Entrance to Mountain Meadow Ranch
First week of camp is officially over, and it came to a really smooth conclusion, which I'll talk about later. First, I would like to present a general camp schedule. It is so:
7:10 AM Wake up, wash up, clean up.
7:50 Walk down to breakfast line at 1st bell
8:00 2nd bell, begin eating
9:30ish 1st activity period. Campers and counselors gather at the campfire and pick kids for their activities. I run paintball and riflery. Both activities finish early because the kids only get so many shells/paintballs. After they finish, I have been going back and playing soccer tennis, doing the slackline, and going to the pool, basically playing with the kids until lunch time.
12 noon Lunch (same dual bell system)
1:30-2:45 PM Rest period. I usually nap, refill CO2 tanks, or call the Spanish Embassy during this break.
2:45 PM 2nd activity period. Same deal as the 1st, except we play until dinner time.
6:00 Dinner (with bells)
7:30 Any number of evening activities which include 3-ball soccer, Olympics, color wars, capture the flag, counselor hunt (hide and seek), and story time.
9:00 Back to cabins.
10:00 Lights out. Counselors are free to leave to the lounge in the dining hall to update blogs.
So that is a typical day at camp. However sometimes we do other things. On Tuesday we had our overnight hike and camp. The guys and girls hike to separate camp sites and brave the elements for an evening. We cook hotdogs and beans, smores, pancakes, and hot coco for the two meals and late evening campfire snack. I had a really fun time climibing some amazing rocks with the kids.
We walked across the great fallen tree.
Cool endangered plant.
We, however, did not make it through the night. It started raining. Counselors spread tarps over the kids, hoping for the rain to pass and hold out for the night. However, lightning started hitting very, very close, and with the dry climate, the risk of being trapped by a forest fire meant that vans were sent to pick us up. Since all the girls were picked up first, the male counselors lead companies of campers down the mountain in the middle of a storm, through mud and rain. Those guys must have felt like they were the manliest 9-16 year-olds in existence. Their attitudes (helped along by enthusiastic staff) really made what was a horrible situation into an amazingly memorable night.
Some other days are a little different, too. For example, in addition to rest periods and relaxing time after lights out, each counselor gets 24 consecutive hours off per week. I left on Friday at 6 PM and got back Saturday at 5 PM. Here's what we did.
11 of us piled into cars to go eat buy some groceries at Safeway and then eat at Buffalo Chip's:
It was pretty darn delicious. After dinner we were tired so half of us crashed at someone's house and the other half split a motel room. Dan (Las Vegas), Alan (Scotland), Katie (CA), Ashley (CA) and I stayed at a cheap little place. Dan, Alan and I stayed up quite late talking about life. It was really nice to get to know them better. The following morning, we stopped to get some breakfast. I got a peach, banana, and strawberry smoothie. After breakfast, we headed over to Lake Almanor to hang out at the beach and relax. We were armed with food and relaxing music. The other half of counselors met us there after an hour or so (and brought us sunscreen. My feet and back got burned good, though).
Lemonade + sun. It makes sense that I'm on the Yellow team for color wars.
Lake Almanor.
I am really excited for Sunday. The plan is to sleep in an extra hour and get breakfast at 9 AM, then take a walk out to the rock pile to practice our skit for the Sunday night show. Each cabin performs a short sketch in front of the whole camp. Ours is called "Pun-ishment: A Word Play." Here is our practice destination.
California dreamin
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