Looking Glass Rock Climbing

One of the best rock climbing areas in the Southeast is Looking Glass Rock. Rising almost 1000 feet from the forest floor, Looking Glass is a dome-shaped mass of granite near Brevard in the Pisgah National Forest. It can easily be seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway nearby. For rock climbers it offers a fantastic variety of sport, friction, face, crack and even aid climbing routes suitable for the beginning, intermediate and advanced climber. Circling the domed rock are well-known climbing areas: the Nose, South Side, Sun Wall and North Wall. On the southeastern side of the rock, there is a popular tourist trail for hiking to the summit.

Rockbrook Camp Girl Joanna on Looking Glass Rock

Here’s a photo of a Rockbrook camper on the Nose (5.8).  Rockbrook is located only about 15 miles from Looking Glass.  After topping out our own climbs on Castle Rock, our camp rock climbing program brings girls to Looking Glass, as well as other climbing areas in this region of North Carolina.  There’s a lot of rock to climb around here, and the girls love it!

Shaving Cream Fight Video

Ever had a shaving cream fight? Armed with a couple of cans, and dressed in your bathing suit, have you chased your friends around trying to smear them with shaving cream? Has anyone ever sneaked up to you and planted a handful of shaving cream on your neck? No? Well take a look at this video and see just how much fun it can be!

100% Rockbrook.

Friendship Animation Video

The digital photography activity at camp is always coming up with new projects and games for the girls, different ways to incorporate taking (making!) pictures with other active ideas. It might be a scavenger hunt, a color or texture study, or simply a collage of some sort. One cool example of this is making a stop-motion animation video. This involves taking a series of photographs and stringing them together in a sequence. If the objects in the scene change slightly in each picture, the resulting video looks like they are moving. One way to do this is to build something out of play-doh, a snowman for example. Using this stop-motion animation technique, you can make a video where the snowman comes to life!

Here’s an example of this technique used to create the illusion of people moving. This past summer, Hannah, Briana and Catherine made this short video about friendship. You can really tell they had a great time making it. Take a look!

Ice Cream and Fairy Houses

Today the girls were surprised by the arrival of the “Biltmore Train!” You’ve heard of the Biltmore Estate. Well, in its earliest years it also ran a commercial dairy (as well as a hog, poultry and cattle farm) and sold its products locally. The delivery truck for the Biltmore dairy products— remember the milk man? —was decorated with a train motif, so when that truck would arrive at Rockbrook, the campers called it the “Biltmore Train.” One of the things it brought was ice cream. Think big tubs of yummy, ice cream ready to be hand dipped. Keep a stack of cones nearby too. And keep eating until it’s gone. That’s the Biltmore Train at RBC.  It means the campers can eat several (two, three, even four!) ice cream cones by getting right back in line while they eat their cone. Soon there’s a train of girls eating ice cream at Rockbrook. A decadent, once-a-year special treat for all these Rockbrook Girls!

Tonight for the Twilight period after dinner, Pam organized a special “Fairy House” workshop. This was an invitation to come down to the garden and build a small planter, a magical pot of flowers, moss, sticks and other natural objects that fairies would inhabit.

Mostly Juniors were excited about the idea, but there were several Middlers who attended as well. Pam prepared by having a variety of flower pots available, as well as trays of flowers, a pile of different mosses she had collected, even shells. The campers were encouraged to bring with them a couple of special “found objects” to add to their houses, something like a shiny pebble, or strangely gnarled stick, for example. Most of the girls started by planting a couple of different colored flowers in their pots. Pam, Alison and Sarah helped them with the soil and explained how to bury the roots of the plants. Then most added moss to the pots already making them magical looking. Adding string, a collection of stones and twigs, some of the fairy houses became quite elaborate. A couple even had a roof made of sticks and moss. The imagination and creativity built into this activity, combined with all the cool natural materials made it such a wonderful experience. It’s the kind of thing we just love around here!

Activities Galore at Rockbrook

Miriam tries out her Yoga skills

Monday was quite eventful around Rockbrook Camp as our Third Session campers tried their first set of daily activities. They will do these chosen activities for three days and then have the opportunity to try a whole other set for the second half of the week. We have seen over the years that this concept of choice while away from home is a wonderful way to encourage independence and growth for every camper.

Two extra morning highlights included muffin break and free swim. Our resident baker Allison had wonderful chocolate sprinkle muffins waiting for the girls between first and second period. Then after second period, most girls headed down to the lake for a dip after this warm morning. They had their first opportunity to go on the water slide and swim laps for our Mermaid Club. With all of these bust active girls, there were smiles everywhere down at the lake!

Two thumbs up for the slide

After rest hour this afternoon, activities continued and our first white water rafters left for an overnight camp out experience at our Nantahala Outpost. Another group will join them tomorrow on the river for a day trip. As the only camp with an outpost at the Nantahala River, we love being able to let each camper decide which length of trip she would like to participate in.

We did have a little rainstorm this afternoon, but we did not let it slow us down. One of our favorite songs here at camp is the “Dewcoat Song.” We just think of rain as a little dew and keep on going! As we all filed into dinner, campers were greeted with a camp favorite: hotdogs with all the sides and fixings followed by key lime pie for dessert.

Even our youngest campers have the opportunity to weave on our Appalachian looms

Great new friends who met yesterday!

We hope that every camper picked up a new skill today, whether it be making a friendship bracelet, walking a horse or talking with a new friend. Each of these qualities is what makes Rockbrook so special and the campers will continue to build upon during the rest of their session here.

Ready for Equestrian Fun

Any day now, more of our horses will be arriving at camp. We’ve been getting ready too! New fences and gates are up, the fields are lush and green, and the new equestrian office is set. We’re positive sitting on that porch will be very popular. There will be plenty of action with both camp barns full and 28 horses in all. Many of your favorites are coming back— Danny, Lacy, Buddy, and Cool Beans —and there will be a few new equestrian surprises as well.

Are you ready to ride? It’s going to be great! And fun!

Tournaments and Halloween Dinner

This morning our tennis, archery and riflery “teams” traveled to Camp Carolina to challenge the boys in a tournament. This is a long tradition for both camps. We select 3 girls from each age group (Juniors, Middlers and Seniors) for each of these sports, and get together for a friendly competition between the genders. It’s fun to see us load up the buses because we bring our own equipment— our sharp shooting riflery team with their guns, the strong, steady archers with their bows, and our tennis girls carrying their rackets. Many of the girls wore their matching Rockbrook t-shirts to build up a little team spirit as well. Most of the girls are a little shy at this event, with the possible exception of some of the seniors. We can report several excellent showings and high scores, with a couple of bullseyes and aces in our column, but overall the Carolina boys won the title this session. It was a fun morning to show our stuff, and next year, we’ll have even more to bring!

Back at camp, the day’s muffins caused quite a stir.  Liz created yet another original flavor she decided to call the “Rockbrook Double Whammy.”  They were chocolate chip and sprinkles!  Sweet, colorful little cakes, fresh-baked and oh so good!

Dinner was out of this world… for a couple of reasons.  First the food was absolutely delicious.  We had mounds of homemade fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli.  The potatoes were so creamy and the chicken seasoned just perfectly, the girls kept coming back for more and more.  In case you haven’t noticed Rockbrook girls like to get dressed up in costumes, but not just costumes you find on a shelf in a store.  They like to create costumes, and tonight was an excellent example of that as everyone came to dinner for “Halloween.”  This is really a lot of fun because the cabins work on their costumes together, mixing and matching different “elements” to achieve a certain effect.  That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised if you see something you sent with your daughter being worn by someone else.  Tonight we had zombie brides, cats, Egyptian princess, witches and so many other unfathomable characters.  You’ll have to check out the photo gallery to see how all this creativity turned out.  Awesome stuff!

Between Sessions

This is the time at camp when we have our 4-week campers but not a mini session group, a “between session” time. The first July Mini session girls left on Thursday and the second mini session girls arrive tomorrow. That means we have about 80 fewer girls around, but wow are they enthusiastic camp kids. Since they are here the longest, they know camp really well, and have loads of time to deepen their friendships and dig deeper into different activities. It’s no surprise that we have our best climbers and paddlers with us right now. These 4-week campers also tend to be Middlers and Seniors who, as they’ve returned each summer, move up from a shorter sessions just to have more time at camp. These are the girls who more than “love” camp; they say they “couldn’t live without it!”

Dinner tonight included a fun southern traditional food— boiled peanuts! Rick was able to get 80 pounds (!) of green, unroasted peanuts, so he decided to boil them up. It’s amazing how nice and sweet they taste even with nothing added but a little salt. With the peanuts, we had BLT sandwiches, chips and fresh pineapple. Over on the sidebar, I saw some leftover fried green tomatoes from lunch earlier. Talk about southern food! Rick’s been keeping us very well fed.

Tonight’s evening program was an all-camp game of “Minute to Win It.” We divided everyone up into small teams that then competed in several different crazy relay races. We found out who could eat an oreo cookie the fastest when it’s first placed on your forehead (no hands!). We raced to sort a bag of skittles by color. We tried to juggle balloons. We stacked Swiss Rolls, and balanced gold balls. It’s all pretty funny to see the girls tackle these challenges, so even the spectators had a great time laughing as different groups struggled through the relays. It’s marvelous to have this much fun with such simple props. Camp is often just that, being with your friends and enjoying activities you wouldn’t ordinarily do at home. Really great stuff!