NEBRASKA CITY – A group from the Bald Eagle Boys Camp is journeying down the Missouri River on a raft designed and constructed at their base in Mill Hall, Penn., and with a reliance on each other.

Bradley Wagner is among 10 boys on the camp’s farthest journey west and said it’s all unexplored territory for them.

The raft design benefits from what the camp learned from trips on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers over the past 20 years.

 

Wagner: “We first built it back out at camp and then once we liked it we decided to test it out up on a river, so we reconstructed just the platform. Once we liked it we shipped it out here to Gavins Point Dam and then we reconstructed it.”

The crew cooks breakfast each morning on the Eagles Nest, which is similar in size to the historic keelboat used by Lewis and Clark. Each evening, they set up 12 personal tents on shore. Their days are filled with gathering supplies, wood craft, guitar lessons and especially looking out for river obstructions.

 

15-year-old Dre Cruz says it turns out that it’s really hard to push through a sandbar.

Cruz: “It’s really hard because you have to push a lot of sandbars in some parts of the river, like we had to have 12 guys pushing one sandbar back by Sioux City, I’m pretty sure. We got stuck because we kind of went the wrong way, but pushed through that. I like it. It’s a lot of fun.”

 

 

The camp was founded in 1990 by a group of Mennonite businessmen for boys ages nine to 16 who come from troubled homes.

Nate Kauffman, who is one of two counselors the boys call camp chiefs, credits God and the wildnerness-camping model for the change in the boys after a stay of 18 months to two years.

https://baldeagleboyscamp.org/about/#our-story