Our girl scout troop went camping two week ends ago and I thought I would post a couple of pics.  We went on a really cool hike with Ranger Josh.  He was supposed to lead a bunch of back packers on a loooong hike, but only a few showed up and they were just there to cancel (something about a thunderstorm with lots of lightening being a possibility--go figure!)  Anyway, we showed up for the "casual hikers may join us for the first leg of our hike" part of the hike and so we had Ranger Josh all to ourselves. 

He took us on a two mile back country hike and we learned a ton of stuff.  The first thing he showed us was his stacked debris hut.  Apparently he spent a great deal of last winter LIVING in it.  He let the kids and any willing adults crawl into it to check out the inside.  Apparently it is much more spacious than it looks!

We then proceeded on with the hike with a couple of other interesting "side trips" to a boreal bog where he tried to instruct us on "feeling" how old prints of animals were and to a couple of mountain seeps which were extremely cool.  He also told stories about clearing different areas of Chinese privet and then returning a few seasons later to see some return of native species.  He made us all want to charge off to the nearest privet-filled body of water and rip the stuff right out of the ground.  Of course, none of us know what privet actually looks like, so I don't know how effective we would really be. 

Later that afternoon we took the girls on a hike to see the waterfalls and on the way back we picked up trash.  As this was our second trip to Cloudland Canyon, the girls were very excited to see familiar land marks.  Here is a picture of the girls standing under the big nose.  This is just a really large rock overhang that looks like a huge nose as you are approaching it. 

All in all it was a very fun weekend!