Showing posts with label Junior Rangers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Junior Rangers. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

I'm Too Old for Junior Rangers, So Now I Collect Passport Stamps

Disclaimer: you're actually never too old for Junior Rangers; I'm pretty sure every national park will let you complete the workbook, take the oath, and pin the badge onto your T-shirt at any age!

HOWEVER, for my teenager's nineteenth birthday, I wanted to give her something that might recreate, for her, that enthusiasm that she always seemed to feel as a child for earning Junior Ranger badges. She has a huge collection of them, and I think took a lot of pleasure in earning new ones. Exploring new national park sites was something we've always loved doing together, and we have taken MANY a detour or special trip just to hit a new park so she could earn a new Junior Ranger badge.

So what might incorporate the same kind of fun?

The National Park Passport Book, I hope!

To that end, these were a couple of her summer birthday gifts from me:

And, because sending this kid away to college has made me realize how precious (and how ever more preciously few) are the activities that she and I love to do together... I bought myself the National Park Passport Book, too. Now we can collect passport stamps for every single national park site TOGETHER!!!

First up: a day trip to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, sneaked in just a couple of weeks before she went back to college for the semester.

It's been several years since our last trip to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, so I was able to tell Matt and the teenager all the same Lincoln gossip that I'd told them the last time, and they were able to pretend like I haven't also been telling this same gossip continually even when we're not visiting the memorial.


Fun fact: this area used to be a major breeding ground for the passenger pigeon. Sigh...


My favorite thing here, though, is always the living history farm!



The teenager was HORRIFIED to see me pull a couple of weeds in this garden. But hello, I would love it if some stranger would wander by *my* garden and pull a few weeds!




Here's the well where the family drew their water, now at the very edge of the national park site and bordering a residential street:


It was SO muggy when we hiked this trail that all we talked about was how on earth people managed without air conditioning back then. Did you know that until his dying day, William Faulkner refused to have air conditioning in his Mississippi home? Putting a window air conditioning unit in their bedroom was just about the first thing his widow did after his funeral...


Because I bought us the bougiest passport books, they also have spaces for national park stickers, which is apparently also a thing. Every year they publish a new set of ten stickers, each featuring a different national park site from a different region. Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial had several sticker sets in their gift shop, including the 2009 set that includes a sticker for the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, so I bought us both that one and then spent part of the car ride home busily sticking my new stickers in their correct spots.

I dunno if I'm sold on the stickers, though... They'd be objectively awesome if the images were good, but they weren't always. If I had to guess, I'd say that every national park site has to submit its own photo, and the small sites with limited staff maybe don't always have someone on staff to take a beautiful photo? 

Stay tuned to see if I end up buying more of the stickers, and DEFINITELY stay tuned for the teenager's next big college break, when she and I are going to knock some passport stamps off our to-do list!
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Thursday, July 6, 2023

Here's Every National Park Junior Ranger Badge Kids Can Earn On-Site or By Mail (Updated July 2023)


July 2023: This is an update of my original Junior Ranger badges post, first written WAY back in 2018! I crossed out several Junior Ranger badges that are no longer available to earn by mail, but fortunately I also added a few new ones, too, and I updated my map with new Junior Ranger badges that kids can earn on-site.

It's been years since the kids first discovered the Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park, and thus began their obsession. I'm never one to let an educational experience go, so since that first thrilling day, I have deliberately organized ALL of our US vacations to include as many Junior Ranger programs as possible, and I've included all of the Junior Ranger programs that it's possible to earn by mail into our homeschool plans.

"How did you figure out where all of the Junior Ranger programs are?" you ask.

Friends, I made a giant freaking map:



Yes, that is EVERY SINGLE NATIONAL PARK SITE WITH A JUNIOR RANGER PROGRAM. I put them all in by hand. I went to every single national park's website, searched for its Junior Ranger program, and if it had one I put it on my map.

When I plan road trips, I check my map for all the national park sites with Junior Ranger programs that we could detour to, and then we detour to them. During our upcoming road trip, for instance, we're visiting Saint Croix Island and Acadia National Park, primarily for their Junior Ranger programs.

But the kids' enthusiasm for earning Junior Ranger badges is unceasing, and yet we cannot spend our entire year traveling to various national parks. If only!

So I went back through every one of those websites, and I noted every park that permits children to earn their Junior Ranger badge by mail. Most of these parks provide the badge book as a downloadable pdf for kids to complete using internet or book research (often the park's own website, but we've also found useful park videos on YouTube). They mail their completed badge books to the park, and in return, the park rangers mail them back their badges and certificates.

It's always, eternally thrilling.

The kids have been doing this for years now, and still have tons of Junior Ranger badges left to earn by mail. They've learned geography, history, and several sciences in the process, experienced the breadth and depth of the national experience in ways they haven't had the opportunity to do in person, and have an intense appreciation for the variety of cultural, historical, and geographic artifacts and monuments that must be explored, preserved, and protected.

Not every national park, or even most national parks, allow their Junior Ranger badges to be earned by mail, mind you. You'll know if one does, because it will say so on its website or on the book, and it will have the book available as a downloadable pdf and include a mailing address for the completed book to be sent to. Many parks will state, kind of pissily in my opinion, that they do NOT allow badges to be earned by mail, and that's their right, but I think everyone loses when they do that--why stifle a kid's desire to learn? Why refuse an opportunity to grow someone's knowledge and love of your national park?

Before you get your kid all revved up on earning these badges by mail, you should know that since you've got to mail the completed badge books to each park, you'll be paying a few bucks for postage and manila envelopes each time. If you're conserving resources, check out the online badges that I've noted in my list--those let kids either do or submit their work online, so you don't have to pay for either supplies or postage.

Fortunately, MANY national parks are happy to have more kids interested in them and working to learn more about them! Here are all the national park Junior Ranger badges that you can earn by mail:

NOTE: I do NOT include Junior Ranger badges in which the badge book is offered as a pdf from the national park site, but kids cannot mail them in or submit them online to earn the badge without a visit to the site. Lots of national park sites offer their badge books as pdfs so that kids can get a head start on the book (which is a great idea!), and some sites even allow kids to mail in their badge books later if they didn't have time to complete them at the park, but this is is solely for badges that kids can earn entirely from home.

 I'm also not including any of the newer "virtual Junior Ranger programs," which let kids complete some web activities and then print an image of the Junior Ranger badge. Those can be fun, but this list is solely for physical badges that kid can earn from home.

This is one of my absolute favorite activities that we do in our homeschool, but it's partly so wonderful because it's so adaptable. Sure, it can be your entire geography curriculum, or just an enrichment to another spine. You can include it in your history studies, or in the natural or earth sciences. Even if you don't homeschool, these Junior Ranger books are so fun that kids can simply DO them for fun. My kids do, and they think it's a nifty trick that I also let them count them for school!

If your kids love earning Junior Ranger badges, then they'd likely be interested in learning about the national park system as a whole--there's so much to explore there, from history and culture to geology and the sciences. Here are some of our favorite resources for learning about and exploring the national park system:


P.S. Want more obsessively-compiled lists of resources and activities for kiddos and the people who want to keep them happy and engaged? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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Saturday, June 11, 2022

When in Michigan, You Must Take a Flying Leap Down a Sand Dune

 

We thought we were probably lost. There were lots of little roads between Traverse City and Sleeping Bear Dunes. Lots of turns onto unlabeled streets, lots of winding country roads, lots of farms and vineyards and orchards full of cherry trees. And when you type a national park into your GPS, you're never quite sure what part of the park it's actually going to take you to. Will you arrive safely at the visitor center, or at a fire tower fifty miles away? The main entrance gate, or the post office where the park gets its mail?

Since we didn't know what to expect, and weren't quite sure where we were going, then, it was even more magical to be driving down yet another little road and suddenly see, to our left, the largest wall of sand I've ever imagined.

It was huge. Incongruously huge. Game of Thrones The Wall huge. Absolutely impossible, except that there it was.

Obviously, we had to climb it!

Okay, climbing a giant sand dune was a little bit like slogging through hell below our feet. But above us?

Only sky.

And look at that view from the top of the climb!

We lounged in place for a while, me recovering my resting heart rate, and the kids playing in the biggest and best sandbox in the Midwest:

Can you imagine living around here and having small children? I'd have taken my two here every single day!



When we'd originally set off, my words had been something like "OMG look at that giant dune let's climb it!" But after deciding that maybe I wasn't having a heart attack, after all, I started to look around me and realized--we weren't at the top at ALL! There was a whole other HIGHER dune just ahead!


We must climb it!

Notice in these photos the concession to Mom's fragility embodied in Will having taken over the Mom Day Pack. Now, Will was the Keeper of Water and Snacks and First Aid Kit and Sunscreen and Bug Spray, and Mom just had to get her own butt up that last dune, the distant figures of her children literally running up that mountain of sand egging her on:

But what did I see when I finally reached the top?

Omg. Another, higher dune.

Must. Climb. It.

And from the top of THAT dune?

Nope. I give up.

Later, when we finally found the visitor center and picked up park maps, I'd learn that the trail we were on was something like three miles round-trip, a distance that we were not prepared to hike with zero prep. If I had this trip to do again I'd have us pack lunches and make a day of just this Dunes Trail, but for three people with just a water bottle each, not even all of us wearing shoes, this was our turn-around point.

Now, to enjoy the lovely walk back!


Although most of us ran most of the way:



And there may have even been some leaping involved!







You probably can't tell, ahem, but the leaping was my favorite part. 

After sandwiches eaten in the delightful air conditioning of the car, I decided it was time to figure out exactly what we were supposed to be doing and seeing in Sleeping Bear, not to mention pay our entrance fee, so Google Maps kindly agreed to direct us to the visitor center. 

Twenty-five dollars later, I had a nice, big fold-out map of Sleeping Bear Dunes to peruse while the kids worked through their Junior Ranger books:

After that, my Junior Rangers and I took the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. The kids weren't super impressed with most of the stops--I mean, not after a whole morning playing on the marvelous and mind-bending Dune Climb!--but this stop was worth it all:


Despite the dire warnings--

Is that exhausted climber... vomiting?!?

--people really were walking all the way down this dune--

--and then crawling back up. The kids and I hiked to an overlook where we joined a vocal community of observers of these intrepid adventurers, rooting for our favorites, discussing what we'd do differently were we in their places (god forbid!), offering advice and criticisms, and cheering every time someone finally finished their long crawl back to the top:

Oh, and we also admired the view, of course:


I had anticipated that Sleeping Bear Dunes would be fun and pleasant, but I was shocked at HOW fun it was, and just how unspeakably beautiful. I'd happily spend weeks back there, rolling down dunes and crawling back up them and lying like a lizard in the warm sand and admiring the clear, blue water. 

And at the end of every day, I'd do like I did on this day and drive my kids back down those windy country roads, past cherry orchards and vineyards, to buy ourselves ice cream from Moomers. 

I'm pretty sure the cow who made my chocolate caramel nut ice cream is in this photo!


And here's my ice cream, in a chocolate-dipped waffle cone:


Will had a banana split:

And Syd had a worms and dirt sundae:


As Will's time as a child in my home grows very short, I often think with longing about her younger years, when I so often felt overwhelmed and disconnected. I fantasize about time traveling back to our old house by the park and ringing the doorbell, and when an exhausted, bored me comes to the door, I put her to bed with a book and a snack, and I spend the day playing with a very small Willow and Sydney. I drink in their tiny selves, and I enjoy every single second with them. I memorize again all their little features and gestures, and I don't look away for a moment.

My big kids spend their days mostly going about their own business. They have schoolwork and jobs, friends and hobbies, and I am no longer the planet they orbit around; they are no longer my ever-present shadows. I'm not exhausted and overwhelmed by them anymore (or rather, I'm mostly not...), these independent, capable kids that can now mow the lawn and do the laundry and read to themselves and even help me drive the eight hours from Traverse City, Michigan, back to our home. But I miss them, so much, now that I have the space to miss them, and I'm going to miss them so much more when one of them lives in Ohio. And because I miss them in the day-to-day, I cherish these trips with them even more. Mind you, half of them griped most of the time, and both of them griped some of the time. I thought about bailing on the whole adventure more than once, and when that happened only the fact that I wouldn't get any refund on that super expensive cottage kept me on the road. 

But sometimes, every now and then, both kids would be smiling at once. Both kids would be having a marvelous time running down a dune, or sitting at the top of a hill talking to each other about how slow and sad my hiking is, or eating a dish of ice cream the size of their heads. We would be looking at something beautiful together, and they'd be saying how beautiful it is, in the next breath mocking some hapless soul trying to crawl back up a sand mountain so he didn't have to pay $3,000 for the air rescue. I cherished those precious moments with my grown-up Willow and my nearly-grown Sydney. I drank in their funny, clever, quirky selves, and I enjoyed every single second with them. I memorized all over again their changing features and their familiar gestures.

And I did not look away for a moment.

Day 1: Presque Isle Lighthouses
Day 2: Mackinac City
Day 3: Searching for Petoskey Stones

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