Opening day on Lookout Mountain
Well hellooo parents and welcome to our camp news or blog as they call it now. This is where you’ll find all the information about whats happening here on top of Lookout Mountain while your daughters are here at camp. I’ll try my best to explain some of the pictures I’m sure you see through our photo partner Waldo photos. I’ll give ya a little more info about Waldo in a few minutes. I hope everyone was able to make it through check in this morning without and problems despite the on and off again little showers. They continued through the morning and then this afternoon it was nothing but sun and fun.
Right after everyone left today, (and some of y’all took a little longer than others……just sayin), all the campers got right to playing some “get to know ya” games with all their new friends in there cabin. Once everyone got to know all their new cabin mates, it was time to come to the gym by groups (age groups) and start signing up for their activities for the next two weeks and see which club they will be in. Once they were finished with that it was time for a camp tour so everyone would know not only where they are but where all the important parts of camp are like the dinning hall (my personal favorite), Beli Deli (the camp snack store), T shirt corral, and of course the horse barn, pool, archery and all the other activities. Its good to know where those things are cause we don’t want anyone getting lost up here.
After lunch it was time for their first club meeting. This is an important meeting where they’ll pick their club leaders. Now if this is your daughters first time at Camp Skyline let me explain the whole club thing to ya. Number 1, they take their clubs serious so make sure you remember what I’m sayin. When you look at the cabin and club pics from today be sure to look and see what color shirt your camper is wearing. If its red, then they’re a Mounty, if it’s blue, they’re a Ranger and if it’s green, then they are a Trooper. Once the girls are in a club, they are in it for life. We have several alumnae in their 70’s and they still hold their clubs near to their heart.These girls will be competing for their clubs over the next 2 weeks in everything you can imagine. If you haven’t seen the club pics online then no worries, you’ll be getting a letter mailed home and it will have all your campers activities as well as which club they’re in. Now don’t go running out to the mailbox and waste time waiting on that letter to arrive. Not that you don’t want too, it’s just that sometimes the mail up here on the mountain can be about as fast as a heard of turtles stampeding through peanut butter so you’ll just be wasting time if ya run out there now. Give it a few days or three.
One thing you’ll love is our picture program “Waldo”. You should have gotten an email a few days ago from our office that had your join code and instructions to use Waldo. You’ll have the option of having Waldo find every picture of your camper and then magically send them to your phone as soon as they’re posted. This is done through an agreement with Waldo where they charge a small fee for the facial recognition. You can still see all the pics everyday (there will be 300-500 pics per day) if you’d like, Waldo just makes it easier for you to see your camper faster.
If you don’t want to use the facial recognition, no problem. Just follow the direction in the email to have access to every picture for free. Either way is fine, it’s up to you as to which way you want to view the pics.
Waldo also offers a “Waldogram” where you can send 2 color pictures and a short message to your camper. On your phone just click the “shop” button on the bottom right corner. Then click “Waldogram”. At the top of the page you’ll see “Send your campers a card today”, click that choose your camper and then put in three cabin name. You then can choose 2 pics to put in the Waldogram and type a short message.
The Waldograms and camper email will both be downloaded each day around 9:30 central time. They’ll be printed and delivered to your camper at lunch time with the regular mail. Here’s a pro tip for ya. Since the emails are delivered only once a day, if your the kinda person that likes to send a bunch of “just thinking about ya’ or “we saw a picture of you”, etc… you get the idea…. just type those all into a word document and then paste them all onto 1 email. Each email cost $1 each and is charged to your campers spending account so get all the short emails into 1 so you only pay once. You don’t want to be the cause of them going through their spending money.
Now back to today, after dinner it was time for Cabin Fun Night where each cabin got to choose what activity they wanted to do together for the night, This gives ‘em a little more time to know one another all during the first day (and if ya can’t tell, its been a busy day with games, pictures, swim test, club meetings and more…). Some of tonights activities were, of course, spa night (pretty sure thats always gonna happen at an all girls camp)shaving cream wars (it’ll take a while before I can get the smell of shaving cream out of the grass), slip and slides, scavenger hunt, hungry hungry hippo (human version), pool night, kickball and karaoke. You can see for yourself there was all sorts of action tonight that made for a great first day of camp.
Each cabin also took turns coming by the campfire for some good ol fashions S’mores. Can ya think of a better way to end the first day?
After all the activities were finished, everyone came back to the campfire for our first devotion. This is the only campfire of the sesion where we have the whole camp at one. After this, they’ll be split up for one campfire on the younger girls side of camp and one on the older girls side. This just make it better for everyone when they can split the devotions accoring to age. Of course the girls on the older side of camp (Riverside and SUmmerplace) get to stay up a little later for there campfire so that makes it a little more special.
By now all the campers are fast asleep (I wish I was…) and getting ready for tomorrow’s first day of activities. We’ll have our photographers and videographers out there catching all the action for ya. You can see the video 1 of 3 ways, at the end of the blog, on our youtube channel (there’s a link at the top of the page) or through the “MY CSR” link at the top of the webpage. MY CSR page will also have the link to the pics, camper email and daily videos and everything else you could possibly want while your camper is here. Be sure to check it out.
Well, like I said, it’s been a busy day so I’m gonna head off and get some sleep so I can try to keep up with all the campers tomorrow. You guys do the same. We’ve only started and still have a long way to go.
We’ll be back here tomorrow and I’m sure you will too so we’ll see ya then!
Have a great night….. I’m about too
LJ
