Camp Family

I've been going to camp for as long as I can remember.   My dad was a camper, then a CIT, and finally a camp dad at Becket YMCA camp in the Berkshires.  We went to family camp there the last week of summer for ten years when we were kids.  Slowly the group that we went with got bigger and bigger.  First we'd bring a cousin along with us.  Then the next year their whole family would come.  The following year they'd bring a friend and so on.   It was one of those places that once you went you couldn't stay away.

A few snapshots and slides from Becket family camp in the 70's 

Family camp was a week full of archery, four square, boating, sailing, fishing, woodworking, high ropes adventures, tennis, hiking, swimming and hanging with family and friends.  At night their were skits, square dances and just hanging out in your own cozy cabin or around the camp fire.  We even went in winter with a huge group of people from the town I grew up in and from one of my dad's life long friend's towns in Connecticut.  I whole group of us would head up and rent out a whole building.  Take over the bunk rooms and continue on with camp traditions of skits and games at night with all the generations mixed in.  It's where I got introduced to panty polo.  A game a young mind will never forget when seen played by the grandparents in the crowd.  Fun to see how much fun they were having!  During the days we ice-skated on the ponds, cross country skied and sledded and snowshoed all over the camp grounds.  One night the Massachusetts crowd cooked dinner and the next night the Connecticut crowd did.  My brother and I also attended month long camps there.  We each only went one year.  I guess we were more sold on family camp!

My girls have grown up loving camp as well.  We go every few years with my dad and my step-mom for their big milestone birthdays.   They pack us all up including 5 step-siblings and all 13 grandchildren.  We swap camps and go to my step-mom's Camp Arcadia in Maine some years and to my dad's Camp Becket in Massachusetts other years.  We love both camps equally and the girls love camp life.  Meals in the dining hall, kids activities, hanging with their cousins, arts and crafts and all the lake activities.  They love it all.

 

My oldest definitely has the camp bug.  She just looks so comfortable and at home there.  Last year she went to a soccer camp with a few friends but the 98 degree heat wave, tarred roofs next door to the un-airconditioned dorms, and lack of non-soccer related activities wasn't as fun as she'd hoped it would be!  She was yearning for real camp.  Lots of choices, activities and not more soccer in 4 days than you play in an entire season.  We signed her up for Camp Hayward.  Another YMCA but with 1 or 2 week sessions.  A camp I worked at in college and still remain in touch with the counselors I worked with that wonderful summer all those years ago.  She was so excited to go.  We went to the tour of the camp about a month before which gave her the lay of the land.  She decided it was somewhere in the middle of Arcadia and Becket in terms of size.  She got to see where all the activities, dining hall, and waterfront were.

Me on the right in college working (& playing) at Camp Hayward.  

When it came time to pack we decided she needed a camp trunk.  I asked my mom if she still had the one I took to camp in her attic (knowing full well she did!)  She said I could have it back as long as I took everything that was in it too.  Journals, old college papers, funny stuff!  We went to peel the pink and purple contact paper off it and found this.

My dad's label from when he went to camp.  How cool that she was taking the trunk her mom and uncle and even her grandfather had taken to camp before her.   I guess we are a camp family!  She was bursting with excitement the day she left.  It was a long drive from the cottage to the camp on the Cape.  She promised me she wouldn't be home sick.  "I'll be ok mom.  I love camp!" she reassured me on the drive there.  

We could email her letters while she was at camp which was easier from the cottage where we don't have a mailbox and the post office is a ten minute drive away.  It was fun to see pictures of her intermixed with all the other kids on the camp Facebook page.  Fun to see her smiling and having fun with new friends!  

Her dad did the drive down to get her. It's a long day and since she'd only gone for a week long session I didn't have time to forget how long that drive felt to do it again.  She was bursting with stories when she got in the car but then quickly fell asleep.  

The second she walked in the door I knew she'd grown.  She was exactly the same size as me.  She nodded and said "I did eat a LOT at camp!"  Glad she had so much fun!  She's already texting and planning visits with her cabin mates and they are talking about which session they will attend next year!