Just Another Wednesday at Camp Kamaji
Today is Adventure Day. If you are a new Kamaji parent, you might be wondering, “What is Adventure Day?” Let us explain. Most days of the week, your daughter spends a good part of the day participating in four different instructional activities. Because campers are programmed into activities individually, they don’t often find themselves with their porchmates during the instructional times. That’s mostly a good thing. Through the instructional activity program, campers meet and get to know a lot of different people because of shared interests.
But we digress – back to Adventure Day . . .
On Adventure Day, the porch groups spend almost the entire day doing things together. After breakfast, the adventure begins with a big time cabin cleanup, including changing sheets and LAUNDRY. Imagine trying to collect the entire porch’s week’s worth of dirty clothes, towels, sheets, etc, putting everything in huge laundry bags and carrying the huge laundry bags to the laundry room. Whew! Talk about an adventure! Needless to say, this super cabin cleanup takes the campers and counselors a good portion of the morning. After an early picnic lunch, the porch groups head off for a variety of activities. Today’s adventures included a trip to Itasca State Park for the Nutshell (all three porches) as well as Cocoon and Tikinigan. Itasca State Park is the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River. Campers can actually walk across the river as it leaves Lake Itasca because the river is only about 7 feet wide. Lake Itasca is beautifully breathtaking . . . and there’s has a wonderful beach.
For those cabin groups who elected to stay in camp on Adventure Day, porch groups could choose to go waterskiing, sailing, climbing on the wall, horseback riding, swimming, and playing softball. Cabin 1 Porch 1 had the most unusual Adventure Day activity today. The spent an hour giving three of Kamaji’s Rainbow Boys extreme make-overs. (See picture immediately below.)
Adventure Day’s dinner is always a Rainbow Burger Bar-be-que. After dinner, all the porch groups worked on their projects for the big Kamaji Kraft Fair to be held next week. The second Adventure Day of second session was clearly a success.
Katie Thoresen, one of the counselors in Cabin 3 Porch 2, took her camera with her this afternoon and chronicled her porch group’s afternoon Adventure Day activities. Those pictures are on Smugmug.
Here’s some other headlines from the past week.
The Weather Report
In a word — “Great.” Temperatures remain near normal. That means highs near 80 degrees and lows near 60. Just like we advertised. We have had some rain, but the National Weather Service has officially classified them as “Camp Director’s Showers”. That’s a technical meteorological term for rain which occurs between 10 pm and 8 am. Let’s hope there is more of the same in the days to come.
From the Health Desk
The medical news during the past week has been mostly good. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been some colds, some bumps and bruises and a few rashes. The good news is that all of these ailments seem to take their course pretty quickly. Trust us, if your daughter has been treated for anything out of the ordinary, you would have received a call from us. No news on the health front is good news.
Last Saturday, our friends Drs. Jeff Neil and Terri Inder returned home to hot, humid St. Louis and were replaced by Adam Blonsky. Adam is a pediatrician from St. Charles, IL and dad to camper Jordan. This is Adam’s fourth rotation as Kamaji’s Camp Doc. Adam, Lynn, son Ben and daughter Olivia will be here until this coming Saturday, when Adam’s place will be taken by Alan Braverman, a cardiologist from St. Louis. This will be Alan’s 6th summer as the Kamaji Doc.
Trips, Trips and More Trips
Since our July 20th note, the Wilderness Trip Program has been running at full speed. Cocoon has completed their 3-day canoe trip to Lake Andrusia. Nutshell Porch 3 went on their 2-day Mississippi River trip and a combination of 4 week campers from Cabin 2 Porch 2 and Cabin on the Hill finished up their 3-day Crow Wing River trip. On Monday, Cabin 4 Porch 1 left for their 4-day trip to Voyageur’s National Park and Cabin 3 Porch 1 left for their three day trip to the source of the Upper Mississippi River.
Tuesday’s big Wilderness Trip event was the return of the Canadian trippers who completed their week long White Otter Wilderness Area trip in northwestern Ontario. It sounds as if they had a spectacular experience.
Today, Wednesday, the Hatchery girls headed off their big 2-day Adventure to Webster Lake and a group of eight lucky campers left for a three day rock climbing trip to the amazing North Shore of Lake Superior. Tomorrow Nutshell Porch 1 is scheduled to head to Webster Lake and a group of advanced riders will trot down the road for an horseback overnight. By the way, if you use the computer program “Google Earth”, you can visit all these places by clicking on the “My Places.kmz” . You can also get a birds-eye view of Camp Kamaji.
Well, that’s about all for Adventure Day. We hope your Wednesday was as full of adventure as ours.
Mike, Kathy and Kat