Divide and conquer

Wednesday is Division Day at camp, a time when boys divvy up into their divisions and spend the afternoon together. The Colt division gets to cruise into town today to goof off at The Waters water park in Minocqua, grill out at Clear Lake and end the day watching the awesome Min-Aqua Bats ski show. It’s an action packed day for sure, but they aren’t the only ones having a great time. The Cubs are packing up and spending the night on local Pallette Lake, they’ll roast marshmallows, play in pristine water with a sand bottom and get good use out of their sleeping bags and flashlights! God bless those Cubbie counselors who wrangle all twenty or so eight, nine and 10 year olds! The Senior division will convoy down Plum lake by whatever means available – kayak, canoe, etc. to tie up at the Sayner Pier. They’ll cook out in Sayner and play softball on the Sayner ball field. Juniors will have camp all to themselves tonight, cooking out on our large stone grill in the adventure ropes area and play games. These Wednesdays are a nice break in the routine. They offer up a little more free time to the boys, a slightly longer rest hour and time to just enjoy being together with all the boys in their age group. The cooks like it too, as it’s their night off!

We are gearing up for the camp birthday this Saturday. We will turn 111 this year, and I have to say, I think we’ve never looked better! We celebrate our birthday each year with the world-famous Steeplechase, a two and a half hour Army/Navy relay race, with a course that runs through camp and even around Five Pines and to the Star Portage! Each boy participates in their own crucial event in the race and it’s a rip-roaring good time. Events range from pin bowling, to soccer dribbling, to jumping through a hoola hoop from Tower Three. The relay culminates during the nail-biting water boil and Baker tent set up and breakdown. The fun starts about 9 a.m. and goes on throughout the morning ending around 11:30 a.m.
At 3 p.m., the Seniors host camp down in the Row for the random-little-known-games Olympics – the Senior Carnival – complete with homemade dunk tank, pillow fight jousting and bug juice chugging! And what do you win at this Carnival? Bachmann Bucks of course.
The fun doesn’t stop there. After the Carnival, we have a picnic supper on Junior Hill followed by Games on the Hill, also a Highlands highlight. This is also an Army/Navy competition filled with wheel barrow races and the copyrighted Broom Race (you have to see it to understand it). Saturday is ACTION PACKED and is my favorite day of the whole summer.
The weather continues to be dry and cool, which is better than wet and cool. We’ll take it! Check out this glassy lake photo taken just an hour ago. I don’t know how those sailors got all the way out there with such low wind! It’s just camp magic, I suppose.
We hope you guys at home are having half as much fun as we are here at camp!
And on that note… 
I ❤ CH // tracy b.