Summer Camp 2nd Session

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After the first session of kids had left, we had 4 days until the second session arrived, so we got quite a bit of time off. Mick got to go play golf at the best course he had ever seen (even better than the Jasper Park Lodge in Canada). It’s called the Cleghorn Plantation and is rated in the top 50 courses in the USA. To top it all off, it only cost $50 to play including Cart. Mick played OK but really enjoyed being out on such a beautiful course again. Only problem is that no one in our group remembered to bring a camera. They also happened to encounter a massive thunderstorm and had to head back to the clubhouse. They were completely soaked by the time they got there and waited about an hour before they could go back out to complete our round.

While Mick was at golf Hayley was tubing down the Green river with about 20 other staff members. Although the water level was sometimes not high enough (you’d bump your bum on a submerged rock) and they weathered out a massive storm to get there it was fantastic fun. The group that went was really wide and varied so you got to have a good chat with lots of people. You would have to hang onto each other’s tubes by the handles or lock feet or hold hands, some smart people brought twine to tie tubes together. This came especially in handy for Lauren as she had her cast on and was unable to use her hands to steer so we tied her up with a handler for the afternoon. Halfway along the river there was a tree swing so of course they stopped for a while to jump out of the tree, swing and egg each other on. The river trip was meant to be 2 hours long but they seemed to miss the stop to get out and be collected by the bus so they ended up floating down for another couple of hours. They had a good laugh when poor Amanda ran into an overhanging tree and swore she felt something in her hair. Hayley dutifully checked her hair out and Hayley thought Amanda was having her on because there was in fact a fishing lure that must have been stuck in the tree attached to one of her dreads!!!



Second session quickly arrived and there Mick was, with a new bunch of 12 kids to get to know. Once again their personalities varied, however Mick did have a few more that liked to throw rocks and hit things. Once again, all the counselors grew very fond of their kids and got plenty of laughs and some great memories. 2nd session also brought us “Color War”. Color War is four days of competition where the Camp is split into the Green Team and the White Team, the camp’s colours. Hayley and Mick were ranked as Generals on opposing sides which was fun. The only problem was that generals were the second highest rank and supposed to run the show, but both pairs of generals from each side were completely new and took a couple of days to figure out what the hell was happening. So it was four days of sporting competition as well as banners, chanting, song writing amongst other things that could earn your team points. After the 4 days with very little sleep, Hayley’s Vampire White won the competition. Afterwards was probably the most fun of all with 2 massive shaving cream fights taking place, one on girl’s hill while the other was taking place on boy’s hill. After arriving a few minutes late Mick was swarmed by about a dozen kids and counselors because he was too clean! Good times.

Soon enough the second session came to a close and it was time to say goodbye to the kids from our cabins as well as those from other cabins that we became very close too. It was very weird not to have any kids around, but attention soon turned to the staff party at the Mexican restaurant. All the staff were able to let their hair down for the final night. At the end of the night there were a few wobbly legs but many huge smiles after a great night and a great summer.

After a massive cleanup day, the smiles started to turn into sadness as we started to say goodbye to the many friends that we had worked alongside for 2 months. There are a bunch that we will see again soon on our trip to Florida which we can’t wait for.

During the summer we always had the same day off and we generally took the day to go explore the local area. Some of our excursions included Chimney Rock National monument which we really enjoyed. It had great walks and an old moonshiner’s hideout in a cave. We also went out to Lake Lure, spent a day in Asheville, enjoyed Du Pont National Forest with several beautiful waterfalls and visited the North Carolina Arboretum.

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