Philmont 1967

In 1967 I was the happy winner of an essay contest co-sponsored by the Boy Scouts, Newsday and the Long Island Lighting Company. The subject? "How Electricity Powers Progress". I probably still have a copy of that epic work around here some place, but if not, the world hasn't lost much. Winning the contest was important to me, though, for besides getting a neat pen and pencil set and my name in the paper, I also was given a gift certificate for camping. Instead of another summer at Onteora Scout Reservation, as fun as that might be, my parents put in the extra money and I was thrilled to learn I would be going to Philmont Scout Ranch.

The trip, simply put, was great. I saw more of the United States that year than before or since. It was a real physical test, one that would kill me today, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

During my summer vacation this year with my family, I was near Philmont and decided to stop back again for a quick visit. Although my hiking this time was pretty well limited to a path between the parking lot and Trading Post, the visit re-awakened some great memories of the past. I dragged out my ancient slides and other memorabilia from the trip to put this little effort together. I had been meaning to copy the pictures for my brother, Jim, who was also on the trip, and due to a new slide scanner can finally do so.

January 2008 update

I am in the process of rescanning and hopefully improving the pictures on the site. Back when I started this project connection speeds were very slow, so I used smaller images on the site. Now, with many more people having high speed access, I am rescanning the photos at a higher resolution and larger image sizes. I'm also taking advantage of the improvements in scanners and editing software to correct some of the problems with the slides and negatives.. It takes time, so you're likely to see some of the older images still on the site as I work my way through them.

An Introduction