I’ve got a new free download to share that I’m really excited about! Joy’s a Webelos in Cub Scouts this year, and her den leader mentioned to a couple of us parents that he was looking to make a mini hiking notebook for the scouts to take on their adventure.

I’m taking a very laid-back role in scouting this year as it’ll be our last, and life is just life.

But looking at his example for 5 seconds, I knew this was something that was absolutely in my design wheelhouse that I could take care of quickly, where another parent without Illustrator might take much much longer trying to figure it out in Canva. And if you need a hiking notebook for your outdoorsy kids, you don’t even have to spend time designing it! Just grab this free download and you’re good to go:

This free download is set up to print on legal-size (14″w x 8.5″h) paper. You could scale it down on printing so the hiking notebook fits on letter-size paper, but this is for kids and that might make the pages way too tiny for them to write on.

How to Assemble Your Hiking Notebook Free Download

1. Once you print this free download out, you’ll cut out the big outer rectangle and discard the white space around it.
2. Fold along the center line and open.
3. On the reverse side of the paper, apply glue around the edges, along the center fold, and a few other places to make sure the two long halves stick together nice and secure.
4. Fold along the center line again, gluing the two long halves together.
5. Use a bone folder, (or other rigid flat tool like a lego piece, ruler, or debit card) to make that fold nice and crisp. Also smooth out any bumps in the paper from chunky glue stick bits.
6. Fold page 12 up to meet the fold line at the bottom of page 11.
7. Continue rolling the paper up from there, bringing each roll up to meet the folding line.
8. Your book ends with the “Hike / Date” page as the front cover, and the “My Favorite Part of This Hike” as the back cover.

I hope that was clear enough instructions! If you need a little more visual guidance, I uploaded this tutorial to youtube: