For reasons I've mentioned before, we were planning on not doing the Council Day Camp this year. In addition to the council leaders (who are a joke), the cost was $190--a non starter for the family of every boy in our Pack, with one or two exceptions. Plus, Council camp is M-F 8:30-3:00, which is really hard to get Den Walkers. I knew I'd be taking most, if not all, of that week off because its hard to count on parents.

So this year, we did our own thing. We had a 2.5 hour Den meeting Wednesday evening, and had a couple parents there to help out. Thursday we met at the church, and had some indoor games and crafts, and some outdoor water games. Friday we went to a park, did a hike, played mini-golf, and went fishing. Saturday we shot bb guns and did archery at the house of one of the parents' friends who has some land. I helped Wednesday, all day Friday, and Saturday morning. My wife helped out on Thursday. It was only one vacation day for me.

All-in, our cost was $50 per boy. They got to do 95% of the things the Cubs did at Cub Camp (we didn't have a rope bridge) and it took about half of the weekday time. The parents of nearly every boy helped out at least one day, knowing that they were there to help their son, and not a bunch of random kids in a group that maybe included some kids from their ward. Everyone had fun, we were safe, and we earned every adventure badge that the boys at the Council Camp did.

I will say that it took a lot more planning on our part. But now that we've done it one year, it will be much easier to do next year. In fact, we might even involve a Pack from another ward. It would be easy to scale up to 2 or 3 more wards (bigger than that, however, and it gets difficult). All of which to say is if/when the Church leaves Scouts, I'm confident in the ability of leaders, parents, and the boys to find suitable replacements that will benefit everyone directly involved.