For the most part the national and state parks, monuments, and historic sights we’ve been to have junior ranger programs or at least something similar. Here are some things about the junior ranger programs: One of the more recent badges I earned was from Farragut State Park in Idaho. Farragut’s Junior Ranger program was quite different from the others. I had to complete 4 of 6 tasks. I chose to read about safety, attend a Ranger program, go on a hike, and draw three plants & animals. The ranger program we attended doubled as a hike, so we had the opportunity to walk through the forest and learn some neat things!
With some of the other junior ranger programs I had to do a certain amount of the pages usually depending on age. Sometimes I had to do as many pages as how old I am plus one or two required pages. With some of the others there are age groups. If you’re five or under do three pages, ten and up do seven pages, and so on.
Also, most of the junior ranger programs have the same sort of activities: take a hike then write about it, a maze, bingo were you have to find something yellow or see a bird or park sign, are some examples.
Some programs didn’t just give out little badges but also patches. The patches are a variety of shapes: some circular some in the arrowhead shape and rarely rectangular square shapes. I also earned two necklace-dog tags from the Parks Canada 🇨🇦 junior ranger program called Explorers.
Some well known junior ranger programs I’ve completed since we started on our RV trip include: Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park, the Tetons, Badlands National Park, and Mammoth Cave (see the post on Mammoth!). We’ve also been to some national monuments such as Devil’s Tower (apparently it’s review week!) and a few others.
Something that really bothers me is that I have a little board that I put the badges patches on and some of the badge pins have been falling off! They just detach and I have to glue them back on 😡😖. It drives me crazy! And I hate it. The glue never really works well either, so it just keeps falling off.
This is so great Aleah! Great job
Thanks for telling us about the process to earn your badges! Great job! I remember when we went to Manassas and you worked to get one there.
It sounds frustrating that they keep falling off of the board. We used to sew our Girl Scout badges (cloth patches) onto a sash. Is there something you could sew them onto?