Girl Scout camping without girls

This weekend was the first ever Peninsula Girl Scout leader retreat. I'm not 100% sure what I want to say about this past weekend other than the very non descriptive:  It was AWESOME!!! We had representatives from all over the peninsula including vampire/werewolf country:  Forks, WA. I'm thinking I need to make a dig to the SU's from Bremerton and Poulsbo because they missed out on a fabulous weekend. We talked a lot about the girls, commiserated about challenges, things we had learned, but mostly just got together and had a freaking blast.


Our contingent ended up getting there a little later than we should have. Turns out it is hard to find the camp in the dark. It is in the middle of BFE, I mean, the Tahuya National forest. The sign for the dirt road turn off for the camp is about the size of notebook paper. Anyhow, when we did finally get our gear put in the cabin and get downstairs to meet the rest of the people, I have to admit, I was a little intimidated. That didn't last very long, mind you. But still, I was a little nervous. The whole point of the weekend was for leaders from all over to get to know each other. 


I walked into that room and I thought they all were a bunch of old friends -- they all must have come from the same area. I had to fight that urge to sit by myself or find a table that had enough seats for my contingent to sit together. Instead, I went to a table already in the middle of something -- unwrapping the hershey kisses on the table so they could make a foil ball to see if they could make the trash can from across the room. (It made sense then. What can I say?) Anyhow, I got right in the middle of this and I was welcomed instantly. Cool, right? Turns out that these ladies weren't all from the same service unit. Turns out a lot of them had just met the hour before. But how cool is that?


The next day we could attend discussions, do crafts (which were pretty darned cool -- batik & decoupage -- not at the same time but I suppose you could) or whatever we wanted. I took a hike around the lake after we attended a morning discussion about resources in our local communities. Later that afternoon we had a great discussion about the new Girl Scouting program. Yes, has changed once again and it is really really cool. Change is good. Stagnation is bad. Stagnation = irrelevance. It's that simple.


The food was fabulous. (Honestly, when do you get creme brûlée while camping?)There were flushing toilets, showers & electricity but my data connection was spotty at best. (I know, lame to use a cell phone during a camp out but how else was I going to check my Facebook?)


And while we were on our weekend high, our group decided to host next year's event. This was an event pulled together just since this past June and already the bar is set crazy high. But since we have a year to put it together, hopefully it won't be too bad. 


Just don't know how to top creme brûlée.