Kickin’ into High Gear!

July 11, 2011 by

Pictures from July 11, 2011  (password required)

I can’t believe we’re already in week two!  We had a very busy weekend, and it seems like everyone is making the transition into an action-packed week without any trouble.  By the time I made it to breakfast this morning, the climbers and cavers had already eaten and were heading out for the day!  That’s just the start of all the trips going out this week – there will be climbing, paddling and mountain biking trips out every day, a couple of caving trips, and 3 multi-day hiking trips – not to mention all of the goodness going on in camp.

One of the places I spend most of my time is down at the swimming docks.  As you can imagine, there are some boys I get to know really well down there, and some I hardly ever see.  This year the swimming activity has more participants than I’ve ever had the privilege to teach at High Rocks (in my 7 years)!  I have all ages down there – from the littlest to the oldest in camp.  They all work so well together, and it is such a bright spot in my afternoon to spend time with them, watch them have fun and enjoy their goofy senses of humor. 

Free time and choice period are other great times of day down at the docks.  There are campers who frequent the area during those times even if they aren’t signed up for swimming as one of their activities.  Kids are always down there to play on the Rock-it, get a game of “Stars” (a movie trivia game) going in the deep end, play some water basketball or hunt down some fish with hand-held nets in the shallow end.  Mostly, I think it’s just a fun place for them to cool off and relax. 

We also have a number of campers doing tri-swims regularly, as a part of our Swim to Dolly’s Program.  A tri-swim is a long swim in the middle of the lake (250 yards, give or take).  If boys are interested in the long swims and challenge, but aren’t comfortable swimming in the middle of the lake, they can also do equivalent swims in the swimming area.  Anyone who wants to can come down and do one tri-swim a day – we keep track of how many they do, and if they complete 10 by the end of the session we take them to Dolly’s for an ice cream treat.  Not a bad deal!

Our forecast this week looks slightly less stormy than last week, which is encouraging.  Hopefully we’ll all be able to go full force in activities this week, but if we run into some storms we’ll take them in stride and do some fun alternative activities until the bad weather passes.  I hope you have beautiful weather wherever you’re spending your July – we’re enjoying our time here no matter what the weather brings!

Crystal Clusiau

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