Cookstove Hike

On Friday, we hiked up the Harding Springs trail in Sedona. We camped on top of the ridge and then hiked down the Cookstove Trail.

Harding Spring is named for O.P. Harding, a pioneer. He came to Flagstaff in 1884 and worked in construction. In 1889 he moved to Oak Creek, homesteaded, and planted hundreds of fruit trees. He brought his fruit to Flagstaff using this trail. In 1910 the Flagstaff newspaper reported that Harding, age 76, had walked from Oak Creek to Flagstaff. At his death in 1915, it was learned that he had been a distinguished Union General in the Civil War, a face he kept hidden during his life in Arizona.

We saw lots of scat from black bears during our hike, but never saw a bear. After our hike, the boys played in Oak Creek for several hours. Everyone had a fantastic time.

Court of Honor

This is Glen's voice:

The CoH went very well. We started off with Gary Taylor from the VFW talking about what the flag meant to him as a combat veteran and then he gave a little history on what happened to the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Then we retired the flags, about 15 of them, and that went off without a htich. I had Cameron come and I gave him a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster badge and Stacy and I told some good stories about him from Scout Camp. We presented the "Big G Gold" award and had Wes come up and point out that his name was on the ribbon since he was the SPL, then I had him tie the ribbon onto our Troop flag. After that we gave out a lot of merit badges and ranks! Dawn Craner gave Annie and Christina (and Jessica, in spirit) a dozen roses for being the wives of Scouting men and putting up with us being gone with our Scouts a lot. All of the boys now have merit badge sashes, which they paid for, and all of the parents are on board with the shooting merit badges and the fact that their boy needs to earn $35 for ammo. Alex is set on ammo and is still going to buy a box of clays; everyone else will probably just pay $35. I'm working on getting some more donations for shotgun ammo and clays but so far we at least have the 2k of .22.

We are gonna go kayaking again for sure!