Every summer, my Boy Scout troop would go to camp Camp Tahquitz, up by Big Bear (a mountain in Southern California that has a lake with boats and a ski resort and stuff). I went... I don't know, 4 or 5 times? We would go there for a week. Arrive in the afternoon on the first day and pitch our tents. Then over the next 5 days, we would go to merit badge classes spread out across the camp. I signed up to do 4 or 5 merit badges each time I went. After classes are over, you go back to your camp and have lunch with everyone (we had to cook and clean the dishes ourselves), and then we had to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. Some would go down to the shooting range to shoot rifles or trap shoot with shotguns. Others would go to the rock climbing tower. Others would go to the swimming pool and play water polo and other games. A horse riding ranch opened up in the lower part of the camp during the latter years and that was pretty fun.
The last year I went, I had almost every merit badge that was offered at the camp, so I spent most of my time just wandering around, chilling out with the other guys, rock climbing and horse riding. Ironically, I think horse riding was a merit badge I never got, despite how much time I spent horse riding. When I was a kid, I took horse riding lessons in Norco for a few years, but when I grew up I had spent so long away from a horse that the next time I met one, I sorta pussied out got too scared and the merit badge instructor told me to go back to camp. Overcame that fear of animals and did horse riding during my later years there.
I remember going to the outhouse in the middle of the night. While inside, I heard deep growling noises and stomping towards the outhouse. I was terrified and thought a bear was coming out. I flipped out my little pocket knife thinking that would save me. The mystery bear stomped onto the concrete platform of the outhouse... and then it turned out to be just an older scout from my troop pulling a prank on me. "FOOLED YOU!" I felt so embarrassed.
I think on Thursday, they had an ice challenge, where you're supposed to wake up at like 4 or 5 AM in the morning (before it's light out) and go down to the swimming pool. You jump into a barrel of icy cold water for a minute or two, and then you jump into the pull and do a mile swim. (Or were those two separate activities?). If you complete it, you get a patch. Never did it myself, kinda wish I did.
We had a lot of fun at night, collecting logs and building our little forts to play hide & seek and other games at night with lasers and flashlights, before inevitably one of the old no-fun-allowed adults came out to tell us to go to bed. Also playing poker and chess inside tents.
Camp Tahquitz had an organization called "Tribe", which is viewed by the other Troops as a prestige honor organization for older or more accomplished scouts and had some sort of pseudo-authority at the camp. They got a special green uniform the rest of us beige boyscouts didn't get to wear. They also got to put on a show for the other Troops where they dressed up in feathery costumes and did native american dances. The first time I went to camp, I was enraptured by the apparent "coolness" of the whole thing... and was then disappointed when our Scoutmaster said "no, none of you are allowed to join Tribe". We were a Christian troop. When I grew older I began to understand that it was pagan worship and fake prestige.
On the morning of the last day of camp, after we had ate breakfast, our Scoutmaster would do a mini Church service reading from the Bible, and then we would pack up, clean up the campsite, and leave. And stop by a restaurant on the way home.
