Fantastic Friday
July 8, 2016 by Don Gentle
Today’s Pictures
Friday’s are fantastic for most everyone. Camp is the same way. With many of our campers heading out on trips during the week, there is a lot of coming and going. On Friday, everyone is back in camp! It adds a whole lot of excitement coming into the weekend. What a few days we have already had. The weather has been fantastic these past few days. It was pretty warm, even for us. The stout breeze, however, made for wonderful weather with partly cloudy skies all day.
It is pretty neat to see these guys get into “camp” shape. Not that these boys are in bad shape, they just have not been this busy, or as intense for this many days in a row. Life at camp requires a few days to get your body into shape. Of course, there is the wake-up and sleep schedule, but it is also all the walking that just happens getting from one place to the next. My Fitbit hits ten thousand steps by 11 a.m., and I’m not as busy as these guys. The activities build strength and train for balance that we have not even mentioned. Anyhow, the boys appear to be working into camp shape nicely. I base it mostly on the amount of food they are consuming. One father said to me once “the fact that you feed my son for a month is enough for the cost. They do eat a lot, and we enjoy feeding them.
Speaking of camp shape. I have been quite impressed with the mountain bikers lately. Mountain biking is probably one of the newest programs for camp. Even though it is over twenty years ago when we first started hosting it here at High Rocks, mountain biking is a child compared to the likes of hiking and swimming. It is also one of the biggest calorie burners for these boys. We spend a few days warming up to the hills, bikes, and terrain. Most of the boys are hitting the trails quite regularly. We are so fortunate to have not just the 15 miles of trails here, but the more remarkable 10,000 acres of DuPont just minutes from our parking lot. We can be over to their machine built trails fast enough to put in a morning trip that wears the boys out by lunch. Just in time to head back to camp and eat! It sure is cool to see these guys build their biking skills. Our staff does an incredible job of teaching and describing all the small pats that go into good mountain biking skills. It is really incredible how they can verbalize and identify what you are doing on your bike and how you can do it better. I’m so glad the boys have the opportunity to do it here.
On a side note, if you were having trouble emailing us today, we apologize. There were some server updates with our hosting that may have given you an “undeliverable” response. It looks like everything appears to be sorted at this point. Just send off those emails again and we will get it sorted.
Our evening program consisted of some dodge ball, rope swing, water slide, canoe fill-ups, and something crazy on the activity field. We wore the boys out just in time for snack on the lawn. The rain came in just after everyone returned to their cabins. We could not have timed it any better. Have a wonderful night. I hope your Saturday brings you as much joy as it will for us here on The Rock!
All the best,
Don