First Camping Trip – Day Two
Experiences as a Leader, Hikes & Outdoors No Comments 
camp mary elizabeth, camping, fail, outdoors, squirrel, stories, success, tina, troop 2562
Here’s Day One.
It takes me forever to go to bed. I have a hard time normally getting to sleep anyway, but so many notes to self are swirling through my head, and I am thinking ahead about how we will handle breakfast in the morning. I finally drift off to sleep (I think) when the first Brownie comes to the flap. ::scratch scratch scratch:: Co-pilot Beth opens the tent flap, and the girl who ate all of the Fritos complains about her legs hurting. Co-pilot Beth tells her to rub them, and if that doesn’t help, she’ll give her some kids’ Tylenol to help (yes, we have the parental permission for this). Continue reading
So hey, what’s on my reading list you ask? Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, 11th edition. Woo weee! Side note: I’m also reading Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut, but that’s a different topic and has nothing to do with Girl Scouts. I guess. I’m serving as a service unit delegate in my council, and while reading through our by-laws and the Girl Scout constitution, I realized that I really had no idea how an official meeting is run and what all of the terms truly mean. Sure, you kind of act like you do if you have a casual meeting with any organization, but who knows this stuff? And who trudges through 716 pages of parliamentary procedure? Apparently I do. At this point, I’m about halfway through, and the meeting is tomorrow. I shoulda gotten the condensed or the Parliamentary Rules for Dummies version. Oh well. But I did find some online basics that I can at least print out. I’ve read enough to hopefully have a better understanding than I did before. Plus, we are supposed to have training in the morning for us newbies, so maybe I’m just being an overachiever. 
For dinner on our camping trip, the girls picked Tacos in a Bag. It was a big hit, and it’s perfect for a young troop because there’s really not much cooking other than the ground beef. You could even cook the meat ahead of time and just warm it up over either a fire or a propane stove. 
So after finally gathering up the courage and waiting for my girls to get old enough, we took our 2nd year Brownies (and one junior) on a “dress rehearsal” camping trip this past weekend to Camp Mary Elizabeth. I call it a dress rehearsal, because not only was it most of the girls’ first time camping, it was also my first time planning one. I’ve been on many a camping trip in my life, but I never planned one before. I took Sleep Out training three years ago and a refresher course at last year’s Mountain Magic, so I was pretty excited and nervous at the same time. But if things just absolutely fall apart, we have CME’s lodge as a backup.