Girls' Camp

Motto: We can do hard things!

I used to like girls' camp, but I don't ever remember thinking that it was the best part of the summer. Memories include sharing a 6-man tent with 8 girls, rain, trying to ignore the fact that our dutch oven meal wasn't quite done, rain, Pop Tarts, and rain.

So when I was first called into Young Women at church, one of my first thoughts was, Do I have to go to camp? Fortunately, I didn't have to plan camp; I had a seasoned camp director whose vision was to really "rough it." Oh boy.

Camp in this area usually consists of staying in cabins and only showering every other day. There is usually a pool and a mess hall for eating; I have always scoffed at this kind of "lite" camping, but as I anticipated our high adventure camp, a cabin was sounding better and better.

When I first heard the name Rock Island at the tip of Green Bay in Lake Michigan, my first thought was of spending 6 days on what looked like Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, a rocky, mostly desolate island. Last Sunday night, I was curled up in a chair here in our study trying to invent a stomach ache. I absolutely did not want to go to camp.

I couldn't find a good enough reason to desert my young women, so Monday at 8, I was wearing my 50-pound backpack (laugh, scouts, laugh, but it was so worth having my full-sized pillow and all those Mike & Ikes...) and a plastered smile. After two ferry rides, we hit the island and hiked to our campsite. There are no cars allowed on Rock Island, and the perimeter is 6 miles around. After we set up camp, the leader told the girls to hit the beach.

The Beach??

Oh, yeah.

Rock Island has a sandy beach and the water is surprisingly warm. Thanks to a leader who understood that minimal structure is insurance against camp drama, we spent the majority of every day swimming and laying on the sand.

It was Beach Camp!

Instead of ticks and poison ivy, we were treating sunburns. In addition to teaching them to light fire without matches (use a lighter! Just kidding, but we did learn that hand sanitizer is flammable) and cook over a backpacker's stove, I taught them to bodysurf in the waves that preceded the tornadoes that went right around the island (rain is the one true constant at girls' camp). I also taught them to fly a kite at the beach, but when there are tornado winds blowing, kites just go in circles until they plummet to the ground.

We went on a hike around the perimeter of the island with full packs, and spent that afternoon crashed on the beach. I kept looking around in disbelief that THIS was girls' camp, and that it was considered "high adventure."

This is the boat house right before we left to come home. Those are a few of my girls sitting on the wall. Just to remind us that it WAS still girls' camp, it rained again the night before we left, so everything was packed slightly damp and muddy. Hopefully, they all remembered to unpack and air their stuff out so they didn't smell like the poncho Kelly pulled out when I was packing. ("Look, Am, you can take my old scout poncho. I think it still fits." "What is that smell? Did you throw up in that poncho?" "Hm, maybe it needs to air out." Yes. In the garbage can.)
And here is all our stuff waiting on the dock for the ferry to take us home. Even though camp was great, we were packed and waiting for the 10:00 ferry at 8:45.

Post Script:
I took my own camera so that I could always be behind it. There were no mirrors on the island and I had no idea what I looked like. It was a nice way to live for a week and now I see why pioneer women posed for pictures. They had no idea they looked so bad. So the only picture of me is in this last one. I'm in the pink shirt.

I solved my tent issue by packing my own little tent. We bought it in Salt Lake at a scout supply store and it was the perfect size for a 12 year-old boy scout. I had to sleep on a diagonal, but I didn't care. I LOVED having my own tent and I'll do it again every time I go to camp.

Also, my lips hurt real bad. They got sunburned and blistered, but I'd way rather have sunburned lips than mosquito bites and poison ivy.