Getting Women Outdoors One Adventure at a Time

By Meredith Kay

When a “girls’ trip” includes rifles, shotguns, fishing gear, tents, and camo, you can bet that the girls on the trip are going to be adventurous and ready for anything. And more than likely, they are going to be from Texas.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Texas Women’s Outdoors (T.W.O.), an organization bringing together women of all ages and ethnicities with one steadfast thing in common, a love of the outdoors. What started as a simple Facebook post to see if there were any women interested in an all-female camping trip to Lake Whitney in 2021 during post-pandemic restlessness, Texas Women’s Outdoors has grown into a thriving organization that has attracted over 1,700 women across Texas, and beyond.

The group was started by Kelly Godfrey, who lives in Comanche with her husband, Jayme, and their two children, Johnathan, (5) and Katherine (3). Kelly was born in Katy and moved around the state with her family until settling in Comanche. She graduated from Tarleton State with a bachelor of science in Wildlife Management and Biology. Her love of the outdoors led to her career as a park ranger with the Army Corps of Engineers before deciding to stay home to care for her kids while her husband advanced in his career with Union Pacific Railroads, which often took him out of town.

Kelly feels it’s important to teach kids about the outdoors, conservation, and sustainable skills, but she missed the special camaraderie that comes from sharing outdoor adventures with other women. So, she reached out on social media, never imagining that the idea would spread so quickly and so positively. From that first camping trip, Kelly started a Facebook group and saw the membership continue to grow. When the group grew to several hundred ladies interested in communal outdoor adventures, Kelly made Texas Women’s Outdoors, L.L.C. official and started to charge registration fees to cover the costs of organizing outdoor adventure trips that are now open to any woman 18 years and older.