Tanner's Eagle Project

IT IS DONE!!! I'll tell you what, this is one kid who has definitely earned his Eagle after this project. We had a ton of fun at Kolob this past weekend putting in new toilets, digging drainage holes, laying down grating, hauling gravel, cutting down trees, moving tables and doing other assorted little projects at the girls camp. We could never have done it without a ton of help. We are extremely grateful to Allen England, his sons Ben and Zach and Mike Kreimeyer for helping haul up all of the equipment and for their technical expertise in getting everything done.

We also had help from Matt Melton and his brother-in-law Dave and nephew Jake, Pete and Rosie Orozco, Bill and Rebecca Wells and their family, Dean and Susan Slade, Grandma and Grandpa Porter and Jeff and Liz Davenport. We can't thank them enough for everything they did to help make the project such a success. We also had a lot of help from Tanner's friends and fellow Boy Scouts Ardie Ashton, Alex Williams, Chet Littlefield, Connor Gibbs, Hayden Nelson, Sam Peterson and Brock Luebke.

On Friday the roads in were pretty treacherous and we had fun (just kidding) sliding down a lot of the hills in the truck. On Saturday morning we got up to a beautiful blanket of snow on everything, icicles on the showerhouse and big, wet snowflakes coming down. Luckily everyone brought lots of coats and hats and cold weather gear thanks to the equipment list Tanner and Erin had made up for everyone. By mid morning though the skies cleared a bit and we were able to get underway with the project.

Tanner broke everyone up into work groups and by the time the day was done, we had replaced all of the showerhouse toilets and improved the water drainage for the spigots in 12 different campsite locations. We did other assorted odd improvements throughout the camp as well during the day, but the drainages and toilets were the main focus of the project. Once all the work was done the boys and kids had plenty of fun time playing pine cone golf and other assorted games and activities.

Saturday night all the scouts and several others headed for home. The Wells, Orozcos, Daveports, Englands and Brock Luebke stayed for Sunday and Monday as did Mike Kreimeyer. On Sunday the weather was actually quite nice. It warmed up to about 4o degrees and we had a a beautiful church service (thanks Bishop Hyte) on the mountain side overlooking the canyons north of camp. It really was a stunning setting and made for a very memorable and spiritual sacrament meeting. Liz gave a talk on service and Bill Wells taught Sunday School and both did a great job. The rest of the day was spent visiting, playing with the kids and hiking about enjoying the scenery. Oh, and of course eating, which was fantastic. Big kudos to Erin and little Erin for the awesome food! We ate and ate well all weekend. Special thanks to Ben Luebke for helping supply a lot of our food.

Monday we got up to more snow and hail. We worked in the morning hauling out tables to campsite, cutting down trees (broken from the heavy winter snows), helping clear brush and making final pass throughs of camp. Allen England also mowed the meadow for the start of camp in a couple of weeks and then we broke down camp to head home. Luckily the roads weren't too wet from the morning snow and hail so no one got stuck on the way out (I heard some weren't so lucky who headed home on Saturday).

All in all, it was a tremendously successful Eagle Scout project. We had good food, good fun, a great Sunday experience, got lots of great work done and left with good memories all around. I hope to get a bunch of the pictures from the project up in a slideshow soon. Thanks again to everyone involved.