More summer programming

Night Walk on Friday at Saguaro National Park East. It's a 2 hour walk, but fairly easy. Call to sign up, (520) 733-5153.

Sonoran Desert Kids Club

Cub and Brownie leaders--Need some good outdoor programming? Don't forget about the Sonoran Desert Kids Club activities at Agua Caliente park. It's 9:30 AM to noon on the second Saturday of the month, which means the next one will be August 14, plenty of time to pre-register!

Also, the prickly pear harvest is coming up in August. Again at Agua Caliente they are having an activity. You can also do harvesting in your neighborhood, be sure to wear leather gloves. The dark purple native prickly pear fruit isn't quite as tasty as the lighter-colored version. You can remove the spines by burning or cutting them off (not for cubbies!) you can eat it or juice it. Prickly pear lemonade is especially popular.

This is a good opportunity to combine cooking lessons with native plant lessons!

Fall recruiting coming soon

For those of us in Vail School District, it's already here. At the pack level, the packs often sponsor activities--rent a bouncy castle, or free roller skating or the like--to invite interested families to join.  I'm trying to think of new ideas here--anyone else have one?

Agaves are trees, right?

Around here I'd say they serve much of the same function. So if your Webelos are looking to finish that Forester badge and plant 100 seedlings, this weekend is your chance!
Coronado National Memorial is planting 1500 agaves on Saturday. These are critical to the bats who live in the area. Many agaves were removed or displaced during the border fence construction, so now is the time to get things back a little closer to what they were.  This is a great opportunity to learn more about our local environment and give back at the same time.
They are having a birding walk at 7AM with the Audobon society. Registration starts at 8:00AM, followed by orientation and planting starts at 9AM. They are planning to be finished by 12:30 PM, at which time you can join in a plant identification walk.
To make a reservation or for additional information, contact the Coronado National Memorial visitor center at 366-5515, Ext. 0.

Summer Scouting

It's midsummer for some of our school districts, but back-to-school for others. I'd say about 20% of our scouting district is in a modified year-round school. Is that a high enough number to modify the scouting schedule to at least include some of those?  We try to accomodate religious differences (ie, not having all scouting activities on Saturdays), wouldn't school schedule differences fall into the same kind of category?

For instance, the Pimaree last year was right after school started for the year-round districts. How difficult would it have been to move it back a week to accomodate those schedules?

Especially when, looking at the district from a monetary angle, many of those units are your top FoS units and top popcorn selling units. Not to mention all of the kids who are in church-based units (vs. geographically-based units) who go to school there.