Our family has been at family camp this past week. In case you haven't been to or heard of family camp before, it is a summer camp for families (ok, ok, you knew that part). Ours is up in the Sierra at about 5000 foot elevation. We camp in tent cabins (see picture), sleep in sleeping bags, go on long hikes, swim in the pool, make lanyards and hang with our friends. Our camp is called Camp Gold and we have been going to this same camp during the 7th week of summer for 14 years. The attractions are that the same people go every year at the same week of July and we do the exact same things at camp every year.
I am not kidding when I say EXACT same things each year. First off, 7th week turns out to be a popular week so it's hard to get into in the first place. And that means nobody ever leaves! Some families have been going to Camp Gold Seventh Week for
several generations! There are events every night, like music shows and talks and although some of the specific content changes, the order of the activities is always the same. The meals are almost identical from year to year: turkey dinner the first night, mexican enchiladas the third night, BLTs for lunch of the fifth day, strawberry pancakes the last breakfast, all so regular that I can now recite the menu for the week from memory!One drawback to such long standing traditions we found when we first started going to 7th week is that everybody already knew each other (it seemed like). So, how to break in and make friends? Soon it was discovered that we are a musical family and we were invited to join the Jug Band. This meant we had new musical friends and we got to perform in the Wednesday night show for the entire camp. After that four minutes of fame, everyone at camp knew us and had something to talk to us about. We have performed with the Jug Band every year since then.
As I'm writing this, Grace is reading over my shoulder. Now she says, "I want to go back and do the week over. " And I do understand. We all had a lot of fun this year at camp but Grace had her best time ever and a big success! I think I'll tell you more about that in another post.
4 comments:
Hurray!! Thanks for being a great team player Andrea!! :) I was beginning to think we should just scrap the idea, but I see it will hopefully be a gradual process of everyone coming out of the woodwork.
Sounds like you all are having a wonderful summer!
Waaaahhh,
I miss you Emma!!
You HAVE to visit us here,
the Icelandic currency is down so tickets should be really cheap!
I hope you can come!
P.S. We are planning to have a reunion ever 3 years.
Miss you too Boo! You need to post on here about all that you are doing in Iceland. Okay??
PS. I will try and visit you, I promise!
This looks like a lot fun. We did a lot of camping as a kid, but it was at various campsites with various people that we would meet up with, but nothing community centered like this. We had a boat though, so the added bonus of lakes was always nice.
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