldn't need to go to the gym on Monday. Another boy said that with all the running in the sand barefoot he was getting an exfoliating foot treatment. We concluded that playing in the dunes replaces the gym, the spa, and the tanning beds.

After the fun we staggered back to the cars, brushed as much of the sand off as we could (sorry Sis. Bishiop!) and headed back to town. I'll admit that we didn't teach any knots, we didn't earn any merit badges, and we didn't do any service projects but we did have some good teaching moments along the way. I hope that the boys learned that physical fitness can come in different shapes and sizes. That exercise can be fun. We learned a lot about interacting with nature and we learned about interacting with each other. It was a good day!