We took our Girl Scouts on our very first Camping trip.... To Livingston...
I remember being confused when a co-worker told me his family was going to camp in Ripon. My family has always gone camping in the mountains. It's hard to imagine going on a camping trip here in the valley. It's seems the same as camping in the back yard.
I suppose you can camp anywhere..and camping in Livingston turned out to be a good time. It was also very close to home. It took 20 minutes to drive there. It was at McConnell State Park. It was the first time I've ever been there. It's supposed to be popular with fisher people. It's on the river. There are huge oak trees, which means shade(a very good thing in the valley in summer)
I think there were 4 other girl scout troops camping with us. We each had separate tent/eating areas, but we did activities together and campfire. We set up 2 tents for the girls. The three leaders are my Mom, sister-in-law and myself. I had my own tent and my Mom and Faith shared a tent. We cooked with my backpacker stove(William and I bought for our backpacking trip to half-dome)...Mom brought a camp stove, but it caught fire and when the main leader came over she said mom caught fire with the same stove before...so we used my back up stove, and it worked out fine. The girls even roasted marshmallows with it.
Day 2 we started with a flag ceremony. The programs were already planned for the day. The girls learned about nature to earn a patch. They held and studied earthworms and made a bird box. One of the littlest girls twirled an earth worm around her finger and said, "look mom - a ring", then they all did it...
It was soooooo hard to get the girls to stop talking and go to sleep. There were so many mosquitos too. We were spraying repellent constantly and some girls still got bites. My niece is allergic and went home with an extremely swollen face.
We are supposed to be going back to the same place next year. I might bring a few tiki torches with the citronella to keep the bugs away.
