Cub Scout Camp and New York Steaks
Just had the opportunity to go with the Cub Scout to the Lion's Club camp “Camp Pacifica”. “Camp Pacifica is owned and operated by the various Lions clubs in the Central California Valley. Located just south of Mariposa, Ca, surrounded by beautiful mountain country. The facilities have cabins, kitchens, pool, basket ball court, soccer filed, baseball field and a pond just to name a few.
The Oakdale Cub scouts were very fortunate to be invited to spend the Veterans day weekend at the camp. Several adults and a few dozen Cub scouts took up the offer. We all piled into the various cabins, the boys in one, women in another, the guys had their own also. I cheated and shacked up with my wife and kids, the boys have never been on their own before so we kept them with us.
Our activities included hiking, basketball and letting the boys explore the camp area. I am sue the favorite activity was letting the boys explore. They had a blast! Lots of area to run in, plenty of branch to use as rifles, cannons and bazooka's. It was pretty amazing how fast they started that game. Where does that come from?
Now the food part! For dinner we had marinated New York steaks, pasta, salad and garlic bread! Boy, those Cub scouts sure know how to camp. I of course volunteered to cook the steaks. I can't help myself, I always migrate to the grill! Our barbecue was a very large half drum with a crank down grill. It had seen some usage for sure. Over twenty steaks to cook and only one bag of charcoal to use, I was a bit nervous. The grill wouldn't lower down any more than 12+ inches to the coals. That's a lot of room for heat loss.
I fired up the coals and waited to see how thing would turn out. The coals were just too far away from the grill, I could easily hold may hand over the grill when it was lowered to it's bottom reach. I slapped a steak on and it just laughed at me. Time to improvise! I managed to find several pieces of unknown (Pine I think) firewood to throw on the coals. Several minutes latter I had a live flame and I was searing the steaks for a fine meal.
Now I know you all have experienced that “Cooking-Outdoors” sensation when the food is cooking and the smells are smelling, right? It's just perfect, smoke, sizzle, fresh air and a huge hunger. I could do no wrong to those steaks ….
We ate like champs, all the salad, pasta, New York steaks and garlic bread you could eat. Heck, we even had hot dogs for the few that didn't want steak. It was a great weekend with the Cub Scouts at the Pacifica Lions camp. I even managed to take time to snap a couple of photo's!
