Beating the Heat in West Texas

BTSR, or rather, Buffalo Trail Scout Ranch is a beautiful merit badge camp out in West Texas near the Fort Davis mountains. It is usually very hot and dry in the summer, but this year it was very green and cooler due to a large amount of recent rain. The surrounding scenery is amazing as from the camp you can see tall mountains on every side. The picture immediately to the left is the Parade Ground where we assembled for every meal. The next picture shows some of the camp from one of the mountain tops nearby.

The camp has a ton of merit badges that you can earn while there. Many of us where able to obtain 4 and even 5 badges. Of course, going to camp is more than just earning merit badges. We did a lot of activities such as learned how to retire a flag and we did a lot of star gazing because of how clear the night sky can be.

While the food can sometimes be a bit sketchy at remote camps, it actually was pretty good (well most of the time). The camp chef even went out his way to provide gluten-free meals for one of our troop who can't have wheat. The desserts were pretty good and one night we had a ton of ice cream which helped in dealing with the temperature outside. All in all it was a great time and we're planning a return to the camp after Christmas later this year. We've been told that it sometimes snows here so that will be exciting to see for us Texas-based scouts.