Once or twice a year, the pack gets together for an overnight event  at a local campground. In many cases, this is the first opportunity for a scout (and their family) to even experience camping, so we do our best to make it as easy as possible.

Typically, the pack will provide dinner (hamburgers and hot dogs), and reach out to the rest of the pack to bring side dishes, drinks, and deserts. We'll have a day of activities, some at the pack level, some at the Den level, and some simply open play. The kids love to run around, explore the woods, look for bugs and frogs, and play games all day long.

Then after dinner, we have a campfire program! Filled with skits, songs, and all the zany antics you'd expect from a pack of crazy kids, the campfire is a chance for all scouts to get up and be silly with their friends.

After the campfire program, we often roast marshmallows and have s'mores, then everyone settles down for a quiet night in tents they brought and pitched themselves. Not all families will spend the night, and many leave after the campfire is done. The next morning, we have a quick breakfast (like donuts), pack up, and leave the campsite cleaner than we found it.

To help keep things easy on busy families (especially when sports are in session), we try to make sure the campsite is a short drive away (we try to keep it under an hour). In recent years, we've camped at:

• Pohick Bay Campground
• Burke Lake Park
• Camp Snyder (a BSA scout camp in Haymarket)
• Camp Wilson (a county park next to Pohick Bay park near Fort Belvoir, dedicated to youth groups)
• Bull Run Regional Park
• Lake Fairfax Park

The pack tries to hold a fall campout in October and a spring campout in April or May every year.  During the Covid-19 pandemic we held backyard campouts with zoom and held virtual campfires with scavenger hunts and trivia games for the scouts.