Touch a Truck Kickoff Event

Getting the Morning Started with a Hike

A few isolated morning showers peppered the Roswell/Alpharetta corridor this morning and delayed many scouting families from the 9:30AM meet-up and hike.  Pack 285 was pleasantly surprised however to be joined briefly by Amana Academy's Executive Director, Ehab Jaleel. It's always a pleasure to have Amana Academy leadership surprise us with a quick visit.  GO EAGLES!

While the group started off small, late arriving families were able to catch up 

to us at the main event: Touch A Truck!

If you are new to the City of Alpharetta's Touch a Truck, then here's a quick photo primer:

Every imaginable fire/police/rescue vehicle from bicycle patrol to armored SWAT to disaster response vehicles are available for children of all ages to explore.  Staff are onsite to educate interested viewers in the finer details of these very expensive and very special vehicles.

Arriving early offers a special highlight: the landing of the Medivac helicopter.  The helicopter really does stir up the sand on the ball field and blow your hair just like on television.  Those of us wearing glasses fared a lot better than those without!  Because the life flight unit can - and has - been called into service midway through the event, we are always careful to get in the tour as soon as it arrives.  In the first image below, the helicopter has just arrived and our scouts are already in line!

  Because a child once turned the motor on - but not the rotors - visitors are no longer able to sit inside the helicopter.  This at least was the story told to our scouts be their guide!  It never fails to impress our scouts as they see just how tight a spot the paramedics are working in while under flight.

Just about any other vehicle you could imagine is to be found at Touch a Truck: cement mixers, cranes (sporting tire swings!), limos, the MegaBus, row boats, antique cars and trucks, motorcycles, a TANK, the Furbus, 18 wheelers, the Game Truck, and oh so much more!

This year one of the most popular trucks (and there were several very sought after vehicles) was the semi from Coke. Inside the famous red trailer were coolers stocked with ice cold juices!!  To access these delicious COLD drinks, however, visitors needed to ride on the automated ramp.  Squeezing everyone safely on and having parents available to hold little hands was a big help.

The ramp then slowly went up and up!  To leave the truck everyone needed to go back to the ramp and as a unit make the slow decent downward.  While incredibly popular it was also ironic that the Coke truck had no bottled water for it's own driver/operator.  Never fear! PACK 285 IS HERE!  Like the good scouts that we are...our boys offered the operator ice cold water from the cooler which we wisely wheeled around with our group.  Scouts are helpful. Scouts are prepared.

There were some really fun novelty vehicles as well.  The hot dog food cart shaped like a hot dog? Check. The roller skate four wheeler? Check.  Plus a host of other food trucks which we took the liberty of visiting more than once.

If you asked the scouts what their favorite was today, there would have been a tie between the game truck, the tank, the Coke truck and the Megabus.  The adults, however, all agreed that the best vehicles were the air conditioned ones that we drove home after a very hot, very noisy, very fun time.