A St. Plurk Adventure at the Scout Jamboree!

Several months ago, Fr. Leo (of Plurk fame) mentioned that he was planning to go to the National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P.Hill in Virginia in July. I thought, "Wow!"... I could actually envision meeting one of the members of St. Plurk Parish since the site of the jamboree was not too far from my town. So we had a few discussions about the possibility of a visit; and thus it came to pass...

Knowing that the July heat in central Virginia is pretty rough and the humidity makes it even worse, I remembered to apply some sunscreen before I left. I put on my baseball cap and grabbed my water bottle and off I went on my excursion.

I took the scenic route north and had a very pleasant drive. Presently, I arrived at A.P. Hill... There had been very little traffic on the way and I figured this was going to be easy after all. Uh-oh! How wrong I was! I had hardly turned into the gate when ahead of me was the end of a l-o-n-g line of cars, crawling along at a snail's pace.

We had planned on meeting about 1:30 p.m. and it was not yet 1 o'clock so I figured the parking area probably was not too far ahead. Oops! Another wrong guess! The minutes dragged on and it didn't seem that we were getting anywhere. And then I saw the sign: Parking, 6 miles ahead! Good grief! So, I called Fr. Leo and advised him I would be a bit later than expected.

Finally, after I had almost finished my first bottle of water, the parking queue ended up in a field and we were directed where to park. We were herded toward a towering white tent which was the Welcome Tent. All the visitors had to enter the tent before being allowed to search for whomever we were visiting. Good thing too, because by now, nobody had the faintest idea in which direction we should go.

In the tent, we were given a welcome kit and a scouting patch as souvenirs and that vital MAP that would answer all our questions about which direction to go. But wait! We were told that we would have to catch one of the shuttle buses to get anywhere in this humongous complex. The scout explaining it all to me told me that I needed to catch either a red, yellow or orange bus; not a blue bus! The buses were all school-yellow. And where do I catch the bus? "Just walk over there where those bus signs are. Each bus has a colored sign..." I quickly got my water bottle refilled and moved out. The day was extremely hot!

There were several lines and lots of people milling around the bus stop. Nobody seemed to know what to do... A bus arrived and part of one line filed into the bus and off they went., I asked someone how long they had been waiting for a ride and the woman said, an hour!!! Uh-oh! Not good! I was already using up my second refill of water by that time. Luckily, after a few minutes, an official told me that she would help me get on the next bus. It was a blue bus! Who cares! I was finally on the move. We eventually arrived at the bus staging area. What this meant was that we would all have to get off our bus and wait for another! Uh-oh! So it was back out into the hot sun again! I was running out of water again too!

I put in another call to Fr. Leo and told him where I was. Lo and behold, he knew exactly where I was talking about! He told me to walk up the road and he would intercept me. I looked up at the sun and told him I was walking north. Was that the right direction? Yep! That was right. About a half block later, I saw someone who looked familiar walking toward me. That's him!!!! I waved. He had seen me too. After a quick hug, we walked to his camp's site and under some shade trees, we had a nice little visit. However, it had taken me so long to get there that I soon had to leave. There was no telling how long it would take me to get back to the welcome tent with such a confusing shuttle bus situation. And it had gotten much hotter... so hot that the loudspeakers had declared a red alert!

Fr. Leo graciously walked me back to the staging area and presently a parking-lot bus became available and I said goodbye to Fr. Leo and boarded. About twenty minutes later the bus arrived at the welcome tent and parking lot. You can't imagine how happy I was to get back in my car, turn up the air conditioning and be on my way!

It was an interesting adventure and I really enjoyed meeting Fr. Leo, but I can tell you that I will never do something like that again. The summer heat and humidity are not good for an older person. Especially when we all are so used to air conditioned comfort. I had also never imagined how large an area 40,000+ Scouts and their leaders would need. This is a huge complex with lots of activities going on. No wonder the shuttle bus situation is so confusing to a first time visitor. Thank goodness for the jamboree maps!

So that's how it went yesterday!