A Day in the Life of a Camper
Shared by on February 27, 2023
Every summer, we leave camp with new friends, and enough memories to last a lifetime. How do we fit enough in what feels like just a few short days to make this happen? Every day is planned out and scheduled to make the most of the time we have together. Read on to discover what a day may look like, for a Strong Rock camper.
“Good morning everyone, It’s time to get up!”, the counselors exclaim. The lights go on, and everyone begins to roll out of bed and find their things. “We’ve got to go to assembly.” Everyone is dressed, and we begin to make our way out to the porch and everyone finds their shoes. Looking around at all the other cabins, we can see everyone else getting up and making their way out too. Once everyone is ready, our cabin starts to walk together up to the lodge. We see everyone else walking up around us, and the excitement for the day begins.
Once everyone is together, we pray for the meal we’re about to share. Today is our day to do the flag so, as a cabin we unfold it and raise it up for the day, while everyone stays quiet out of respect. Once the flag is raised, it’s time to sing some assembly songs together! If any of us were still waking up, we’re awake now! We go through some of this high-energy time together and work up an appetite - and good thing, we’ve got some good breakfast today! When we walk into the dining hall, we see french toast, sausage, and oatmeal out on the table. We’re all realizing just how hungry we are now. We all eat our breakfast, and fuel up for the long day ahead.
Following breakfast, we head out to the porch for lifeline with Rambo. We’ll go through a biblical lesson, one that will encourage us and teach us more about a life following Christ. What a great and encouraging way to start the day! After lifeline, we’re dismissed to cabin clean-up.
At cabin clean-up, we’ve all been given some tasks to help us all work together and keep our cabin looking good. We all make our beds, and some of us sweep the porch or vaccum, and some make sure the sinks and showers are clean. We work really hard to try and get the cleanest, tidiest cabin. Hopefully we can win the golden plunger! That’s the award given to whoever has the cleanest one, and if we win it more times than any other cabin in the session, we will get a reward for it towards the end of our time here.
After we’re done cleaning up, it’s finally time to go to our first skill class. Some of us head past the lake to riflery or archery, and some of us go down to the gym or the fishing shack. Some of our camp friends even go to the barn, they’re getting to ride horses!
We spend the rest of our morning at our first three classes, and so far we’re having such a fun day! We have headed up to the lodge; lunch is next. Before we can go in and eat though, we gather up and do assembly. We chant, “Golden Plunger! Golden Plunger!” As we hustle up the stairs. We can’t wait to see who’s cabin was the cleanest today! WooHoo, we won today! Hopefully we can win again!
We pray for our meal and thank God for another beautiful day at camp. Next, we eagerly wait to see who won last nights game! Yesterday the Awahili tribe got to celebrate their win, I wonder who’s flag will fly higher today… we wait, and wait… and the Waya tribe cheers for their victory! So far we’ve been through some fierce competition. This just makes us more eager for the game tonight. Next, we get todays arrowhead clue… “under the shade, but right in your way… watch your toes, everywhere you go.” We all think as hard as we can, trying to think where we may find it, but we can’t think for too long, because we’ve started singing assembly songs again! We sing a few, and then it’s time for lunch. We all line up, and then we go in, cabin by cabin. The scent of fresh cooked pizza fills the air, and we realize now just how hungry we are.
We are finally done with lunch, we clean up our tables and we get dismissed for rest hour; but first, we get to sign up for our camper choice activity. Some of us are really excited to swim, blob, or zip line, and some of us can’t wait to hang out in the lodge and play ping-pong or gaga-ball. We then head to rest hour for a much needed break in our busy day.
Next up, we head to outpost. It’s time to get some snacks. A frio-pop sounds really refreshing today… now to just decide what flavor I want. After outpost, we head to our next classes. Some of us head to climbing, some of us to arts and crafts, and some of us to rec-sports. So many of our camp friends are everywhere, it’s fun to hear about all the fun places everyone is going. We spend the next few hours at our last two classes for the day, and then we get to go to our camper choice activity!
At camper choice, many of us chose to go to the blob today! We meet together, and eagerly walk up to the platform. We go ahead and get our life jackets put on, and the most excited of us all walks out to the end and jumps onto the big cloud-like blob. They crawl out to the end, and watch as the next person goes, and blob them into the water! Everyone on the platform cheers as the next person gets ready to go. All too quickly, our time at the blob is through, and we head back to our cabins.
When we get back to the cabin, it’s time to prepare for tonight’s game. The schedule says we’re playing sock war, so it’s time to find our camo! We get our camo gear on, and then our tribal bandana, and head to dinner. We’re all so hungry after all our activities today, so we can’t get up to the dining hall fast enough. We spend some time on the porch doing more assembly songs, and soon enough, we’re ready to go in to get dinner! We see the chicken tenders on the tables, and get even hungrier. We eat our meal, and now it’s finally time for our tribal game tonight!
We all head down to Redding Field, where our tribe is given flags, we are given socks, and instructions on how to play the game tonight. Shortly after, we go out in groups ready to play! We’re running through camp, all in search of the other tribe’s flag. We dodge socks, thrown by the other tribe, and try to defend ourselves as we scramble to throw socks back. What a battle it is! When the flag has finally been scored, and has made it back to the field, we hear the air-horn blow from across camp, we know it’s time to head back. We hustle back to the field, while we talk about the crazy spin moves we pulled to dodge the other tribe’s socks, and the sneak-attack from behind the tree that helped our tribe score more points. Hopefully it was enough to get the victory. While we are anticipating results, we know we’ll see tomorrow at lunch when it is announced and either the Waya or Awahili Flag is raised higher.
What a day! We all gather back up with our cabins, and get a delicious snack as we head back to clean up and get showers before we settle down to get some rest. When we get back to the cabins, we take off our shoes, and head in. We shower and clean up, and our cabins start smelling a little fresher. Once we’re all cleaned up and ready for bed, we gather around with our counselors for a few minutes for an evening life-line where we hear a lesson and some scripture and we get to talk about how good God is, and what He is doing for us, here at camp and in our lives at home too!
After we talk for a little while, we get in our beds, and start to fall asleep. We hear our counselors say “Goodnight!” and the lights go off. Some of us immediately fall asleep, we sure are tired after all; some of us lay there with our eyes open for a few minutes because we are just so excited about doing it all over again the next day. Eventually, everyone’s eyes get heavy and we fall asleep, ready for tomorrow.