Philmont Scout Ranch - Day 7

The final day. We hiked 7.2 miles from the Tolby Headwaters Campground to the trailhead pick up. We made great time, so we waited about 2.5-3 hours for the bus to pick us up. We ate our last trail lunch, played games, and took naps while waiting on the bus.

We had to clean and turn in out crew gear once we arrived, and showers were long overdue. We celebrated with an ice cream cone. We got there minutes (seconds?) before closing time, so the kid serving the ice cream was not terribly interested in ensuring we all had a pleasant experience - but we did certainly get a good laugh about the whole situation. Ian's cone was pretty pathetic; the server dropped half of the ice cream on the serving tray, looked at it, looked at the cone, turned to look at us, and just handed Ian the cone (the photo below is the un-eaten cone). For $1.50, I didn't push the server, but chose a cup instead!

We had a nice sunset, with a strange light/shadow phenomenon on the eastern horizon, where the shadows converged to a point rather than spreading from a point light source. Pretty cool!

We went to a nice campfire ceremony, which is pretty typical for Scouts, and then went to bed. Ian and I stayed long enough to say goodbye to our fellow Scouts and get a photo in front of the Philmont sign covered in old hiking boots. We intend to use ours some more, so we did not throw ours on there.

We took a scenic way to start the trip, but due to some construction, I abandoned our plans and just took the fastest way home - which was still 3:15 pm with a 7:30 start time.

One of the other things which took up our time was this hot air balloon launch in Angel Fire. We got to our breakfast point just before the crowds arrived, but it still slowed the restaurant down immensely.

That concludes our Philmont trip. It was a bittersweet way to finish Ian's Scouting adventure. 

We started this way back in 2012 in Washington state. He crossed over from the Cub Scouts in Texas, found a great Troop in Virginia and again in Maryland. He earned his Eagle rank, completing his project 2 weeks before the COVID shutdown. He has been somewhat active with his NM troop. We did Sea Base (SCUBA adventure) with the Virginia crew and now Philmont with the Maryland crew. Next week is his last meeting as a Boy Scout with the New Mexico crew - he will age out on his 18th birthday.

Time flies, and while I am sad that this chapter of our lives are done, I am thrilled that Ian still wants to camp and go backpacking with me - I have a camping buddy for future adventures!

Cheers,

Marc