The camp is still a buzz over Saturday night's incredible "Shining Light Across America" arena show. Our subcamp started walking at 4:15 led by Ryan Lemons and his buglers. The walk this time was a little more leisurely as it was later in the day and everyone was tired from the days activities. But there was still some boisterous song singing and chanting along the way. Since we stepped off so early a non-refrigerated backpack meal was provided. Some troops too more provisions like these guys.






The arena show staff does a great job of providing entertainment for those that show up first at the arena. After our 45 minute walk we settled in and watched Trinidad & Tobagos, a youth steel drum band and the Crazyhorse, SD, Native American dancers. Following that was a pretty crazy thing - first, picture a couple hundred scouts dressed in plastic ponchos. Now seat them in bleachers and unroll a huge see-thru "canvas" of sorts over their heads and give them a paint brush to fill in the pattern and "voila!"
Scouts were encouraged to text the messages to the stage and they appeared on the main center jumbotron. These were everything from "Hi Mom!" to troop greetings and funny comments. Messages were also posted by those watching at home to scouts in the the crowd. Three scouts were aloft in lifts and did some of the announcing from there while overlooking the crowd.

At one point it began to rain slightly and everyone broke out their rain gear. Fortunately it was very light and did not last long.


Then came the countdown and the main show began. Huge fires were lit on the tops of the stage pillars and some awesome pyrotechnics signaled the start of the show in front of 70,000 excited folks in the arena and thousands more watching at home via TV and webcasts. A young scout sounded the kudu horn and Chief Scout Executive Bob Mazucca addressed the crowd and then "rappelled" down to the stage (or so it appeared!). The crowd was pumped!

It wasn't long before the big guest, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs was brought in riding the bucket of a front end loader. Mike explained his issue with the scout law to be "clean", a tough bill for the self-proclaimed "ambassador of dirt." Then he showed his shirt that said, "A Scout is clean...but not afraid to be dirty." "Get uncomfortable and like it," he told the scouts. He was great fun and we were sad to see him go. (I couldn't find a YouTube link - yet - but here is the link to the pre-video he did http://www.youtube.com/watch?v/=A6jdeAEVdns)

(added later) Here is a link to a video of Rowe's inspirational and very fun message. It starts at 30 seconds in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znobtgls0OY


A video salute to scouting in the movies highlighted scenes from and references to scouting in cinema and a rapper sang a theme song from the movie Scout Camp before the band Switchfoot took the stage. Their music was loud and raucous....and the boys loved it. The finale was patriotic, scoutly and tugged the heart strings of everyone there. Great music, an amazing choreographed fireworks show, more history retrospect, more scouting feel good ---- simply amazing stuff. Here are some highlights of the show...

Here is the final sequence...(the last bit comes with sound - fair warning!)

(added later) Here is a much better, longer, version of the final sequence that you can actually hear the music to -- it was shot much further back than we were. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1Pmmt5gjqc

It was nearly 10:45 when the show finished and a jubilant crowd started heading back to camp. Left behind were 182 Arrowmen cleaning up after the amazing rock concert-styled show. They had about 2000 man hours in by the time they were done, finishing up around 1:00 a.m. -- just two and a half hours.

More to come.....