Campout at Ferne Clyffe State Park

A Great Time for a Campout

For October, we spent the weekend in beautiful southern Illinois at Ferne Clyffe State Park.

While we aren’t always successful at it, we try our best to have an event every month, with most of them being weekend campouts. This often means sweating in July and freezing in January. However, October is often one of the best times for a campout, and this year was no exception. It was around 70 during the day and cooled off nicely at night. From a weather perspective, it was almost perfect weather for a weekend campout.

An Unexpected Bonus

When we first booked this campout, we simply did so because we wanted to try something new. Several of the adult leaders in our troop had been to Ferne Clyffe, but our troop had never spent a weekend there. Our Scouts are usually eager to try something new, so they were all in favor of giving this park a try.

Shortly afterward, we learned this was the same weekend as the Fort Massac Encampment event in Metropolis, IL. Several of our Scout families had attended this annual event in previous years, and highly recommended it. The Scouts loved the idea, as it made this an even more new and unique campout. So, on Saturday, rather than spending the day at the state park, we made the 45-minute drive further south to attend the event.

We spent most of the day at the event with LOTS of other people. In addition to walking around at the event, we also attended a reenactment, which was very cool.

Until We Return…

One downside to attending the event on Saturday is that we didn’t have time to explore all of the offerings of the state park. A few of the adult leaders took a short hike on one of the trails after we returned. It was a great trail that reminded us of several of our favorite trails from Giant City State Park (which we have frequented often). It’s definitely a place we need to visit again!