D-Day the 6^th of June, 1944 was the date of the allied invasion of France during World War II.  It had been originally scheduled for the fourth, but bad weather delayed the event.  This year’s invasion of Forest Park by the Scouts went off on schedule, no weather delays, so by the sixth of June, their objectives had been secured and they are now ready to move out.

Scouting is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year.  The Saint Louis area Scouts convened in the Park this weekend as part of this anniversary.  Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 Scouts descended upon the Park this weekend.  The Park regularly hosts this weekend campout, regularly being about once every ten years.  The Park doesn’t require ten years to recover from one of these weekends, but I do believe that the Park’s administration does.

At one point on Saturday morning, I overheard two Scout leaders remarking, “I have never seen so many boys, having so much fun.”  I have to agree with those two leaders, because there was a lot of fun to be had.  I rode through the Park in the morning and again in the afternoon, this time with Anne, we got 22 and 11 miles respectively.  Even though the Scouts outnumbered everyone else there were other constituencies in the Park on Saturday.

The Muny had their Muny Kids performing song and dance out in front of the theater.  This helped to entertain the hundreds of Muny ticket goers that had braved the Scout’s gauntlet, to exchange individual tickets.  Then there was International Paint Yourself Day.  Participants of this holiday are young and colorful.  They do this on the first Saturday of June, to bring happiness and joy.

The Scouts had lots of activities to keep their following occupied.  Historical re-enactors descended on the Park to portray their particular niches.  Portrayed were enactors for the Lewis and Clark exposition, American Indians and the Civil War.  There were also many athletic activities.  A few of them were floating, a slip-and-slide and the climbing walls.  The most stupendous event of the day though was the cardboard boat race.

I wish that we had this activity when I was a Scout.  The event is pretty simple, two Scouts, one boat, cardboard.  There were three prizes offered, the fastest, the best looking and the most stupendous failure.  Each of the heats produced a fastest.  Each heat also produced many stupendous failures.  In my humble opinion the best looking boat was the Pikachu, it also happened to win its heat.  My buddy Dan, is the explorer troop leader for the crew of the good ship Pikachu. We didn’t stay for the final tally, but wish Dan’s Scouts, good luck.

While I was playing with the Scouts in the Park, Anne was supporting the three-day MS-Challenge Walk.  She manned the Team Kaldi’s rest stop there for most of the day.  This is a charity event similar to the one that Jay regularly does.  Jay, it is way hotter here in Saint Louis, don’t even think about coming here.