Two Days in Cincinnati with My Girl Scout Troop: On the First Day, We Met Kangaroos and Delved into DIY Oven Repair

In Girl Scouts, there's a standard travel progression that troops are encouraged to follow. As in, your troop should be comfortable taking field trips together before they take a day trip. They should master day trips before trying an overnight. Overnight trip mastery leads to regional travel, and regional travel mastery leads to national/international travel and longer trips, etc.

When I teach this travel progression to Girl Scout volunteers, however, I always emphasize that stepping up to, say, international travel doesn't mean that you don't go on field trips or overnight trips, anymore. Instead, you still take smaller trips, but you use those smaller trips as chances for the Girl Scouts to develop more sophisticated travel skills.

Case in point: the last time my Girl Scout troop took an overnight trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, that was their first overnight trip. They voted on the main event, an overnight in the Newport Aquarium, but my co-leaders and I planned the rest of the activities. The kids focused on building travel skills like carrying their own bags, unpacking and packing their sleeping bags, bedtime independence, staying with the group, getting along with each other for an extended period of time, picking what they wanted to eat, etc. 

This time around, we've taken I can't even tell you how many field trips and day trips together, several overnight trips, several two-night trips, a couple of regional and national trips, and an international trip. And this time around, the kids planned EVERYTHING. They wrote a packing list. They planned our meals. They decided on our activities. They voted on our accommodations. They decided what badge they wanted to earn (Ambassador Photographer!) and planned the activities to earn it. 

Essentially, they made themselves (and their two adult chaperones) an AMAZING overnight experience in Cincinnati!

First up: the Cincinnati Zoo! My kids and I have been to this zoo several times, but this was our first time since the free-range kangaroo habitat was created. Check out the roos!

As part of earning the Ambassador Photographer badge, all of us--kids and adults--concentrated on taking lovely animal and nature photos at the zoo.

The Masai Giraffe are really cool because their spots do NOT look like interlocking puzzle pieces:

Love this snoozy lion!

Does anyone else remember Meerkat Manor? One episode of Meerkat Manor used to be part of my bedtime ritual with the kids back when they were just a toddler and a preschooler, but they both swear that they still remember it, and we all still love meerkats!

I'm a meerkat!

The African painted dog is one of my two favorite animals at the Cincinnati Zoo, tied with the Florida manatee:

Remember Fiona, the baby hippo? Cincinnati Zoo is her home, and now she also has a baby brother named Fritz!

I have been to SOOO many zoos in my lifetime, and I can count on one hand the number of times that I have seen a red panda 1) awake and 2) in motion. I think this is the third time ever, and the second time was also here!

Hanging out with the Galapagos tortoises is my favorite thing to do here. You can pet their shells!

Every now and then, I lent out my camera so that the Girl Scouts could have a go at using a DSLR--most of them were using their smartphones for photos, which is fine, but it's important to see how a professional-quality camera handles, too. So for a change, I have a few photos of ME on this trip!

I got so distracted taking a photo of one of my Girl Scouts petting a tortoise that I didn't notice that I was being stalked...

We just about closed that zoo down, then drove just a couple of miles north to our Airbnb near the Over the Rhine neighborhood. 

I am normally a BIG fan of a good Airbnb when I travel with my Girl Scout troop. Instead of divvying up into five separate hotel rooms, with kids isolated and poorly supervised, and no good group space for activities or meals, a good Airbnb lets us all hang out together, do activities together, and cook meals together. 

Unfortunately, this was not a good Airbnb. It was run by a company with several properties, and I will avoid that kind of setup in the future. I checked in with the host a couple of days before our visit to specifically ask about the oven, because my anxiety likes me to double-check shit like that, and with the host's reassurance that the oven had just been repaired and worked great, I let the kids plan a multitude of cooking projects for our evening and morning there. I made several pounds of pizza dough and cookie dough so the kids could make personal pizzas and have a cookie challenge, and we packed eggs and sausage and frozen hashbrowns so they could make breakfast sandwiches the next morning.

The first kid was literally putting her pizza in the oven when she stopped and said, "Um, I don't think it's preheated yet?"

Thus began my multi-hour saga of attempting to contact the host to help me with the oven, and the host's multi-hour saga of successfully dodging any attempt to be of actual service. It seemed like the gas line wasn't actually turned on to the oven part, just the stovetop, but the host kept texting me to turn the knob in a different direction, or turn it more forcefully, or pull the oven away from the wall and check behind it(?!?), and completely ignored my requests that someone actually, you know, just come over and turn the knob themselves or look behind the oven if it was supposedly so simple. Ugh! 

Fortunately, we're Girl Scouts, so my co-leader figured out a hack that let the kids more or less bake their pizzas on the stovetop, but they didn't turn out great, and the kids (and I!) were all pretty sad. The cookies worked okay in the microwave, and the next day, every kid who didn't already know how to cook eggs on the stove learned that useful life skill!

Fortunately, these hungry Girl Scouts had a BIG food adventure planned on our second day in Cincinnati. Stay tuned!