Ideas for camping with broken leg? In the rain?

[Liz]

Help me out here, Scouters!

Our Troop is new and the girls are just starting to get their legs under them. They're working on a one-year plan but at the moment we're scrambling to figure out relatively last minute camping options. Here's our situation:

* One of the Scouts has a broken leg, very limited mobility right now, and has to keep her cast from getting wet. At all.

* We are in Oregon. The odds of it not raining during a campout are not high. 

* We only have 6 Scouts so excluding even one from a campout is not an option we want to seriously consider.

* The only weekend we don't have fundraising commitments for this month is October 18-20 (we help with parking for Oregon Duck home games during the entire football season). 

* All our in-council camp facilities are booked for our one available weekend. 

* All the area group campsites that I can find and all the state and federal campgrounds I can find that have yurts or cabins are booked. A group site with a group shelter would give the girl with a broken leg a dry place to hang out, as would a non-tent option suck as a 'dak, yurt, or cabin. But individual campsites at a state park in tents... I dunno. We don't have a lot of equipment yet for creating a decent shelter area other than just the minimum of what we need to do an outdoor kitchen. 

There is a nearby out-of-council camp that has availability (Butte Creek Scout Ranch in Scotts Mills, OR) and some of their sites have 'daks but I've never been there and I don't know how accessible their sites are and of course nobody's answering the phone on the weekend (totally expected) and during the workweek I am not available to be making phone calls at all. 

The girls have asked for adult help locating a campground that will include everyone and we're trying but I am not having a ton of luck. We may end up in a local campground so the girl with the broken leg can just join us during the day or something, but she missed our last campout too due to the leg (happened right before our event) so she really doesn't want to miss any of this one. 

I live in a forest and have a couple of acres. How bad would it be to have the girls camp in my woods for the weekend? We have a fire ring and room for tents. 

Help me brainstorm a solution here.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Liz

[Liz]

Is 2.5 hours away too far to go for a weekend (Friday evening to Sunday) campout, do you think? The adult leaders seem OK with it. I've found a group campground that is level, mostly paved, and has a picnic shelter. But it's not close by. 

[desertrat77]

@Liz, camping on your property seems like a great option.  As the girls are new to scouting, it will still be an adventure and at the same time allow them to work on basic outdoor skills. 

The fire pit is great!  Too many scouts progress through the program today with rare opportunities to sit next to a real campfire, let alone cook on coals, use an axe, etc.

Re the broken leg:  I'd recommend a dining fly in the campsite, and then let the scouts take it from there.  They'll rally to help the girl, and develop their own solutions to keeping the cast dry.

Many moons ago, when I was a scout, I attended a camporee in a remote desert of Southern Arizona.  I was on crutches and recovering from quite a bout of blood poisoning.  My patrol insisted that I attend and they helped me as needed.  To this day I'm glad I went.

Kudos for pressing forward with the campout...scouting is outing!  Please let us know how it goes.

 

Edited October 5, 2019 by desertrat77

[Liz]

The more I think about it, the more I like the option at my house. It really is a nice setting. Only my house and one other house are visible. Convincing everyone else, however, might be a challenge. One parent was concerned the girls might get "too comfortable" with the house. My response was "I didn't say I was going to let them come inside." LOL! (Although I have no other bathroom facilities so they'd have to come in once in a while). 

 

[RememberSchiff]

4-H cabins?

http://oregon4hcenter.org/facilities/cabins/

[qwazse]

Well! If I didn't already commit to choose between two other scouting events that weekend, I'd fly across the country to camp in a scouter's back woods!

Travel time depends on the maturity of your youth. My venturers would ride 6 hours for a weekend.

But, for young scouts who have a lot of training on their list, the closer to home the better.

[yknot]

If you camp out on your property just make sure you have adequate insurance. I carry a $1 million umbrella policy just in case someone trips over a rock and breaks their arm. 

 

[Liz]

9 minutes ago, yknot said:

If you camp out on your property just make sure you have adequate insurance. I carry a $1 million umbrella policy just in case someone trips over a rock and breaks their arm. 

 

We have something pretty close to that on our homeowner's policy too. You should have seen me nagging kids at my daughter's birthday party to put helmets on before riding bikes and scooters up and down our steep, gravel driveway. I have liability coverage but that doesn't mean I want anybody to get hurt! 

21 minutes ago, RememberSchiff said:

4-H cabins?

http://oregon4hcenter.org/facilities/cabins/

😱 How did I not have ANY IDEA about this? Totally filing it away for near future. Thank you!!

17 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Well! If I didn't already commit to choose between two other scouting events that weekend, I'd fly across the country to camp in a scouter's back woods!

Travel time depends on the maturity of your youth. My venturers would ride 6 hours for a weekend.

But, for young scouts who have a lot of training on their list, the closer to home the better.

LOL! We'd love to have you. Especially if you bring an experienced Scout with you to help train our girls who are all still teaching themselves what they need to know for the Scout rank! Man, the patrol method is slow when you don't have any Scouts with any Scout Skills.  

Our youth are probably less of a concern than our adults. While willing to drive 2.5 hours after work on a Friday evening, I am not necessarily looking forward to the idea for a 2 night campout. 

It sounds like all the youth and adults who have chimed in so far this evening are leaning toward taking us up on the back yard camping experience. 

[mrkstvns]

On 10/5/2019 at 9:48 PM, Liz said:

Our youth are probably less of a concern than our adults. While willing to drive 2.5 hours after work on a Friday evening, I am not necessarily looking forward to the idea for a 2 night campout. 

Very few of our campouts are less than 2.5 hour drive (mainly because the campsites that are closest to the city are the lamest --- paved, crowded, overbooked, etc.)  We'll occasionally do up to 4 hours, but that's really got to be an exceptional camp.

Totally understand your reluctance about the 2 night campout.  It's always more fun to go for the 3-night campout, but Columbus Day weekend would require some quick planning since it's almost here.

[Liz]

Indigenous People Day is not a school holiday in our state anyway. We don't have any area-wide long weekends coming up until Thanksgiving (and I don't think anybody wants to camp for Thanksgiving). 

We should usually have plenty of camping options within an hour or so of home when we can plan ahead. It just so happens that the OA has that particular weekend reserved for our biggest Council camp, and the only other Council camps with availability just won't offer a viable experience for a kid who can't walk. The ones where you can drive up to the campsite tend to get reserved first. 

We just need to get our year plan nailed down and then as time goes on it will get easier.  

[Eagle94-A1]

I would make sure the camping is cleared by her doctor, and I stress DOCTOR. When dislocated my shoulder on a camp out and popped it back in, I asked the nurse if I could still camp, and was told yes. Several hours later, I dislocated the shoulder while sleeping on the ground and had to go back to the ER. Shift change, so none of the original folks who saw me were there. Doctor told me no way I could sleep on the ground.

Even after surgery and started rehab on the shoulder, I was limited as to what i could do by the doctor.

[Liz]

Good point. Her parents are on top of the medical treatment so I'll mention it to dad and I'm sure he'll make sure to ask. One great advantage to having it at our house instead of hours away is that if her doctor says "no camping" she can still come in the morning and hang out with us as long as she feels up to it.