May 27th, 2023

Since this time I wanted to get a Cooking merit badge requirement that has to do with trail cooking, the night before the hike I got a lot of trail food ready. Since it has been getting warmer, I didn’t have to wear as many layers or pack as much as the last two times. Also, this time the Wilsons unfortunately weren’t going to hike with us this time. We left at 7:00, and got there around 7:30. We started the hike at the Fullerton Woods parking lot at 7:40, and soon we were singing “one hundred bottles of beer on the wall” loudly. It was about 70 degrees and sunny, and a nice day. When we got to Schiller Woods South, we ate our nutella/peanut butter tortillas. The first section of the hike took longer than we had planned, which made Cora a little nervous, because she had homework she wanted to do that afternoon. We were next to the road, so we passed under a couple of bridges, all covered in graffiti on the inside. Under one of them, mom found a bouquet of flowers right next to the river that were actually pretty nice, so she decided to bring it home. I remembered that we still hadn’t brought out the snacks for the Cooking Merit Badge, so I brought that up. But then we agreed that we’d bring them out gradually. The hike didn’t go perfectly smoothly, though. Several times, Cora and Lydia got too far ahead, and had to pause for us to catch up, a factor of the hike going slower than we hoped, making Cora more and more stressed about her homework assignments. So when mom heard this, she decided that Cora, Lydia and I could walk ahead and not be slowed down by her and David, and we could walk all the way to the Fullerton Woods parking lot, the parking lot that we left the car at, and Cora could get some homework done on her computer while they caught up. This is when I put on the big backpack with all of the cooking gear and the four of us continued the hike, but mom drove to Sunset Meadow Bridge so that she didn’t have to hike the whole 10 miles. At the stop I made lunch using the backpacking stove. Joshua, Aaron and Elise arrived in time to eat with us, but they mostly wanted the trail snacks. We talked, then packed up our bags and cleaned the bowls and left for the last mile of the hike (they didn’t know they weren’t doing the full ten) with them. We finished up most of the trail snacks, but I forgot to get out the seaweed. We were done hiking at 1:15.

If you want to see how I mapped the route, my Merit Badge Counselor showed me this link that’s very helpful.

https://onthegomap.com/#/create

March 5th, 2023

I woke up at 6:10 and got ready. I packed everything that I packed last time, plus church clothes, steak strips, two fruit bars, a new trail mix, sandwiches, and two tangerines (I learned last time to bring more food). but this time we decided to hike separately (Kochs and Wilsons) from our houses, and meet up to go to church. We left ten minutes later then we planned at 6:55, and about three quarters of a mile in my mom realized that my boots were falling apart. So she texted Brittany (who was still asleep in bed) to call her when she woke up, and we continued hiking. A few minutes later, Brittany called, mom explained the situation, and asked Brittany to go to my room, get Joshua’s shoes, and drive over to a specific street to switch them out (which really wasn’t a great way to start the day). When we got there, Brittany hadn’t come yet, so we let David, Lydia and Cora go ahead to our meeting place with the Wilsons in Humboldt Park (it wasn’t very far away), while me and mom stayed behind to wait. Eventually Brittany arrived, we switched the boots, and she drove away. We hiked the rest of the way to where the Wilsons were waiting, and we continued. It was forty degrees Fahrenheit, and sunny. We actually passed by the Paynes (in their car) on the way to church. We got there at 9:00, changed into church clothes, and ate a couple of snacks and a scone from the cafe. After the service, there were extra snacks for the “snack and chat”, and we ate our lunch, and got ready to go. On the way to the Wilsons’ house, we passed by a lot of places that had lots of memories for Mrs. Wilson to talk about. We passed by the Lincoln Park Zoo, and took a short break at Oz Park. Mrs. Wilson realized that we’ve been going from park to park (Humboldt Park, Park Community Church, Lincoln Park, Oz Park. We also walked past Holstein Park). When we got to their house at 2:30, dad was waiting for us Kochs, and we drove home. It took a total of 4 hours of actual hiking.

(The red path is the one we first planned to take, and the blue path is the one we took)

February 20th, 2023

I got up at 7:30 and started getting ready to go. The night before I had made trail mix out of granola, dried goji berries, craisins, and dried coconut strips. We each had two snack bags of it to eat during the hike. I had to put those, a knife, water, a hat, and gloves in my bag (It already held my emergency kit). The Wilsons came, and we left soon after. While we were driving, Luke said he wanted to see the waterfall. We discussed this, and then Lina said that she wanted it to be at the beginning, not the end, because people would be tired toward the end, and wouldn’t want to do an extra loop. So then Cora decided that we could just go in the other direction, so that it would be only a third of the way through, because that would be better. That’s when Abby realized that there was a parking lot right next to the waterfall, and we could start there, and everyone agreed with that. We parked at the new parking lot, got out, stretched, and waited for Mrs. Wilson. Then we started the hike at 9:30. We went to the waterfall and back in the first half mile, and then we just followed the main trail for the rest of the hike. Soon after, we saw the waterfall again from higher up. I finished my first bag of trail mix in the first quarter of the hike, which wasn’t a good sign. David was in charge of the compass and map, so whenever we saw a marker that showed how far we had gone or an intersection, we would take a short break and David would check his map to see where we were. It was in the 40s and sunny, I felt good about the amount of layers I wore. Our first long stop was at a bench early on in the hike, and we ate some food. Then we continued our hike. We decided to eat lunch at the parking lot that we had originally planned to start at, and then there would only be 2.5 miles left. At some point we (the Koch kids) realized that none of us had brought lunch other than trail mix, and it turned out that mom had brought cheese sticks and salami. We should have brought more food, but we didn’t think about that. So when we got to the parking lot, the Wilsons shared their lunches, and it was fine. But we learned a lesson for future hikes: make sure to bring enough food! So lunch was from 12:30 to 1:00, and we were tired toward the end of the hike, but we were able to finish the hike by 2:15. Then we debriefed on the hike and decided that next time we’d bring more food, bring less water, talk more about planning stops and making sure we’re going at a good speed for everybody.

Caleb is a Star Scout in Troop 1. As part of his path to Eagle Scout he is currently working on several Eagle Required Merit Badges. For Communication Merit Badge, he has chosen to create a blog on our website. He will post his Hike Reports here after each Hike undertaken to earn the Hiking Merit Badge. There will be four 10-mile Hikes and one 20-mile Hike.