Well, our trip actually started on the Saturday the 7th. We left From the Texas Conference office at about 9:30pm. We chartered bus that our club and the club from Joshua split the money on. From there we drove to Love Field to pick up a second driver for the bus. After we wasted 2hr at a gas station waiting for the bathroom we finally left and got going.

Sunday the 8th
We had breakfast at some rest area in-between here and St. Louis and from there we went to see the St. Louis Arch. We arrived at the arch at about 9:30am. After we goofed off for a little while. Then we went into the museum under the Arch, after that we got to got to the top. That was fun, but boy was it a long way up there. Our bus really looked small, not much bigger than an ant.
We left the arch at about 12:00 noon. From there we loaded back in the bus and went looking for a Taco Bell. It took us 2 ½ hours and some time on the ham radios before we finally found one. We finally got our food at about 3:30pm because Joshua went first. We arrived in Berrian Springs at about 10:00pm. We spent the night at Andrews University. After showers and supper we finally got to bed around 11:30pm.

Monday the 9th
We were woke up at about 5:00 by a football team who was practicing. Tony and Sherri left with another pathfinder club to head on up to Oshkosh at about the same time as foot ball practice. Who know why they were practicing at that time in the morning. After we got up we had breakfast and headed to Battle Creek for the Adventist history tours. It was the first day for the tour guide that we got. After the history tour we went and had lunch at some park out side of Battle Creek. Had fun goofing off there. After lunch we went to Kellogg's Cereal City. I bought a pin and so did most of the people on the bus.
From Battle Creek we went to Warren dunes state park to play on the sand dunes and watch the water. When she was rolling down the hill, Julie lost her watch in the sand. From Warren dunes we went back to Andrews. We had hot dogs for supper and the bus drivers tried our vegie dogs, one of them even said that they were good.

Tuesday the 10th
We left Andrews at 7:00am and headed to Chicago. We arrived in Chicago at about 9:00am and went to the navy pier. We looked around until 10:00am and then we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. Talk about a fun museum, I want to go back. They have a real German submarine from World War Two. We didn't get to see the submarine because the line was to long for the time we had. We had lunch in the Pizza Hut in the basement of the museum and then headed for Wisconsin. We left Chicago at 2pm and arrived at Oshkosh at about 5:30pm. After we got there Tony led us in with Joshua's pastors New Beetle. (!SLUG BUG!) After we all piled out of the bus, Joshua invited us over for supper which we all ate and nobody complained. After supper we started putting our stuff in our tents which Tony and Sherri had already set up. When we got all the stuff put away we went down to the evening meeting. Then we came back up to go to bed.

Wednesday the 11th
After we were woke up by the drum corps from the other side of camp we all got up and had breakfast. After breakfast we went over to the conference worship. Then we all headed to the hangers ¾ mile or more from our camp. On the way there we did some pin trading. There are four hangers, A, B, C, & D. In hanger "A" is where all the venders are. Hanger "B" had some of the honors hanger "D" had the rest of them. There where a few in hanger "C" but that hanger was mostly the ADRA booth. Hanger "A" also had the e-mail center. That hanger was hard to get out of with the ham radios. We all went back to camp and had lunch and after that we headed back to the hangers, Until the TLTs had to go help line up the parade, over at the flag poles. The parade was a mess the first day. Nobody really wanted to listen to us so we had to try and find Donny Gore which was really hard to do. We finally decided that when he went between the flags he just disappeared. Any way at the evening meeting Desmond T. Doss was invested as a Master Guide, which was really cool! Any way after the evening meeting we went back to camp to get our stuff for the showers which were really busy.

Thursday the 12th
After morning worship and breakfast Tony Let the Teens have the morning to look around which we did. After we looked around a little we headed over to the puppetering booth Where they were teaching a class on puppetry. They let us do one of the songs. After the teens wondered around for the morning we all headed back to camp for lunch. After lunch everybody headed back to the hangers but it took longer then expected. That was because we ran into a pin trading frenzy and got stuck for awhile then we would move on to the next pin trading session. Any way to make a long story shorter, we spent from 1pm to about 3:30 to get to the flag poles where the TLTs went to help Donny with the parade. Well to make lining up the parade even more interesting it was international day. Jeremy had one group that he told to line up eight wide (the way Donny wanted it,) from Tanzania. Any way Jeremy ended up with that club first in 2 rows of 15 wide and then with 1 row of 32 or so wide. Which made for a really interesting time. We later figured it out that it was the way that he was holding his hands one was is multiplication and the other was is addition. You can guess which way he held his hands. After a good program that evening we all headed up to the showers. (We had brought our stuff with us to the program so we could get to the showers first.)
Once we had all gone to bed and most of us were in bed and trying to get to sleep, we heard a not so welcome sound. It was the tornado warning siren in town. After we woke every body up and got together, those of us who had a radio tuned into the local ham radio repeater and were listening the weather net that was going on. Some of the clubs got in there vans and started to leave but ended up going the wrong way on the freeway. A lot of the clubs headed to the hangers, but they got soaked on the way. Some of the directors met at the flag poles to pray and when they were done praying the flags changed from blowing hard to the south to hard to the east. A instant miracle. Then we were told that the tail of the storm was going to hit us with the hail and hard rain. Later the hams said that the storm split and went around Oshkosh. We got our club in the conference trailer to get away from the hail, along with Joshua and some of the Cleburne Club. Some of the kids from the Keene club said that they saw the hand of God in the sky, I don't know if you could see his hand up there but I know it was there. After the rain let up we all headed back to our tents to see if we could get some sleep. It was about 1:00am before we got back to bed. It was officially Friday the 13th when the hams closed the net down and they decided that was the reason for the bad weather.

Friday the 13th
It was a cold and rainy day. Well, it really wasn't raining, but at least the sun was shining to try and keep us warm. Friday morning we went back to the hangers. Friday afternoon we headed over to the EAA museum which was really fun! They had all kinds of planes in there, every thing from the Wright brothers replica to WWII Planes to a Ford Tri motor. The evening meeting was good with a really nice play and a great speaker.

Saturday the 14th
We all got up and got into our uniforms and headed down to church. Those of us who were going to be invested as master guides got invested during the service. We also were told to wave to the plane that was taking the picture but it wasn't there when they told us to wave so we got to laugh at that. We had the afternoon off so most of us headed back to the hangers. They were the same except that they weren't selling any thing. The TLTs headed back over to the flag poles to line the paraded up again but this time we were in it so it was a little more interesting. After the parade and the air show Julie, Pamela, Jeremy, my mom, Becki, and me got our scarf's signed by Desmond T. Doss. Then we headed back to camp for supper. After supper the kids headed to the evening meeting. Tony, Desmond, Kenneth, Kathie and me stayed behind to take camp down so we could leave sooner. We all had to stop to watch the fireworks. When every body got back from the meeting we loaded the stuff onto the conference trailer so we didn't have to take the stuff back with us on the bus. We got the trailer loaded by 11:30pm and when the bus got there we got it loaded. We left about 1am.

Sunday the 15th
We spent the night on the bus and woke up in St. Louis. We had breakfast at a McDonalds while the bus filled up with diesel. I know that we scared at least one man off when he looked in the window and saw 55 people in there. After that we headed straight back home. We did stop for lunch in Oklahoma city at Cici's. the manager was really nice at Cici's we didn't realize that the bus drivers were going to eat with us, so we had already paid for the food and the manager said that he would take care of the bus drivers. It was rather warm in Oklahoma, but not as hot as it was in Texas when we crossed the border. When we crossed the border we stopped at a rest area and one of the guys there said that it had been hotter that it was then. We all thought that it was really hot, but we had lots of nice weather at DTP. Well the stop at the border was the last stop before we got back to the conference office so we could go home. I am pretty sure that we all slept pretty well that night, I know that I did.!

One of the things that helped the most was the fact that so many of us has our ham license. That came in handy so many times it saved every one of us lots of steps if not miles. I am sure I am not the only one who had sore feet when we were done with the trip. But even though the radios were handy they would not have worked if Tony had not found somebody to lone us a generator Thanks a lot to whoever loaned us that generator! We had so bad weather and a little to much time on the bus but we still had fun. I know I did! I am ready to go to the next one in 2004. Thanks for sending us to this camporee it was a lot of fun. And thanks to everybody who went on the trip especially Tony and Sherri.

Hope every body had as much fun as I did. See ya next time!! :-)
Nathan Seery