Happy 4th of July in June

Happy 4th of July parents!!! Now don’t worry, this isn’t a blog that was already written and posted on the wrong date and it most definitely isn’t the 4th of July, except here at camp! Since 2nd session is always the 4th of July session but the numbers didn’t match up this year, we still wanted 2nd session to be 4th of July session so hey, you don’t have to have it be the real 4th of July to celebrate America!.

We started the day off the right way and thats with a little extra sleep! It sure paid off ‘cause everyone had an amazing amount of energy all day long. I honestly don’t know how your daughters do it. After a special flag raising where we had 2 of our very own campers sing an amazing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in front of the whole camp. What a super job they did too as every camper was giving them a standing “O” when they finished (and they deserved it too). After that it was time for breakfast and then off to get ready for our own parade of cabins and clubs through camp. There was patriotic music playing through all the speakers and highly decorated signs being marched through the parade by cabin and club members. Of course our horse barn staff was up front and center proudly flying our country’s colors as they lead the parade. If ya look through the pics from this morning you might even see some colonial counselors decked out in authentic gear. All the campers loved the parade as they were standing sitting and cheering from the side of our parade route and patiently waiting for the parade participants to throw some candy their way!

After the Parade it was time from some club meetings as our club leaders used their skills to get everyone in order for our Skyline Olympics in the afternoon. Something of this magnitude doesn’t just happen automatically, it takes the leadership qualities of our club leaders to get appropriate age groups signed up AND explain exactly what they would be doing for the olympics. Why did they have to do all this work before the Olympics even started you ask? I’m glad you asked…. The answer is simple. our Olympics were all over camp and when I say all over camp, thats exactly where they were. While one race may have started at one specific location, it ended somewhere else completely different and the next person from their club was waiting there to get “tagged” and then start their race to head off somewhere else. So when I say the Olympics were ALL OVER CAMP, thats exactly what I mean. It was really cool to watch sprinters run one direction past us and then have a camper on a mountain bike heading the other direction and then seeing once camper scamper up the tower when the bike with their club member got there. You could hear the cheers from all different paces and could only tell where they were by the direction of the cheers from all the other campers. It was pretty cool hearing the cheers get closer to us and knowing the racers were about to come by even though we couldn’t see them yet. Not all relays had the campers out of sight as we still got to enjoy some good old fashioned relays like the 3 legged relay, the wet sponge over under relay, and more. You’ll tire yourself out just trying to keep up looking through all the pics and there’s plenty of them to go through.

Through all of the excitement of todays action I somehow misplaced my notes from the who did what but I do remember this part. Troopers won the Olympics!!

After the olympics it was flag lowering where we had one of our very special people here at camp lead the flag lowering process. If you’ve looked at any of the cave and rappelling pics, yo may have noticed a very fit young man in some of the pics (spoiler alert… it ain’t me!). Its our Camp Mom’s very own son, Specialist Cooper Lindsey who’s on leave from the Army and returned to help instruct our CSR class this session. While the campers were lowering and folding the flag, Cooper read aloud the meaning of each of the 13 folds of our American flag. I usually do this on this special day but it was an honor to have him here and lead this process.

After an early picnic dinner on the grounds that consisted of what is hands down the best hotdog in the country, the famous Costco dog. It was time for everyone to get in their clubs and head to the pool for tonights challenge of the camp swimmeet. There were some traditional water races and then some not so traditional races. One thing is for sure, there was plenty more of the traditional cheering and yelling for each of their club mates throughout the whole time. Remember that opening paragraph where I said the extra hour of sleep apparently super charged them all day?? They were still going strong through 2+ hours of Olympics and even well past dinner. That energizer bunny doesn’t have anything on these girls. Its like they were sponsored by Red Bull….. it gave them wings

I did manage to keep all my notes from swimmeet so after all the racing, cheering, shouting and singing, the final results were……. Rangers 3rd, Troopers 2nd and the Mighty Mounties 1st!!!