By Charlie Thorpe
We went with "pickle buckets" (5 gal
pails w/snap lids and bail handle). Actually, we didn't use the pickle buckets
that we could get for free from the fast food places (sleeping bags ended up
smelling like dill pickles), we preferred the same type buckets used for
bakery icing (could choose vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, etc. for our sleeping
bag <g>).
We experimented with sheetrock mud buckets because they were
shorter and fit below the gunwales of the canoes for sweeper protection. We
would now probably just go down to Wally World or Home Depot and buy the ones
they have readily available for a few bucks.
Each person brought two personal pickle buckets to most outings (only thing
you were allowed to bring outside of your buckets was a day pack and a fishing
rod when appropriate). The buckets were extremely cheap, very robust, set a nice
limit on the amount of personal stuff brought, were easy to organize inside,
packed easily on an open utility trailer and in car trunks, could be carried
easily by even the youngest Scouts, were weatherproof, and made nice seats
around the camp.
They fit nicely in a canoe (each canoe carried two buckets for
each paddler and another 4 buckets of group gear/food - tied bails to thwarts)
and we could stack them within the canoes on the canoe trailer. We even started
stacking them to make privacy screens for changing room and potty on paddling
trips.
The Scouts got VERY inventive at how they marked their buckets with their
name and Patrol. We would mark the group buckets with strips of duct tape so
that we could change them during a trip (i.e., change a food to a garbage
bucket) and easily skin the markings off for the next trip.
Trace No Leaves,
- Charlie