Camping with the Brownies

Well, this past weekend, I accompanied Alice's Brownie troop on a weekend camping trip. It was about 1 1/2 hours from here and we drove there in pouring rain Friday evening. We went to a Girl Scout place that also had a horse facility. We figured, great! Um, yeah... The site we were assigned to (16 8 year old girls, 5 adults) looked like it hadn't been used in years. We got the only site on the place without flush toilets, which ok, outhouses are no biggie...this is camping after all. But the electricity for the stall was out and there were huge cobwebs in the hole. So everyone had to buddy up and hold the stall door open for the other person so they could see. The stalls on the other side of this outhouse had walls of spiderwebs, so we didn't even try to use them. Our shelter, which had a little kitchen area and showers, also had sinks covered with little dead bugs and there was a frog and spider living in the shower. So we adults decided that we'd prefer to remain stinky and grimy for the weekend instead. You can call me a city girl if you like...I don't bathe with wildlife of any kind!

I can tell you that we left the campsite in far better condition than it was left to us, and the leaders wrote up a several paragraphs long, 2 page letter of comments for the site caretakers. We slept in platform tents that had wooden bed frames and mattresses to put our sleeping bags on, which were fine. They kept the rain out and we weren't on the ground in the mud. The girls were all troopers about using the "hole" for doing their business. About the only plus to that outhouse is that it didn't reek like so many outhouses do. Other than that....

The highlight of the weekend was the horses. The girls got to groom and ride horses on the trails. Since they were Brownie level, there was an adult to lead every horse on the trail. I got to lead the horse Alice was riding on. She had an all white one named Merlin, who was a little spunky and didn't like to stay still, but he didn't spook Alice. I soon discovered that I had limited choices on the trail in many places...hmmm, so I step in the mud or do I step in the horse doody? The ground was messy in a lot of places from the rain. Other horses were different shades of brown and one had black & white coloring like a cow. And speaking of the bovine colored horse...now, I generally don't make a point of checking out animal anatomy because I simply don't care, but here was a you can't miss it even if you're not looking! Good night, I now understand the origins of the expression "hung like a horse". I was glad I did not have my camera with me.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend in spite of the rain and the bugs and mud. I am glad to be back home with a real shower and bed, a bug-free kitchen and football on the tv. The troop leaders took a lot of photos, so if I can get them to email me ones that had Alice in them, I'll be able to add some to this post later.