2025, Gatherings, Kids, Uncategorized

Summer Camp

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I drive past the local college every day on my way to work. Yesterday I noticed quite a few school buses in the college parking lot, signs that the week long summer high school football camp was starting.

My agency used to be housed in a former dorm at the college, and the building overlooked the college practice field. We could watch and hear the 100 or so boys as they practiced their tackles and formations. I can’t imagine what the dorms and food service were like all week.

Our children attended music camps and Concordia Language Villages in the summer. We especially liked the Suzuki Camp our daughter attended in Montreal for a couple of summers, with an added benefit that we attended with her. I usually attended church camp a kid. Husband was a camp counselor for a couple of summers at a church camp near his home in Wisconsin. One highlight was the night the Grade 5 and Grade 6 boys in his cabin caught about 50 frogs and let them loose in the cabin. Ah, Youth!

Did you attend summer camp? How did you spend your time in the summer when you were a kid?

20 thoughts on “Summer Camp”

  1. Camps weren’t a thing when I was a kid. When school was out for the summer, kids just hung out. Bikes, skateboards, swimming pool, reading, park. All things I did, sometimes on my own but mostly with neighborhood friends.

    When YA was little she did a Harry Potter camp (which was a little disappointing), Girl Scout camp, gymnastics camp, zoo camp. She liked the gymnastics camp the best, although the two summers that she did Girl Scout horse camp were highlights as well. Once she was on the gymnastics team, the camp scene got cut back some, since gymnastics went all year round.

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  2. I have written before of the long history of my family and summer camps. I did attend a camp that belonged to the D M & I R Employees Association, which now belongs to a collection of Lutheran camps headquartered near Spicer. This is the first summer no member of my larger family has attended or worked there. Music plays a part. When Lily was 14 they told she could apply to be a counselor for the next summer. Guitar playing would help. With help from her father and UTube she became reasonably proficient and got the job. She still plays. Lily is serving her last summer as a counselor in Montana. My son-i-l was once director of a camp near Renee.
    Clyde

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  3. Summer was monsoon season in the Philippines. We ran around in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin, completely oblivious to the hardship suffered by those who did not live on high ground. We were kids. We had no idea.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I loved camps–I attended Camp Quest, a science camp, Church camp, as well as various 4H camps. I lived for these because they were time away from my bossy mom.

    Today I am going to Childhood Friends Camp for the weekend while Lou stays with my sister (“Away from Jacque” Camp).

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  5. I went to two summer camps – church camp, at Lake Okoboji (Iowa) when I was about 14. I remember making a friend, we exchanged a few letters later. And the director, when we were out on the lake, asked us to see if we could “find God” in the waves. I tried and tried, didn’t feel like I found him/her there. At dinner time, though, we sang together. One song, “Let Us Break Bread Together” brought me to tears every time. I realized much later that – I find my version of God when singing with others.

    And there was Y-teen Leadership Camp before my senior year when I was going to be Pres. – I really enjoyed that one, but no real stories.

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  6. My mom was a Grade 3 teacher, and spent her summers helping my dad out at his coffee shop. That left me at home by myself. It was in the summers I started cooking, since my mom didn’t cook much and I got bored with bologna sandwiches. I made my first real cream puffs when I was in Grade 5, complete with vanilla cream filling and topped with chocolate sauce. I rode my bike to the grocery store and bought cooking supplies with money out of a petty cash stash we had at home. I think I was in Grade 6 when I baked yeast bread from scratch the first time.

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  8. No summer camps for me, unless you count a week-long camping trip with my girl scout troupe when I was fifteen. We all boarded a bus together and drove to the campsite. We slept in tents of varying sizes, prepared and cooked our own meals over a campfire. In the evening we told ghost stories and sang together around the campfire. During the day we gathered wood, did chores, swam in the ocean – the campground was really close to the water – or went hiking in the woods. It was a lot of fun.

    Summer school and summer camps were not a thing where and when I grew up. Mostly we’d just hang around with neighborhood friends. We’d ride our bicycles, roller skate, play games, or go swimming. I was never bored, and enjoyed the freedom of just doing stuff with other kids. This was before any of us had television. I think the advent of TV really changed how children spent their time.

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  9. The only camp I attended during the summer was a week long church camp near Grantsburg, WI – three years of junior camp and three years of senior camp. There was daily church but we had lots of other activities including swimming, softball, and crafts.

    There were swimming lessons offered by a resort at a nearby lake. Nearly every kid in town signed up for these. We rode a school bus to the lake, had our one hour lesson plus some free swim time, spent our nickels and dimes on candy from the resort store (Turkish taffy, rainbow taffy, candy bars, bubble gum, etc), and rode home on the bus.

    The town offered a few other weekly scheduled activities. I took baton twirling lessons from one of the high school majorettes.

    The rest of the time was spent playing with neighborhood friends. Bike riding, backyard softball and badminton games, climbing trees, moonlight/starlight, tag, kick the can, etc. We used our imaginations a lot. Of course, this was in a town of about 500 people. Everybody knew everybody, nobody locked their house or car, you could drop your bike by the side of the road and pick it up hours later, and there was a nine o’clock curfew whistle (the fire alarm) to alert us it was time to go inside. I miss those days.

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  10. Until I was ten, I lived in a log cabin in the woods by a lake in northern Minnesota. Camp would have been superfluous. However, there was some kind of camp along the dirt road we lived on. It might have been a Bible camp, but the fascinating thing was that some of the buildings had a nursery-rhyme theme–one was shaped like an old-fashioned shoe, as in “the woman who lived in a shoe,” and another was shaped like a pumpkin. It’s so weird I sometimes wonder if I imagined it, because I can’t find anything about it online.

    When I was older, in Girl Scouts, I went camping a lot, but never to a Girl Scout camp. Sometimes we canoed, sometimes we camped at a horse farm and rode horses. I have many wonderful memories from those days.

    I finally got my chance to do camp when I was a leader for my son’s scouts den. It was wild. The weather was unbearably hot. My son picked up what he thought was a cold piece of charcoal and badly burned himself. Another kid sprayed a can of bug spray into the campfire and nearly set us all ablaze. I got lectured on the dangers of two-percent milk by one of the dads. At least I didn’t have to share a tent and the stargazing once the kids all settled down was amazing.

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      1. Wow that looks like a delightful camp. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in various friends’ cabins all over the Iron Range during the summer, I can imagine it as a magical place to grow up, though not without challenges.

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  11. I went to a Lutheran bible camp for a couple of summers when I was in my teens. I remember some of the songs we were taught by the camp counselors. Anyone recall singing Kum Ba Yah around a campfire?

    My family lived briefly at a YMCA camp when we were between houses, just before I started fifth grade. My parents were friends with the couple who ran the camp. I recall the bunk beds in the cabin, and the rustic showers.

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