UPDATE: THIS IS AN OLD POST THAT I’M NOW FINISHING WOW TIME FLIES It came time to pick a new badge, and a couple of things happened. I got a new job, which prevented me from being able to do much work on my Folk Dancing badge and some of my others. Also, folk dancing […]
A few months back, I plucked the Pioneer Badge from the Hat O’ Scouty Joy, which gave me incentive to plan a multi-day backpacking trip with some fellow Wilderness Travel Course grads. In several weeks of planning, plus three days and two nights on the trail in the Sequoia National Park backcountry, I knocked out all ten of my requirements! […]
Did you know that a Joshua Tree is not a tree at all? Turns out it’s an angiosperm (that’s “flowering plant” for the fancy-word-averse) that belongs to the yucca family, so considering this was the first “tree” I considered when starting to work on the Tree badge so long ago, I was about two seconds into the […]
My friend Christy used to live in Monrovia, a quaint foothill community about twenty traffic-free or sixty traffic-full minutes east of Los Angeles (yes, in my land we measure distance in time, not miles). The reason I bring this up is that every year on Mother’s Day, the Monrovia Historic Preservation Group hosts a home tour. During her first year […]
Dearest blog readers, friends, family – I do apologize for the lack of verbiage lately, but it seems that working on the Explorer, Trees, Winter Sports, and Pioneer badges requires me to actually be outside doing stuff, rather than inside hunched over a warm laptop. In fact, I’ve been so busy doing stuff that I just wrapped up […]
Let’s be real – this winter, most of the United States has been absolutely hammered with foul, freezing weather while here in California, we shuffle around in our flip-flops, drinking margaritas and throwing frisbees. Sorry but not sorry, rest of the country. However, this warm, droughty situation also means that it’s been nearly impossible for […]
Have you ever been to a fish hatchery? I had heard the words before, and knew these things existed, but had no idea how or why. For my Conservation Badge, one of the requirements was to visit a fish hatchery and to learn what your state and Federal government do to protect and increase fish […]
Trip: Faux Backpacking in Joshua Tree Mileage: 6.0 // Time: 5 hours with lots of driving and breaks Hiking Party: Shawnté and The Pilgrim At the end of a long week, there’s nothing I love more than throwing an unnecessarily heavy pack over my shoulders and hustling my buns off to the desert. This may sound […]
Welcome to a brand new feature on Year Of The Scout that you may come to know as Shawnté’s Ridiculous Trip Reports Written In Pursuit Of Earning The Explorer Badge: #1. Go on five all-day exploration trips under proper leadership, using three or more different types of transportation. #7. Help keep a log of at […]
In pursuit of the ever-elusive Winter Sports badge, I went ice skating today at the imposingly named Valencia Ice Station with my high school bestie / ice princess extraordinaire Christy and her adorable 5-year-old Oliver. Would you like to know my favorite part of ice skating today? When we stopped ice skating. An ice rink […]
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