About

Hi, my name is Paul Lanzi and I am the creator of Camping Arrow. I created this site as part of my Wood Badge ticket item, and I hope that it serves as a valuable and useful resource for those scout leaders looking to book outings, full of fun and adventure.

When I was a young scout and Secretary of Orca Lodge #194, one of my jobs was to publish and help maintain our Where To Go Camping Guide. I believe that, at the time, most Order of the Arrow Lodges published similar guides. These guides were used by scout leaders, both in the local area and those open to traveling to our area, to find and book camping destinations for their Troops, Posts, Clubs and Crews. Certainly Cub Scout Packs also used these guides. When Order of the Arrow pivoted from being Scouting's National Camping Society to being Scouting's National Honor Society, many lodges stopped maintaining and publishing these useful guides. When I did my DYLC training in 2021, I met scouters from my neighboring Councils who were still trying to maintain some version of these documents. We gathered a few times after DYLC to see if we could create a combination guide, but too many busy scouters does not a project make :)

Fast forward to 2023 when, as an Eagle Patrol member of Wood Badge 3-23-23-2, I found myself sitting at a picnic table under the shade of a redwood tree on a beautiful fall day. I had decided that my Wood Badge ticket theme would be: making my District (Golden Gate District -- San Francisco and a slice of Daly City) a more interconnected District. Our District is a bit unique in that we're bordered to the north by Marin Council, and to the south by Pacific Skyline Council. I wanted to increase the connectivity between us and those two Councils -- including in sharing resources like Merit Badge Counselors and knowledge of the best camping sites. That's how the idea for Camping Arrow was born.

Over the next year, I gathered all of the Where to Go Camping guides I could find, and clobbered them into a single Google Sheet. My son and I took turns doing our best to update, cleanse and standardize the data. Now, Camping Arrow has nearly 200 sites, with an outsize number of them focused on Group Camping opportunities for units. My hope is that the Lodges from Marin, Golden Gate Area, Pacific Skyline and Silicon Valley Monterey Bay Councils will step up to help update, correct and enrich the information about the camping destinations inside of their geographic footprints. In this way, I hope that Camping Arrow will fill the gap left by the departure of the Where To Go Camping Guides, and once again position our Order of the Arrow lodges as a key part of the camping experience for all scouting units.