COMPLETE - Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Badge

Choose-Your-Own Adventure Badge

Designed by:     Paul

Order Info:     Advantage Emblem S-1695

Associated Costs:     $2 for patch, admission and supplies for adventures

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For this badge, you’re going to go on at least four adventures. These can be hiking a trail, exploring a cave, sightseeing in a new city, taking a train ride, horseback riding, or anything else that you think of as an adventure. Complete all the SCOUT steps for each of the four (or more) adventures.

We had a weekend adventure epic in Chattanooga where we went to four different tourist attractions all in a row!

1. Adventure #1 was Rock City.
2. Adventure #2 was the Tennessee Aquarium.
3. Adventure #3 was the Chattanooga Zoo.
4. Adventure #4 was Raccoon Mountain Crystal Caverns.

S is for Self

What about this trip means ‘adventure’ to you? What about this trip will expand your knowledge or abilities or test or improve who you are?

1. Rock City - There is a lot of walking and climbing up and down among the rocks here. We knew going into it that it would be physically demanding - and the mid-90s temperatures were not going to help.
2. Aquarium - The aquarium is set up to tell the story of how water starts up in the mountains, flows down into the Tennessee River, and down to the ocean. There are lots of opportunities to learn about the process, and to see interesting animals.
3. Zoo - Animals and zoos are always a favorite thing to learn about, and the Chattanooga Zoo has different animals than our home zoo in Nashville.
4. Crystal Caverns - We saved this one for the hot afternoon on our way home to take advantage of the cool cave. These are growing caves with lots of tiny critters, so there's a lot to learn!

C is for Create

Adventures mean lots of doing! Do at least four (or more) of the steps below.

• Plan the trip. Consult a map, check the weather, and plan out expenses for the trip. Make any reservations needed, and plan ahead with anyone going with you (some adventures are totally unplanned, and that’s great too - skip this step for those).
• If your adventure spot has a visitor’s booklet or other guide, be sure to get that and look through it thoroughly. If there are activities it in, do as many of those as you can.
• Consider safety and preparation aspects of your adventure. Should you pack any safety items or any special equipment? Do you need a place to meet up with your friends if you get lost? If there is a guide of some sort, listen carefully to all the instructions you are given. What emergency planning can you have in place?
• Watch for learning opportunities on your adventure. Did you see a new animal you can learn more about? Can you learn something about the history of the place you are in?
• Does your adventure spot offer a chance to create or participate in what they do? Feed the animals at a zoo, learn to leave appropriate trail markings on a hike. See if they have something for kids to color. Many museums have interactive exhibits.
• Take lots of photos of your adventure. When you get home, create an album to show off your fun time.
• Before you leave, see if there’s a patch you can buy at a gift shop. Buy that patch and put it on the back of your sash when you get home.

Rock City - (a) Because we knew we were going to the Aquarium, too, we were able to save money by planning ahead and getting a combo ticket to both attractions. (b) We got a Guide Map when we bought the tickets. It shows both a regular 3/4 mile route - the Enchanted Trail - and an ADA/Limited Access Trail. (c) We decided that we could manage the regular trail, but looked out for resting points and restrooms. We also made sure we had our inhaler with us, because the air was very thick and heavy. Good thing, too, because we needed to use it to help us breathe. (d) We learned a lot about the people that found and founded Rock City and decorated it with gnomes and fairy-tale scenes by reading the signs along the trail. We also learned the story behind Lovers' Leap and tried to See Seven States. We probably only saw about five, though, because it was rainy and visibility wasn't very good. (e) We bought a gnome to come home with us and some gifts, as well as a patch that looks like a birdhouse with 'See Rock City' painted on it (we learned about that marketing campaign, too).

Aquarium - After lunch, we were ready to be inside for a while, so the Aquarium sounded like a great time. (a) We had already bought tickets back at Rock City, so we were able to go straight to the River Journey building. Starting at the top, we followed the story of water flowing down to the river. The first thing we saw was the otters, playing in the water together! Then later we went to the Ocean Journey building and started with the Butterfly Aviary. (b) For all of these adventures, we wore our dogtag with Boss' name and phone number on it, in case we got separated and had an emergency. No emergencies, but we did get separated sometimes when we were looking at different exhibits. (c) There are lots of places in the aquarium where you can duck into an opening and feel like you're in the water with the animals and get pictures with them, or just take pictures of them in their exhibits. (d) There are also information signs on the walls about each tank or area and the animals in them. We read a lot of them, but missed some. (e) We got a patch at the Aquarium, too, this one a round one with a shark on it.

 

Zoo - On the morning of our second day in Chattanooga, we went to the zoo. This is a much smaller zoo than Nashville's, but the central focus is the chimpanzees they have, which is an animal Nashville doesn't have, along with coyotes, our favorite! (a) We got a Visitor Map & Guide for the Zoo so we could make sure to see everything, and there was an insert with the daily activity schedule. (b) I had looked up the activity schedule online ahead of time, so we were sure to get there in time to make the Snow Leopard Training. (c) We learned a lot about how snow leopards and other Class One animals are trained without the keepers entering their habitats, and got to watch some of the training in-progress. The zoo had had a big event the night before, and it was really hot, so many of the animals were tired. But one of the gibbons (the female, because she was a gold color) was ready to play with us! She came over to the window when we waved at her, and it was really neat to interact with her. (d) We took a picture of her, and when we showed it to her, she ducked down under the window like she was shy! We got a picture of her 'hiding', too. (e) As we left, we checked the giftshop, and got a patch for the zoo, too.

Crystal Caverns - In the afternoon, we stopped by Raccoon Mountain on the way out of town. (a) It was already on our route out, and caves are always a better temperature, plus this one would be a lot easier walk than Rock City, so it was the best choice for our last adventure. (b) There isn't a guide pamphlet, but they had a map on the wall before we went in and a sign showing all the different kinds of animals we might encounter inside. (c) Our guide was very knowledgeable about the cave and was really good at spotting salamanders all over the place, despite them being really small (the biggest we saw was only a few inches long). (d) Because this is a living growing cave, we had to be very careful not to touch anything inside except where the guide told us to. But they had handrails in all the necessary spots, so it wasn't too difficult. (e) For this patch, instead of picking the one that had Raccoon Mountain written on it, we picked one that has a salamander, like the ones we saw inside!

O is for Outreach

Find or create an outreach opportunity to go with your adventure. Is there a chance to volunteer somehow? What can you do to leave the place you’ve visited better than it was when you arrived? Take a small sack with you and pick up trash, or help other adventurers in some way. Watch for other people that could use some assistance. Or leave a detailed review on the website for your adventuring spot; let future adventurers know all about your experience.

1. Rock City - We made a new friend while exploring the trail. She was playing Pokemon Go and looking for a new friend, and I was too! So we have a new poke-friend, and her screen name is Gnatalyn, which made me think of all the gnomes scattered around!
2. Aquarium - When we got separated from Boss for a while, we started chatting with one of the employees. She was there to help people purchase memberships, and was running a bubble-blower for people to play in. She looked really bored when I got there, but we chatted for a while and she was laughing and smiling when I was ready to go.
3. Zoo - We got a really sweet hug from a little girl that was looking at the gibbons next to us. She was excited about the ape, but of course couldn't reach it. So she hugged me instead! Her mom tried to apologize and stop her, but we were okay with it, and let her hug us as long as she wanted to.
4. Crystal Caverns - Boss made sure to give our guide, C.C., a big tip as we left. They are renovating the gift shop/entrance area right now, and it seems like they aren't as busy as they've been other times in the past, so I bet that was a big help.

Everywhere we went this weekend, it seemed like employees of the places we went were super extra-helpful and cheerful, like they really enjoyed taking care of us and talking to us. Even at the pizza place we went for lunch - we had trouble getting to go sit down because we were busy chatting!

U is for Understanding

Research the place you’ll be adventuring or have adventured. Find out about the history of where you went, or the people who created it or run it. Are there other places that offer the same sort of experience - how do they compare to the one you went to? How are all your adventures for this badge similar to one another? How are they different?

I'm going to treat these all together for this one. We have a special personal history for all of these attractions. Twenty years ago, M made a trip to Chattanooga with our daughter, so the adventures for this trip were chosen based on the things that were the most fun on that long-ago trip. Boss had never been to Rock City before, and everyone should go once. The Aquarium is really just one of the best places to go - we had gone there with a boyfriend a few years back, and Kiara had really really loved the Butterfly Aviary. Lupi's Pizza was our favorite place we ate on the first trip. The Zoo had been really super-tiny when we visited before, and we were really excited to see how it had changed since then. And Raccoon Mountain is a place we've gone back to a couple of times since the first time twenty years ago, including for some Wild Cave tours where we got all muddy after crawling around inside for hours! So there was a common thread on this trip of sharing some of the favorite places we'd gone with our daughter and sharing them with our husband, too.

Aside from that, these all kind of fit together with a theme of animals, and water, and caves. We had a living cave and cave that had been touched and decorated. There were waterfalls and pools in all of them. And animals - or at least gnomes - in all of them, too!

T is for Teach

Journal about each of your adventures and the steps you did above. Share your pictures, creations, guides, and journal entries with the troop or with some friends.

Well, this is my journal for this one, and I'll be putting these four patches onto my sash. I've put all the best photos - just a few from each adventure - in my google drive (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ooTu88mLj9Nbr02boRe7XNrc-lVseqqs