My youngest daughter is away at String Camp this week and I’m locked in my bedroom working, under deadline crunch.
Which means I really don’t have a great blog planned for today. So tell me about your best and/or worst camp experience, either as a kid or as a parent. Or if either of these “camp” movies rings true for you 🙂
A random commenter will get…all the fixin’s for S’mores 🙂
Was off at camp in the mountains in Catalonia (we were living in Madrid at the time) when there was a massive forest fire (Spain is very prone to those in summer) and we had to be evacuated. The best part is that we spent the night like refugees in a gymnasium in some tiny town in Tarragona, and ended up spending the remaining two weeks of camp in tents just off the beach. The Costa Brava has some nice beaches! I must’ve been about 8 or 9, so it was all doubly exciting 🙂
Lori, I never got to go to summer camp. I grew up on a farm so there were chores to do all summer. But my younger and brother and I had adventures all summer long right at home!
I never went to summer camp. We had a cottage on Cape Cod, so that’s where we spent every summer. I was at the beach most days, so I really can’t complain!
Count me as one of the unloved, too. Never went to camp (my parents didn’t “believe in it” – that’s a quote) and remember being very jealous of kids who did. So I’m going to love these stories and live through them vicariously! xo
I never went to camp but I did go camping with the girl scouts. I have to say I was not a fan of tent camping since it rained and our tent leaked.
Camp was something I had to endure. I hated it and lost my sleeping bag there, was not a good camper nor an athlete. I vowed never to return and didn’t. COnditions were not my favorite, activities not my interest. I had to be rescued.
Our worst camp experience as parents was when we sent our outgoing, athletic son to soccer camp, and he got homesick. Thankfully, the camp didn’t last too long…and he did pick up some good soccer pointers.
Good luck with your deadline work.
I went to church camp as a kid and learned to dance the cha-cha to La Bamba. Had a blast.
My kids went to camp Deer Run in Texas and have friends and memories still from that time. They loved it, so good experiences for us.
My mother, as a teacher, worked on her advanced degrees during the summer (and to get student tickets for the college football season-lol) so I was shipped out almost every summer since my dad and older brother didn’t quite know what to di with me.
When I was 13, I went to Camp Nagawicka in Wisconsin. *pauses to look up spelling* OMG! There’s a campers alumni association. (The camp closed in 1970) *DIES* *Ahem* Sorry. Anyway, I decided that to be one of the in crowd, I needed to pierce my ears. My camp counselor did the deed with ice cubes and a needle. My dad sent me some 14K gold earrings that were blue butterflies. I was So Cool(tm).
The Only just went to girl scout camp, and baseball/softball camps. There are stories there, too, but I won’t bore. LOL
The year after graduating high school, I worked as a councilor for a Girl Scout Camp. Durning that time, we had so much trouble with the staff that I was constantly moved around from one place to the other. No one else was willing to move, so I was the one that had to pack up my trunk and haul it all across camp every few days. About halfway through the summer, we lost one of our 8yr old campers. Spend well into the night searching for her all over, to finally find her hiding in the pantry of the dining hall, asleep with cookie crumbs on her. Apparently at home, she wasn’t allowed to have any junk food, so she went on a binge. You had to have a key to get into the pantry, so no one was sure how she actually got in there. I have a lot of stories from that summer, that is only one. Some would make you think twice about having kids. That I can guarantee.
I went to a camp in the Rockies, nestled at the foot of Mt. Columbia – one of the Collegate Peaks. It was Camp-Awesomesauce!
I was raised by the bestest mom ever and even though she was a single parent, she always found a way to get me there every year.
I wasn’t the homesick kid – crying my eyes out for two weeks straight. Summer camp was a little piece of heaven. I spent two weeks going on 3-day horse/pack trips, playing capture the flag on horseback, hiking (which I suck at, but still love), canoeing, white-water rafting, dances, campfires, ropes course (I also sucked at it) and learning a lot about God. It was away from school and my brothers and just everything.
A couple of years ago, I got a chance to send my kids to the same camp and go as a bunkhouse mom. Unfortunately, my children didn’t LOVE it as much as I did. 🙁
That’s okay. My kids camp and hike and hunt with my husband (sometimes I go too – as long as I don’t have to touch anything dead).
Honestly, I think camp saved me from becoming a “bad girl.”
i never went away to camp but when i was growing up there were 7 kids and we went camping most weekends as a family so it was still a lot of fun.
I went to camp in the Texas Hill Country. My favorite memories were the Breakfast Ride, when we rode horses had had breakfast around a campfire, and Canoe Trip, when we spent a day canoing down the Guadalupe River.
I led a deprived youth, no summer camp for me.
Wasn’t necessary since that’s the vacation we could afford. Packed up the family (6), dog, 2 cats, and the camping equipment and hit the national parks and landmarks. Always, always in the hottest month of the year, August. Now it seems slightly nostalgic, but then I hated it and couldn’t wait to bail when I hit 16. It got slightly better when the station wagon finally had a/c.
a friend told me about this one camp she went every summer so she took me as her guest….she always talked about the boys at the camp across the lake…well a fire gutted their camp so lets just say all the teenage gals were trying to leave camp early…parents were called for an epidemic of sickness that was all in our heads/hearts (no boys *sigh*now that i think about it it was really quite funny…first & only camp experience
I never went to camp when I was growing up. I think I only sent my son to camp one time and he really enjoyed it. Everything went well.
Loved summer camp. Went every year 5-12 grade.
Meatballs-that was such a fun movie. Sing wtih me..”We are the Northstar C I T’s so pity us, the kids are brats the food is hideous….
Why do I still need to know the words to their song???
No camp for me either. OK i did go to cheerleading camp for 3 days and 4-H camp that was just overnight. If those count. I just remember being tired and hot though. lol Meatballs is a classic movie though. I remember watching that one years ago. Haven’t seen it in ages. Even my kids have seen it though. I might have to go rent that if i can find it still.
Lisa B
Well, there was the summer when I went to one week-long church camp, my older sister went to another, my brother was at Boy Scout camp and my father was running a third church camp.
My mom (with two kids left at home — fifth grade and 5-year-old) moved.
She said it was the easiest move she ever had. No one argued with her .
We all came back to a new house in a new town (well, in the country actually).
When my son did scouts I did the summer camp thing. I baked all day and ate like nothing. By 4 o’clock I had a whopper of a headache. Now, you can’t just take something. You have to get another leader to watch your boys, go to the infirmary, and get a pill that they watch you take. So the lady I’m co-leading with says she does acupressure. I think, what the heck. She pushes on these two bumps on the back of my head. It ached for like 2 minutes and my headache was gone.
My brother and sister loved every minute of camp (the good news). So, no big deal for me to join them. Except, the first day, a horsefly caused my ride to buck. The second, I tried to make friends, but the horses started fighting over my carrots–kicking with me between them. The third day, class went fine but the horse broke for the barn, with me clinging all the way back. I’m not sure there was a fourth day. If so, no horses participated.
When I was in 6th grade I went to “patrol camp”…..for all the 6th graders who were in the school patrol at their respective schools. At patrol camp they acually had a candy store. If your parents bought you a card before camp, you would take the card with you to the school and get candy and the counselors there would punch your card until it the “money” on the card ran out. It was awesome. We went to that candy store many times each day. I loved the chocolates, and my best friend loved the lemon drops.
I went to Summer Bible Camp so I don’t think the movies really relate to my experiences! But I think Meatballs is a classic. Or American Pie!
I went to a local Co-ed sports camp ran by college students. It was interesting to say the least, I believe I learned more about kissing and what happened behind close doors then I did about any sports. I actually walked in on both my camp leaders having sex inside a closet. The next day something went wrong and she told the Camp Head Leader what had happened and we got new Camp leaders because the 2 were fired.
DOES SITTING ON A CAR HOOD ALL NIGHT AT THE LAKE COUNT S CAMPING? LOL TAHT TO ME WAS THE ONLY WAY I WOULD CAMP, UP OFF THE GROUND AND SNAKES
I never went to camp but both of my daughters did, and for the most part had a pretty good time. But the first year she went, my older girl had a terrible bout of homesickness and her letters home were just a litany of misery, culminating in one with several splotches on the page which she had circled, and noted “these are my tears”. My husband practically had to restrain me from driving up north to rescue the poor little darling, and then, when we picked her up at the end of her stay she sunnily told us she’d had a fabulous time and couldn’t wait to go again the following year!