Scouting, Volume 70, Number 4, September 1982 Page: E5
82, E1-E24, [16] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The theme of the Knoxville fair is
Energy Turns the World.'Post 831 discovered
it takes a lot of energy and strategic
planning to see the most popular exhibits.
ingenious members of Post 831. The
general interest post from the Down-
river District of the Detroit Area
Council does a lot of traveling and
takes one really big trip every year.
Most of the members have been
together ever since Boy Scout days
and have learned the value of plan-
ning their outings well.
They had heard from friends that
the fair could be a super-expensive
place, where a visitor could spend
hundreds of dollars a day without
even trying, and this is all too true.
Everything at the fair—from trinkets
and T-shirts to food and fine
art—reflects the kind of inflation that
is a worldwide phenomenon. But Post
831 had a few tricks of its own to fight
the high cost of everything.
They pared down their lodging ex-
penses by pitching tents at Camp
Pellissippi, a BSA facility just 20 miles
from the fairgrounds. Reservations
were made well in advance through
the Great Smoky Mountain Council.
"It's really rustic," said Mike Me-
tric, "but it sure beats paying $100 or
more a night to stay in a motel."
The Explorers also brought most
of their own food, making breakfast
each morning at the campsite. The
first day, they lunched on bologna
sandwiches at their parked car sever-
al blocks from the fair. The second
day, they set up stoves in the parking
lot and cooked chili for supper.
The round-trip drive from Mich-
igan to Tennessee took 18 hours, but
the total transportation cost for each
member was just $10—a tiny fraction
of what it would have cost to travel by
plane, train, or bus.
"All told," said Johnson, "we made
the trip for right at $42 per person,
not counting spending money for
souvenirs."
One stroke of luck that helped hold
expenses down was finding some
scarce two-day fair passes for $16
apiece. Regular one-day passes are
$10 each. "We also steered pretty
clear of the carnival rides, since most
of the guys had already done most of
that somewhere else," says Johnson.
Instead, they concentrated on the
wide variety of enlightening and en-
tertaining features in the pavilions.
At the Japanese pavilion, they were
treated to a thrilling "ride" via state-
of-the-art video, complete with seat
belts and a moving floor.
"Why do we need seat belts?"
wondered 15-year-old David Mitchell
as he strapped himself in. But he
didn't have to wait long for the
answer as the oval-shaped, domed
theatre came to life, giving the viewer
the illusion of being aboard one of the
world's fastest trains.
At the Hungarian pavilion, the
group encountered a huge model of
the multicolored Rubik's Cube, and at
the Egyptian display, they saw ar-
tifacts that spanned the ages from the
ancient pharoahs to modern times.
They saw the vast array of exhibits in
the five-story U.S. pavilion, illustrat-
ing every facet of the fair's theme:
"Energy Turns the World." They
watched a spectacular laser light
show and tasted milk that never
needs refrigeration. In short, they did
a little bit of everything in a smorgas-
bord of technological, scientific, cul-
tural, and artistic attractions. They
would have had to travel thousands of
miles and touch down on practically
every continent on earth to sample all
that the fair had to offer.
As 16-year-old John Herman put it
at the end of their two-day trip
"around the world": "If you can't
have fun here, yoif can't have fun!" H
In the Mexican exhibit,
top, the Explorers take a
look at an Aztec Indian
stone carving. Above, a
tunnel of mirrors leads to
the entrance of the
Sunsphere.
E5
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 70, Number 4, September 1982, periodical, September 1982; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353590/m1/55/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.