WI River Outings

It doesn’t matter if you’re renting canoes or doing a guided trip, all of these activities can help students understand that planning and logisitics are a big part of life.  Taking a canoe trip and not bringing enough food/sleeping bags/tents can make the trip quite uncomfortable for the person who doesn’t have what they need on the trip.

Pre Trip

• Ask students to first estimate answers to these questions and then "run-the-numbers" to see how close they actually came to the correct answer.

• How many participants (students/chaperones/teachers/guides/speakers) will there be on the trip?

• How many canoes will we need?  How many paddles, vests and dry bags?

• How many meals are we providing on any given day?  How many total lunches, dinners and breakfasts will there be?

• How will you estimate the amount of food you need to bring?

• How many tents will you need?

• Set up a budget of what the trip will cost and include the cost of the canoes, transportation to the river (fuel for family vehicles or charter a bus), food, guide and any meals not covered as part of the trip.

• What do participants need to pack?  How will you make sure they pack everything they need and not too much as space is limited?

During Trip

• What methods are you going to use to keep the group together?

• How will you insure everyone is accounted for at any given time?

• How will you handle responsibilities for preparing meals?  Clean up?  Camp set-up and tear down? 

Post Trip

• How did your budget work out?  Did you spend more or less?

• What do you need to plan for next time that you didn’t plan for this time?

• Was there anything that you neglected to bring on the trip that you’d recommend bringing next time?

• Prepare a Post Trip Report so that students and teachers will have the information from this trip as they plan next years trip.