As you all saw, I unfortunately had to cancel the trip I had planned for Bellplain State Forest last weekend.

Instead of being able to enjoy my favorite activity (i.e. “New Jersey Camping”) I ended up spending the entire weekend shuttling back and forth between soccer practice, soccer pictures, football practice, football games, driving to Dover Delaware to visit my mother-in-law who is recuperating from surgery and participating in a Cub Scout Car Wash Fundraising activity.

All-in-all, I would have rather been camping but it was still a fairly productive and fun weekend.

So here it is Monday morning and I am putting the last minute details on a Cub Scout camping trip scheduled for this weekend as well as beginning to plan a winter camping trip somewhere in Northern New Jersey.

There are a group of scouts and parents that enjoy winter camping (mostly the guys!) and we have begin talking about taking the older scouts up to the Delaware water gap for a one night camping excursion.

We haven’t decided if we are going to explore some of the campgrounds up in the area or “rough” it in a state park.

There are pros/cons for each argument but I think that as the “Cubmaster” I will end up making the decision to let this first winter be a little less rough and stay in campers at a campground instead of staying in tents at a State park. The main reason being a lot of the kids that will be joining us have never camped out in anything but high summer conditions and I’m afraid that a night in a tent in 30 degree weather could be a little much for their first experience.

Once we have that decision made all we have to do is found a campground that is open year round up in the Water Gap area. Here is the list of campgrounds that we have to work with New Jersey Skylands . As you will see there are lots of choices for campgrounds but I have to make some calls to figure out which are open in December/January.

Till next time.

Eric