Backpacking Here and Now
Experiences as a Leader, Hikes & Outdoors 3 Comments 
backpacking, cadettes, camping, hiking, outdoors, troop 2562, waterfalls
Back during my Troop 20 days, I was lucky enough to visit National Center West as part of a three week cross country trip that my troop took in 1987. Because of that experience, one of my goals as a leader was to take my troop backpacking at some point. I worked toward that goal and was lucky enough to join forces with a co-leader who was also willing and able. At times she claims she’s not able because she’s over 50, but I just wave my hand and say, “Nonsense! We can do this! You’re only as old as you feel!” The next day after some draining activity, I’m lying in bed feeling pretty old. Don’t tell her this. Anyway, here’s the write-up about last year’s first backpacking trip that I kept promising was coming “soon.”
When our girls moved up to Cadettes, Cheryl and I both vowed to take them backpacking by their second year, and so we started prepping early on for it. We spoke with a friend of mine named Cathy, a former backpacking trainer for our council, and asked what she suggested for a first time backpacking trip. She told us about a trail in the beautiful Mountain Bridge Wilderness which happens to be one of my favorite places to hike. It’s located about an hour from us in the Upstate of South Carolina, and it’s home to two state parks – Caesar’s Head and Jones Gap. The trail we’d be hiking is called the Jones Gap Trail which is a one-way hike between 276 and Jones Gap State Park:
This is a reformat of the Cadette Think Like an Engineer Journey that’s found in the Volunteer Toolkit. Compared to the six PDFs from VTK totaling 135 pages, the reformat is 56 pages. So it’s still lengthy, but at least this will save you some paper. Nothing has been modified, except that the word “SAY” has been replaced with “Suggested conversation,” and I took out some extra spacing that I didn’t think was necessary. This reformat includes all of the handouts with the exception of the Cadette Take Action PDF, which I’ve also linked directly from the GSUSA website. Please note that I do not claim this as my own invention. Basically all I did was reformat this Journey to make it easier to read and also to keep your printer from melting down if you need to print it out (like I do). 
In case you’re not up to speed and have no idea what I’m talking about, about two years ago, the Farthest North council out of Fairbanks, Alaska, 
Last June, I wrote a post called 
I finally got around to finishing the Junior Think Like A … Journey Trilogy series by completing the Junior Think Like an Engineer Journey. Like the others, I took the set of 6 sessions from Volunteer Toolkit and slimmed it down by reformatting and removing any duplicate material. You can also find the original set from the 
The series of Highlander movies features a famous line: “There can be only one.” I’ve personally never seen any of the Highlander movies because I’ve heard they involve heads getting chopped off, and I’m not one for gore. It makes me queasy. But moving on from decapitation – put on your reading glasses, because this is a long one! And it involves discussion about national governance, so go get some coffee, too! You also might need to whip out your copy of the Blue Book of Basic Documents, since I know you all carry one around in your back pocket. You never know when there might be a governance emergency!