Girl Scout Camp Fall 2008

Last weekend, Teresa and I went camping with her new Junior Girl Scout troop. Apparently, the service unit "won" the camping lottery. Not only did they receive a chance to reserve the camp, they won the FIRST weekend available...the last weekend in October. Not my first choice.

It all has to do with being cold. But that's because I'm Hawaiian, remember?

The leader and I decided the girls only needed to stay out ONE night, not two. Good choice. Friday night last weekend got down in to the 30's!!

We met at 0630 and piled the girls in to 2 vehicles. I was shocked that I could actually get all the gear and still close the hatch to my van! When we arrived at camp, I bet it was still in the 40's. The girls were pretty cold. Tough. Go put on some gloves. I'm such a NICE leader.

Our weekend mostly consisted of hiking and eating...two of my favorite things! The girls were supposed to participate in archery and a climbing wall, but those two activities fell through at the last minute. The girls were VERY disappointed. That's fine. They had fun any way. We ended up making 4 fires in 24 hours. What's not fun about that?

Here is Teresa hiking with a couple of her friends. Out front, of course. And singing "The Bear Song." Another shocker...

One activity we did at camp was hold our Investiture/Rededication. This is a ceremony that welcomes new Scouts and welcomes back returning Scouts. In Brownies, we did a ceremony with looking in to a pond. But that's Brownies. This is Juniors. We went through the ceremony planning guide in the book, the girls decided what was important for the ceremony and we held it right there. The Brownies who were sharing our camping space happened to be there, so we invited them to stay. They started by giving each other the Girl Scout handshake. Then they all recited the Girl Scout Promise. Then we sang some songs. (You knew that was coming, didn't you.) It was perfect for Juniors.

At camp, we had to cook all our own food. One cool thing about this camp is that the cooking areas for each camp site were extensive. There was a fire pit with logs for sitting, a covered area with a covered cooking area (grill or stone outdoor fireplace with a chimney), picnic tables, prep tables and a locker. The locker had buckets for the cleaning waters, 2 dutch ovens (the real kind...cast iron with lids!), 3 or 4 cast iron skillets and 6 pie irons! Pie Irons are my new favorite way to cook outdoors! We ended up cooking our hotdogs in them. They came out PERFECTLY!! And, we also made apple pies!

Pie Iron Apple Pies

Butter 2 pieces of cinnamon swirl bread. Place in pie iron with apple pie filling in the middle. Cook in fire until toasted.

YUM-O!!!

This might be a good time to mention my FAVORITE part. I was the song leader for campfire! (again, shocking!) We sang every song I love, except the canoe song, but we sang it earlier in the day. It was a blast! Terry H, we even sang the "Jelly Bean" song and the nursery rhyme song we learned in May. They LOVED them!!

We slept in three sided log cabin "perma-tents." As you can see, they had a cute front porch with a canvas front. Each tent had 4-6 iron cots with mattresses. In mine, we lined up the 5 cots side by side. There was no room for anything else. It was like one big bed. It wasn't cold at all, hardly...

It was fun. I'm glad we only stayed for one night...for more than one reason...

Terry H and Teresa L...I MISS YOU!!!!