New Years Camp

New Year’s Camp was a big hit all around. Campers and staff enjoyed our traditional camp programs as well as some special New Year’s Camp activities.

Archery, Canoeing, GEEP, and art merged classic summer camp with the winter time fun. Our campers also enjoyed our ropes course, with a lot of time on Low Ropes. Some campers even attempted the Wall for the first time with the help and support of everyone. High ropes was a blast, as always, and later in the week we had some first time Tower climbers.

One of the highlights was Footprints. Since we were in the Christmas season, we sang Christmas songs, played reindeer games, and wrote letters to residents of Still Hopes Retirement Community. After dinner on New Year’s Eve, we had a beautiful candlelit Eucharist in the Chapel of the Transfiguration.

We had some fun surprises for our New Year’s campers! They got to participate in some of their favorite campfire skits, take some of the pictures that we uploaded to Facebook, and we had a few special summer camp staff visitors to add to the fun.

Since our lakes were too cold to go swimming in, we had a free choice period after rest period every day. Options included adventuring around camp, painting landscapes, thundergun, and reading by the fireplace. Campers were allowed to pick their activity from the available ones each day, so some went adventuring the whole time, while others chose to mix and match all week.

Throughout the week we had many exciting and brand-new night activities planned. Capture the flag is always great, but we added a few twists. Flags were hidden on the two sides of our Conference Center, and each team had to be sneaky to find and return the opposing flag to their home base. Trivia (with fabulous prizes for the winners) was the second night, with categories about Sports, Movies, Music, and Camp Staff. For flashlight tag, we were split into two teams and played in the dark on our Camp side. The goal was to either freeze the entire opposing team or collect all the flashlights in the game. The big finale was our New Year’s Eve Ball where we danced and sang karaoke. We had snacks, punch, and a chocolate fountain to go along with all the dancing and singing. We had a movie playing and a campfire for campers to choose between. To finish the night, we had a fireworks show and our final Shalom circle.

We all cannot wait for everyone to join us for our next New Year’s Camp!

-Beth Jones

Director of Camp and Program Development