Week 9 - Summer 2008 Comes To A Close.

Camp Friendship’s summer 2008 season has now come to a close. Our final week of summer camp was a super fun and exciting week for all. This week was not only our final week of camp for our campers but also for the majority of our counselors. Some are staying behind to help us with Family Camp but most will be going back home and back to school for some. We wish them all well and thank them for a great summer.

Just because this was our final week there was no slow down here at Camp Friendship.

As always we enjoyed great activities, high spirits, and fun all around. To top it all off we also had a special Color Wars Olympic themed event on Wednesday. The competition covered water and land events all over camp for our teams, Blue, Red, and Green. Once everyone had enjoyed breakfast the competitions began with lake events for Junior team members and land events for our Senior team members.

After lunch the all-camp relay begun which covered a variety of obstacles and activities. The relay was completed on the lower field with a giant campfire built by the respective team captains (counselors). See photos on bunk1.com of many of the events during our Color Wars event. Evening activity continued the Color Wars theme at the drama theatre. The teams performed their team songs as the final event of the competitions and presentation of the team float.

It was a great experience for our campers and as always great fun for everyone.

As we closed out camp for the week and the season we enjoyed a final Friday night dance with some great costumes but the highlight was our final CAMPFIRE. The campfire consisted of some unique performances from our counselors and campers.

Mini Camp started the evening off with a classic camp performance of “Jigga” and invited everyone to join in. Many special song performances and some classics to remember the campfires that have passed. I took quite a few photos during the show so go check them out. Now that the summer has closed I hope to have a bit more time to upload some videos of the summer.

I have said this before but hopefully this time I can keep my word. Please be on the look out for those on our YouTube page in the coming weeks.

This is the final post for the summer of 2008 but rest assure I will still be here keeping you updated on what’s happening at Camp Friendship. After all this is my home all year long.

See you next soon.

Cris

Week 7 - We Waterski Too!

Week seven marked the end our final two week session of the summer but we still have two full weeks of camp left full of fabulous activities. This week we had some fun highlights such as the final Horse Show of the season. Our riding campers have been working very hard the past two weeks for the show and they all did beautifully. I had the pleasure of watching the show for about an hour and got some great photos of our riders during the show. Camp also had two Challenge Adventure Trips go out this week to West Virginia for our Horseback Trail Riding and Combo Challenges.

During the week our campers participated in many activities such as, fencing, dance, low & high ropes, mountain biking, mountain boarding, water polo, and so much more. One of our archery classes had a friendly little challenge going on when I visited them this week. I believe the boys vs girls archery challenge was a pretty close race by the time I left the range. The boys may have been ahead by a few points, but don’t tell the girls I told you that.

Our canoe class this week were practicing rescue procedures on the lake during my visit. It seemed like a wise lesson to cover to me. During the two canoe periods I visited, first the older campers were volunteering to be rescued while the campers/counselors in the canoe would perform the proper rescue procedures. Earlier Mini Camp had also enjoyed a similar volunteer session with their counselors.

Well that’s a small taste of what went on this week during some of our activities and as always there’s tons of photos on our site if you want to know more. However this week I finally got to go on our Waterskiing/Wakeboarding Sports Clinic on Lake Ana. I got to sit on the boat for a few hours, take some photos and watch our campers waterski and wakeboard to their hearts content.

It was great fun! I was very impressed with the campers skills on the water. We did have a couple of successful jumps on the wakeboard and a few wipeouts, but that’s all part of the challenge. We all had a great time on the lake, had a bit of sun and a few clouds but that didn’t stop us. I hope to join them again for some tubing in the coming weeks, if I’m lucky that is.

Well that takes care of this week, next week is our big soccer match against our neighbor camp TripleC camp and everyone is very excited. I unfortunately will not be able to attend so no photos from me but I’m sure I can round some up from all the other cameras that will undoubtedly be snapping away during the game.

See you next week.

Cris

Note: The week of August 3-9 we will only have one photo update on Wednesday the 6th and no update on Friday. We may have more photos for the session upon my return but they will not be uploaded until the following Monday. I’m sorry for the inconvenience and I hope you can understand.

Week 5 - A Beautiful Week!

As our second 2-week session comes a close we are happy to look back on another great week. This past week we enjoyed some very beautiful weather. There’s not much more one can ask for at camp than great weather. Last week we enjoyed great activities, evening activities, challenge adventure trips, and more. Some of the great activities enjoyed by all this week were, fencing, fishing, kayaking, dance, canoeing, archery, wilderness survival, pottery, and more.

Our Junior Villages this past week enjoyed some great evening activities. Slip ‘n’ Slide was the activity to beat for Junior Boys and Mini Camp this week. This evening activity was wet, soapy and lots of fun. I got to take a few photos of the event and it looked like a blast. My son tells me it was all kinds of fun.

Later in the week our Senior Villagers enjoyed nice cook-out on the beach on Friendship Lake. The Senior Villagers seemed to have a great time and a great meal created by our Senior Village counselors. It was a special concoction I did not have time to try myself. It seemed like a nice mixture of cheese beans, vegetables and corn chips. Now that’s a well balanced dinner!

A Basketball Tournament for the Junior Boys and a Pool Party for Riding Camp, Mini Camp, and Junior Girls was the evening activity on Thursday evening.

Just another great close to the day’s activities. Some great photos of these activities are on our site. I can absolutely attest to our campers love for jumping of the diving board.

Now the really highlight of the week was all-day Friday. We enjoyed our usual great variety of activities but we also had our second Horse Show of the season. Some of our parents stopped by to visit and watch the show. Our riding campers performed wonderfully. The tennis courts were enjoying a little tournament to real test the skills they’d learned all week. Campers enjoyed some one on one matches as well as some doubles against the counselors.

The Friday Night Dance themed “Jail House Rock” was great fun for all who attended. I got to see some interesting takes on the theme from all who dressed up. I have to say the most , umm, interesting were the Prison Bars costume. Just check out some of the photos to see them in action. Later on we headed to the Council Fire to close out the week and the session with a Camp Fire. We enjoyed some songs, skits, and a great time together.

We’ll see you next week.

Cris