Trailblazers – The Second Year

Well, another year has passed, and we’re about to hit summer now. Last summer was a weird one. I was in a boot for a few weeks due to wearing shoes that didn’t have enough support at the beach which caused me to eventually develop a Morton’s Neuroma or something along those lines. It still bothers me from time to time, but I just ignore it and move on. It was also the Summer of *NSYNC. What will this summer bring?

Anyway, I just wanted to pull together a recap of the second year of our Trailblazer troop. It was a very different experience than our first year, so we’re still finding our way. So how was it different? 

In our first year, due to covid, girls didn’t have anything else going on. Band competitions were cancelled and weekend sports tournaments weren’t being held. So because of that, our participation numbers were through the roof, and in fact, we had to limit numbers due to covid guidelines. We wondered at times if our success was due to the troop itself or due to the lack of other things going on. Would our second year would be more indicative of what “normal” would look like?

And that was the case. Our area of the country went back to normal for the most part, so participation was way down compared to last year due to school commitments and sports. I’d say we had about half the number for trips and maybe a third of the number we had for activities compared to our first year. I would estimate a little over half of the girls who joined our troop didn’t take part in anything at all. I’m actually not surprised by that. I have a feeling there are some who think the idea of our troop sounds fun at first glance, but when it comes down to it, they don’t actually follow through for a variety of reasons. I think busy schedules have a lot to do with it.

This year was more of a struggle for me personally. Due to everybody’s schedule going back to a state of craziness (mine included), it was harder to get us leaders all on the same page at times. We all have our own regular troops in addition to serving as Trailblazer leaders (plus other family commitments), and trying to coordinate dates is a struggle. Plus one of our co-leaders moved to Germany mid-year, and her leaving was a big loss. We will miss her very much.

I personally struggled at times as well. At the beginning of the summer, I was on track to staying in shape. But the foot injury put me behind. Then when I healed (kinda) and was getting back to consistently being active, I came down with covid in early October. I had a mild case, but it was still another setback.

For our first year, I came up with an intricate spreadsheet to track girls’ progress in the troop. But by the end of the year, I realized that the way current badges are laid out just don’t work for our troop’s structure. We don’t have the consistency of attendance to be able to pull it off. The fact that we have three different levels in our troop doesn’t lend itself to badges very well either. I realized that the previous IPA programming where Cadettes on up could all earn the same badges would have been a much better system for us. I plan on going rogue and offering the outdoor-related (and skills based) retired IPAs at specific activities. That’s the plan, at least.

When it came to the fancy spreadsheet, I abandoned it completely. It was much too tedious to try to track miles, piecemeal badge requirements, and all of the other things related to our patch programs. Admittedly, I grew a little unmotivated early on and didn’t even get all of my paperwork organized until the second half of the year which is very unlike me. I ended up finally creating a simple spreadsheet of names and kept attendance along with fulfilled requirements toward the Trailblazer pin. We still use the Hiking Log patch program extensively – especially this past year because we led more hikes plus the backpacking trip counted toward miles. But girls are expected to not lose their logs since we aren’t tracking miles for them anymore, so we go by strictly what’s in the log itself.

Was it a successful year? Yes, although I felt like it was unorganized for some of the reasons I list above. We didn’t plan as many activities and took a month off here and there due to low participation numbers. We did find that the most popular activities were camping and backpacking, and we will plan for the future accordingly. Here’s a recap of our two most popular trips:

We went camping in late November at Congaree National Park, and I was pleasantly surprised at how many signed up (eleven) considering it was COLD and the weekend before Thanksgiving. If you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog, you’ll remember that Congaree National Park is home to the synchronous fireflies, and I took our regular troop there a few years ago to see them on an easy backpacking trip.  This past November’s trip was a lot of fun even without the fireflies, and I enjoyed every second, except when my foot pain flared up again. But ibuprofen and wrapping helped. And when a baby in one of the campsites woke us all up screaming and shrieking about 3am and kept going for a solid twenty minutes. It sounded like she woke up from a nightmare and nobody ever tried to comfort her. But other than that, we had a great time hiking nine miles all throughout the park, learning about trees, going on an owl prowl that night, reviewing orienteering, gathering around a campfire (with s’mores, of course!), and partaking in a delicious dutch oven breakfast casserole!

The Mosquito Meter this time around was very different compared to May of 2019!

Our recent backpacking trip in April in the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area was a blast, but if I told you all of the personal fails that I had, you’d think I had a miserable time. Like the camping trip, I was again surprised at the number of girls who signed up (also eleven). Three of them had never been backpacking before so I led a training a couple of weeks prior. But two of my co-leaders may never allow me to plan a backpacking trip again. I swear I double-checked AllTrails.com and the six mile route on part of the Naturaland Trust Trail to the campsite showed that the trail had a steady decline. Nope. Not even close. We three leaders struggled mightily (especially me it seemed since I’m not very good at pacing myself), but the girls had no issues. All that aside, it was a gorgeous trail with beautiful views, and we couldn’t complain about the weather. It was a little chilly that evening, but nothing we hadn’t dealt with before. We camped at the picturesque “Girl Scout Camp” site on the Asbury Hills Camp property and then hiked a much easier two miles Sunday morning to the pickup spot. We would like to stay at this campsite again – but coming from a different and less strenuous way!

Next year I hope to be more motivated and organized. I recruited another leader, and we plan on doing more in the way of skill building. Also, we hope to have at least two camping and two backpacking trips plus offer a Wilderness First Aid class. This past year didn’t go exactly as originally planned, but it was a learning experience that we’ll build on for the future.