President's Day Hike-20 miler in Spokane

Last year Troop 323 did a 20 mile day hike at Escure Ranch; a 20 sq mile sheep ranch south of Sprague Lake. The purpose was to satisfy the toughest requirement of the hiking merit badge; a 20 mile hike in one day. This year I took inspiration from an article in the Spokesman Review, titled the City Wandered. The author did a 3 day, 53 mile backpack trip starting from his home near Northtown Mall. We left about 6:40 am on a holiday! We drove north to Painted Rocks (indian petroglyphs) on the Little Spokane River. We hiked downstream to the confluence of the Spokane River then up the Spokane River to Latah Creek, up Latah to the South Hill for a total of 20 miles in approx 9 hrs. Thanks to James Clark, Howard Ashby and Michael Whiting we had an awesome experience and a lot of laughs, besides getting much better acquainted with our fair city. James showed us graphically how to avoid needing first aid, Michael taught us that Abe Lincoln never drank liquor nor smoked and walked three miles to return a few penny overcharge, Howard will yet teach us a fun song on the next outing.

Zac, Curtis and Daniel epitomized manly men!

Well done Troop 323.

Steamboat Rock and Northrup Canyon Hike

Troop 323 had a great winter camp out. We drove to Steamboat Rock State Park on Banks Lake near the Grand Coulee Dam.

We ate in Davenport at Edna's Drive In and arrived at the park around 8pm. We got a fire going, set up tents and put out our sleeping bags.

Our campfire included a hot cup of cocoa, some songs (we were in trouble til Howard saved us), a game of run sheepy run, thank you Matt Borders, a visit from Ammon and how a scripture prophet epotomized the scout law...Bravery and Helpful come to mind. We also had two reports; one on eagles by Zac and the other on Banks Lake by Daniel.

We or at least some of us turned in about 10 pm.

Aaron was up early to warm up and get the fire going. We had a hot and hearty breakfast of "All in One" breakfast from the dutch oven. ( hashbrowns, eggs, sausage and cheese)

About 9 Kent Morris joined us and we hiked to the top of Steamboat Rock for an awesome view of Banks Lake in north and south. We also saw a small herd of deer.

We returned to camp, had some lunch, broke camp and headed to Northrop Canyon by car.

There we hiked to Northrup Lake and got back to the trucks about 3.

All told we did 10 miles of hiking. We did spot 3 eagle but not the hundreds that have been reported.

The weather couldn't have been nicer, given it was early February.

Thanks to Kam, Howard, Aaron and Kent!