The badges live on a strip of blue felt that Maya thumbtacked to the wall above her desk. Six are hers, lined up in the order she earned them, each with a date on a tiny strip of masking tape underneath. Nico's five live in an old mint tin, except when they live on his shirt, his backpack or, one night, his pajamas. That's eleven Junior Ranger badges between them, and all of them together cost us less than one stuffed bear from a visitor center gift shop.
How the booklets work
At the national parks we've visited, it goes roughly like this. You ask at the visitor center desk for a Junior Ranger booklet. Most have been free. The exception for us was the Smokies, where the booklets cost a couple of dollars each. Inside are activities by age: word searches and drawing for the youngest kids, more reading and writing as they get older, and a note telling each age group how many pages to finish. Most booklets also ask kids to do something in the park, like go to a ranger talk, walk a trail or pick up a bag of trash.
When the booklet is done, you bring it back to the desk. A ranger flips through it, asks a few questions, has the kid raise a right hand and repeat an oath, and hands over a badge. The whole ceremony takes about three minutes, unless you have a Nico.
Florida state parks have been less predictable for us. Some ranger stations had activity booklets ready. At one we printed a booklet at home the night before. At another, a ranger asked the kids a few questions about what they'd seen on the trail and gave them each a badge on the spot. We just ask at the ranger station when we check in now.
Where the eleven came from
- Everglades: both kids, at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center on the way to Long Pine Key.
- Biscayne: both kids, on a Saturday morning. It's close enough to our house that it barely counts as a trip.
- Great Smoky Mountains: both kids, at Sugarlands in June, with the booklets finished on rainy afternoons in the tent at Elkmont.
- Florida state parks: three for Maya, two for Nico.
The missing state park badge is from spring break 2024 at Jonathan Dickinson. Nico was four. He was much more interested in a gopher tortoise burrow than in a booklet, and nobody had the heart to sit him down at a picnic table. Maya has offered to "tutor him" if we ever go back. He has declined.
The oath, Nico style
Maya treats the booklet like homework she happens to love. She reads every page, does the activities for the age group above hers and asks rangers follow-up questions about sea turtles, even in the mountains.
Nico treats the oath like a coronation. He takes his hat off. He raises his right hand so high that he tips sideways. He repeats each line slowly and loudly, about half a second behind the ranger, like a ship's captain taking command in front of a crowd. At Sugarlands in June, a family in line behind us clapped when he finished, and he bowed. That badge stayed pinned on him until we got home.
What I like is that the oath means something to him. The versions we've heard include a promise to protect the park and keep learning about it. Since June, Nico has picked up other people's trash at two parks and one Publix parking lot, and he informed a teenager at Tropical Park that rangers don't allow littering. I don't think the program was written with six-year-old enforcement in mind, but here we are.
Why it's our favorite souvenir
Gift shop money goes fast. On the Smokies trip, our souvenirs, tolls and odds and ends came to $172 in the trip log. The Junior Ranger booklets, a few dollars buried in the attractions line, were the only part of our spending I didn't second-guess. A badge costs nothing or close to it, takes up no room in the car, and comes with an hour or two of the kids actually paying attention to where they are. Maya's Smokies booklet had a page on salamanders, and she has corrected me on the difference between a salamander and a lizard about once a week since.
A few habits we've settled into:
- Pick up the booklets on the first day, not the last, so there's time to finish without a meltdown.
- Check the visitor center hours. We once reached a desk at 4:52 for a 5 p.m. close, and a very kind ranger swore in two sweaty kids at top speed.
- Let the kids do the work. Maya helps Nico with the reading, but nobody fills in his answers.
- Keep a pencil in the glove box next to the trip log. Every booklet assumes you have one, and for a long time we never did.
Last week Nico asked whether grown-ups can be Junior Rangers. I told him I'm probably too old. He looked at me for a long moment and said rangers don't allow fibbing.
