Roy Blakeley's roundabout hike

Every time I start telling you about one of our hikes, I say it’s the craziest hike I ever took. I guess it’s true, because they’re all crazier than each other. If there are a l...

Now I’m going to start writing the next chapter and I’m going to keep writing it till the dinner gong rings, so you can see it’s going to have a good ending. It has a good endin...

Now I’m going to write another chapter till I have to go to scout meeting. I have to get there at eight o’clock, but if I don’t get there till seven it won’t make any difference...

Now pretty soon it’s going to start. The next morning we went in front of Administration Shack and everybody was there laughing at us. I made a kind of a speech. I said, “We, th...

Pretty soon I saw the man was smiling and I knew everything was all right. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead and I saw he had a bald head--he didn’t have one hair on hi...

Jiminies, up to that time I never knew how near Temple Camp had come to getting that land. Because Mr. Saul Bagley sure was strong for the Scouts. He was mighty nice the way he...

Pretty soon we came to Beaver Chasm--it’s in the woods. Lots of times I saw it but I never went down in it. Once a couple of Scouts from camp told me there were rattlesnakes in...

Gee whiz, I can be sober when I have to. I could see all right enough that we had a chance to do something big. I wasn’t going to start fooling about it. I knew if old Mr. Bagle...

I guess you’re in a hurry for the next day to come, but anyway you’ll have to wait till after we’ve had our lunch because we were good and hungry. Mostly I have eats come betwee...

I made flipflops for lunch and Pee-wee ate eleven of them. Dub ate seven. Sandy said he could eat them as fast as I could make them, but I was four ahead of him when he stopped....

The fire was already started so I said I’d go with Pee-wee while Dub and Sandy stayed and tended to it. Because there’s a rule that you must never leave a fire, no matter where,...

Pee-wee was so excited he could hardly speak. “We don’t have to hurry,” he said, “because nobody saw me--I didn’t make a sound. Listen, it’s bandits! I crept around to the other...

I said, “Will you please excuse me while I drop dead? We met him over at Bagley’s Green and he told us his father got killed in Beaver Chasm and that his last will got lost there.”

We took our time hiking back to the chasm. That’s the way we always do. We just ambled along kind of kidding each other--you know how. Because anyway we didn’t have to get back...

All of a sudden I had an idea and I turned around and said, “Hey, Scout Harris, you know so much about scouting, is the Rotary Club award for one hundred dollars?”

We were glad when we got back to the chasm; anyway I was, I know that. Our little tent looked good, standing there. Dub said he wished we could camp there all summer, just us fo...

That time we went, we could see just how the camp was on account of it being daytime. That lean-to thing looked just like I thought it would. But there wasn’t any other tent. Th...

We all looked where the boy movie hero was going, with Pee-wee alongside him. The three young men just sat where they were, in a row--they didn’t seem so much interested. As lon...

I couldn’t just stand there not doing anything so I ran into the wide part and up the side where it was easy to go up. I guess maybe I was kind of kidding myself that I could do...

if anything might topple him over. I just held my breath while I was waiting. He grabbed hold of the boy’s leg, then he got hold of him round the waist. I just looked at that fe...

Pee-wee had a lot of scratches on him--he looked as if he had crawled through a nutmeg grater. He was kind of lame too. But he was all right. He said it was a mortal peril he wa...

That afternoon we stayed and helped those surveyors to get their own tent up, and we built them a scout fireplace out of stones. They were going to cook with an oil-stove--jimin...

He was talking like that all the way round to the other side of the lake. Over there the woods are thick. We stood looking across the water at the camp--all we could see were th...

The next thing I knew Dub threw off his coat and just ripped his shoe-laces open and tore his shoes off. He didn’t wear sneaks like all the Scouts at camp, but regular shoes. It...

We went up the hill a little ways into the woods and then down into a hollow. I knew about it because I had been there before. It was lucky I had some matches because those two...

When I got back to the hollow Will was just standing there holding his shoes to the fire. I said, “Dub took the boat and he’s gone over to camp--here’s a paper he left on a tree...

So now you know why Dub Smedley didn’t get the Gold Medal for saving Will Dawson’s life. That was twice he didn’t get it. And you needn’t think Will and I let it go like that ju...

So that’s the way he did, we all hiked down to Catskill to see Dub off. The Scouts that went were the Big Four and Will Dawson. All my patrol wanted to go but I wouldn’t let the...

That’s some crazy game all right, I learned it from Hervey Willetts. I jumped up on the stone wall alongside the road and started along on it with the four of them after me. “Fo...

Down at the foot of the hill were a couple of girls sitting in a Ford and they started laughing at us. One of them said, “What are you holding your ears for? You look too silly!”

So now you know the way we hike. Sometimes even it’s worse than that. Tom Slade (he’s camp assistant) says it’s best to have a destination when you start. But if you have a dest...

Sandy’s a nice fellow, he’ll even drink sodas to help a friend. He’s always doing good turns. Just as he and Pee-wee went away I noticed Will wasn’t around anywhere. Then I saw...

Will just put his arms around his father’s waist and stood in front of him to prevent him from walking. He was all excited, he said, “Listen, Dad, quick, because in a couple of...

Gee it was awful funny; Dub didn’t get a chance to have his way at all. He didn’t know what was happening to him till it was all over. I guess he thought he was being kidnapped....