Hula hoops among activities at weekend Kampout at Camp Miakonda

Maura McCarty, 7, practices archery during the third annual Dad and Kids Kampout at Camp Miakonda in Toledo, Ohio, on Saturday. THE BLADE/ZACK CONKLE Enlarge | Buy This Photo

Hoo boy, what a lot of hoopla as dads did the hula hoop.

During the third annual Dads and Kids Kampout at Camp Miakonda, a hula hoop contest for fathers was just one of the popular, crowd-pleasing activities.

Activities got underway Friday, continue today , and end on Sunday. The cost was $40 per family with all meals are included.

Photo gallery: Dad and Kids Kampout at Camp Miakonda

Bonita Jemison, Scout Reach district executive, said the day before the Kampout started that activities would include horseshoes, ultimate Frisbee, movies, campfires, and the hula hoop contest. Participants were to spend time casting with fishing lines; taking aim with BB guns at the firing range, and testing their skills on an obstacle course, she said.

Located on former farm fields along Sylvania Avenue in Sylvania Township, Camp Miakonda is Ohio’s oldest Boy Scout camp and the sixth-oldest in the United States.

Camp Miakonda was purchased and built in 1917; Miakonda means “crescent moon.”

The camp originally had 78 acres of land and its first building, erected in 1917, still exists. The camp from the late 1930s through the early 1950s is considered by some to have been the greatest Boy Scout camp in the country during that period.

Its facilities were legendary, including the world’s longest swimming pool. The pool, 480 feet long, was spring fed, built in a ravine, and held more than 1 million gallons of water, according to the camp’s Web site. The camp also had a tree house campsite, featuring eight treehouses with built-in bunks 32 feet in midair; staircases went to the top of each one. The camp flagpole during those premier years was the main mast off a Great Lakes freighter. There was a crows nest halfway up where a camper sounded a bugle to open and close each camp day.

The eight-sided Council Lodge building, designed to feature campfires inside of it, remains a Camp Miakonda centerpiece.