1. Our Story

2. Troop 5000 always loved dolphins! The troop had many fund raisers to benefit wild life, especially marine animals! From Pedal for Penguins to Disco for Dolphins, our trips and events typically centered around the girls favorite animals!

3. Disco For Dolphins As mentioned earlier, troop 5000s love for dolphins started at an early age. When they started planning Disco for Dolphins, which happened to be their bronze award project, they realized they didnt want to just help some dolphin organization that they had no information about! They wanted to learn about: who they were actually helping, how they could accomplish that without it being dangerous, and why the dolphins needed help. The girls held 2 Disco for Dolphins; one to benefit the trip.

4. Dance Across the World and Kick it The girls also held fundraisers to promote good fitness habits as well as cultural experiences. Dance Across the World was one of the first fundraising events the girls held. Troop 5000 girls could take time to teach others about their hobbies. The event helped younger scouts learn about different dances all over the world. Kick it Across the world was the LAST fundraiser the girls held before leaving for the trip in mid June of 2013. It helped the smaller scouts learn about games of each country.

5. Turkey Trot The turkey trot 5k was one of the biggest fundraisers we had. The girls planned where to hold the event, made signs, and organized every aspect of the day. The girls got sponsors, donations, stood in front of stores, had Facebook contests, and hung flyers EVERYWHERE. They also made t- shirts.

6. The meeting before the trip.... We had a troop meeting to discover more about Learning Theory. We practiced training techniques by giving positive reinforcement if our pet rocks did what we asked. We also picked out the dolphins we were going to adopt. We then made grocery lists and went over the plan for the week of the big trip. 3 days before the trip, we also had another meeting to discuss the final details at Pizza Hut.

7. Plane Ride!!!!! The girls got together at 5:00 in the morning to catch their flight. The plane ride on the way there was about 2 and a half hours. The girls had more fun then the moms. This is from the actual flight.

8. Day 1 When we landed we crossed many long bridges as we were trying to look for a place to stop and eat lunch. We then arrived at our resort where we explored the pool, beach areas and our houses. They were lovely! An adult and two girl scouts went to the grocery store. As the rest of the girls had a blast in the salt water pool. We then unloaded all the groceries. We had cake that night to celebrate Darias 13 th birthday.

9. Day 2 - DRC Each day, one of the houses woke up extra early in the morning to prepare a breakfast for all the girls. After breakfast we all got in our cars and drove on over to the Dolphin Research Center. The girls took a tour of the DRC and learned about the skeletons of dolphins. W e also got to personally tell the dolphins what to do with a hand sign. Then, we did an experiment with a microphone where we got to hear the dolphins magical sounds underwater When we went back to the houses we all took a nice long nap. When we all woke up the girls were so excited to get in the pool. We ordered pizza by the pool and then had an ice cream bar. We all got showers and a nice dinner and off to bed.

10. Day 3 – DRC We got up and ate breakfast at the Jax house. Then we went to day 2 of DRC. When we got there the dolphins were waiting for us. We then separated into groups to swim with the dolphins. We danced, we sang, and we splashed around with all of our favorite dolphins. We also painted t-shirts with them. We used target poles to demonstrate how dolphins are trained little by little. After that we did hands on activities to demonstrate what we just learned Fun fact! The Difference between a dolphin and porpoise is their teeth.

11. Day 4 – Turtle Hospital/Snorkeling The girls got up excited to go to the turtle hospital. When we got there they showed some turtle awareness videos and then we took a tour. We liked seeing all the different turtles. Then we went straight over to the snorkeling company and got our snorkeling gear together and got on the boat. At first no one knew what they were doing since we were in open water that was 30 feet deep but we had life vests on so everyone was ok. We got in the water and we saw the beautiful fish, clear water, and reefs. We even saw an 8 foot bull shark, barracudas, and a 400 lb grouper! We ended the day with a nice end of trip dinner.

12. End Of the Trip To finish off the trip we drove about 45 minutes into Key West to go sightseeing. Even though it was very hot. We saw Ernest Hemingways house as well as the Southernmost Point in the US which is 90 miles from Cuba! The plane ride home was much longer than the first because we had to fly to Tampa, up to Albany and back to Baltimore. It was a total of 5 hours. But it was so worth it to be with our friends. Everyone agreed that they had learned so much and wanted to go back every year.

13. Extra Pictures…

14. Iguanas were everywhere!

16. Last Day at DRC!!!!

17. The End Thank you to everyone who helped out with the big trip!! We had so much fun and we learned so much!!! Here is the link to our website if you want to see more of our fun adventure www.dolphintrip.webstarts.com