Our troop motto is Gotta Wanna Do It! The Scouts really want to spend time in the wild. Here are some stats to help tell our story. We camped for a total of 33 nights. That’s more than a month of outdoors in 2019. In addition, we had the opportunity for Scouts to earn 243 miles of hiking this last year on our outings.
The longest trip was to the Cottonwood Sierra area where the scouts climbed two 14,000-foot peaks. They summited both Mt. Langley and Mt. Whitney for a total of 65 miles over 7 days. The Sierra trek for the younger scouts had 10 scouts and 4 adults going 30 miles in just 6 days at elevations over 12,000 feet.
Troop 26 stays active in the community and in the wild. The Boy Scout Motto is Do a Good Turn Daily. Troop 26 scouts takes that a step further with its more than 984 community service hours in 2019. 330 of those hours were spent on conservation projects in our local mountains and beaches. The other 650 plus hours were spent on projects the scouts support yearly. The highlights are collecting food, “hiking it” in their packs to the Santa Barbara Foodbank, helping with both Fiesta events as well as the Chumash Indian Pow Wow. They also helped support the Veteran’s Day parade, the 4th of July parade, the Alzheimer’s walk, flag ceremonies for local nonprofit events and baking pies and serving dinner at the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission during Thanksgiving.
The Scouts have fun, stay fit, learn leadership and the importance of community involvement.
By Jyll Doubleday
Committee Chairperson
