Summer 2010 — The Last Day

It’s hard to believe it, but we’ve come to the last day of our third session, and the final day of Rockbrook’s 2010 summer season. Thinking back, it’s been a wonderful session. There are so many cool things we’ve done (kayaking, horseback riding, learning archery!!), amazing friends we’ve made, and unexpected ways we’ve grown, becoming more confident, more capable and just plain happy. Over these last few weeks, camp has proven itself, once again, to be a place where we can relax and be our true selves. It’s been a joyful place, surely overrun with complete silliness at times, but also something strong and significant for all of us.

Saying goodbye is hard also, and yes a little sad. But we’re grateful for the time we’ve spent together and for the awesome experience we’ve shared. And while we’ll miss each other, we know the Rockbrook Spirit will stay with us and we’ll most likely see each other next summer back at camp.

It has been a real privilege for all of us at Rockbrook to spend these weeks with your camper. Thank you for sharing such marvelous girls!

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!

Horses, Muffins and Rafting at Camp

Our mini session campers have brought a bright new energy to our activities. Their first day included lots of firsts for many: first time climbing Castle Rock, first time shooting a bow and arrow, first friendship bracelet, and so much more! Director Jessi also offered one of her ever-popular yoga workshops. The barn seems to be the biggest hit with our newest campers. Every horse got a great workout yesterday, and every camper seemed to have a blast meeting some new friends of the large four-legged variety. The names we heard the most out of the barn were Cool Beans and Watson. These two horses are quite popular this year.

Rave reviews were heard mid-morning at muffin break. Our wonderfully creative baker Liz went all out on some banana chocolate chip muffins. Mixing two delicious recipes seems to be her specialty. We also enjoyed a little comfort at dinner by way of some chicken pot pie and chocolate chip bars.

This afternoon our first rafting trip of the week headed out to the Nantahala outpost with Jeff and counselors Allie and Sally. It’s sure to be an evening of campfire stories and s’mores. Tuesday about 50 more campers will join them for an exhilarating ride down the Nantahala with all of our specially trained raft guides. The team is headed up by our Outdoor Adventure Director, Clyde Carter. We are so lucky to have him work with us during the summer while he can get away from his college job as the Head of the Wilderness Leadership Department at Brevard College. He is a veteran on our local area rivers. We cannot believe that this will be our final trip over for summer 2010. Where does the time go? We will be sure to report back with a lot fun information from the trip.

Big Busy Thursday

Today was another big busy day at Rockbrook as the campers began their second set of activity choices, trips went out of camp in several directions, and we enjoyed all-camp special events. Down in the Lakeview Lodge, which this session is the meeting lodge for the Middlers, the dance classes were swinging. All three of our historic (built in the 20s) stone lodges have wooden floors, a big fireplace, and windows wrapping around, and the Lakeview Lodge has mirrors on the wall of one end making it a really cool dance studio. The dance classes always have several things going on, usually a new move or dance step to learn, a group choreographed dance to work on, and a silly game like “Freeze Dance” to keep things lighthearted. It’s a good balance of action, coordination, concentration, musical rhythm and goofball fun, and the girls really enjoy it.

We’ve been having lots of families visiting camp this week, having guided tours, in anticipation of next summer (already!).  We always encourage new families and their girls who are interested in Rockbrook to visit camp, and for some reason this has been a big week for that.  Getting a firsthand sense of the place— just how friendly and relaxed the people are here, for example —is a welcome spot of reassurance that may not come through from just reading our catalog.  It’s so great to meet these new families and to hear their stories about how they’ve found out about RBC.

In gymnastics, Elaine our head instructor is working with the girls and teaching them a few moves on the mini trampoline. She sets up the tramp at the end of the carpeted runway and positions landing pads all around. Then, with a couple of counselors spotting, the girls run down, plant both feet firmly on the tramp and jump up and onto the landing pads. Starting off with a good solid jump, they can advance to doing tucks, splits, pikes and even flips in the air. Over on the Alpine, they’re doing a different sort of trick— climbing blindfolded! It’s one of the new challenges over there; after climbing all 50 feet of the tower, up one of the many different routes, the girls can elect to climb again without being able to see. They get plenty of help from their friends on the ground shouting out instructions (“A little higher with your left foot!”), so they do quite well, sometimes climbing even more confidently than without a blindfold.

Clyde and Kelsey signed up a group of girls to go whitewater kayaking on the Tuckaseegee River all day. This is an intermediate river suitable for kayakers who are comfortable in their boats and who have previous whitewater experience. It has several excellent rapids and offers great opportunities to practice catching eddies and ferrying. It is a dam control river, and the water was up nicely, making it a fantastic trip. By the way, “Tuckaseegee” is a Cherokee word meaning “place or river of the turtle,” and sure enough, we just about always see turtles in the river over there.

For our evening program tonight, our friend Gary Greene, who is a wonderful storyteller, singer and musician, came over for an all-camp campfire. He brought his guitar to teach us a few songs, and of course presented several stories for us to enjoy. He’s really talented and quick to involve the campers in his performance, animating different parts of the poem “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, for example. This was also a chance for some of the counselors to get in on the act. Grace and Gracie transformed themselves into gypsies, acting as occasional story and joke tellers throughout the evening. They had all of us cracking up with their flamboyant accents and witty vignettes.

One last thing… If you haven’t heard the news about Malia Obama, the President’s daughter, attending summer camp, here is an Associated Press article discussing it. It’s a very nice article, well worth reading, because it affirms the benefits of camp for all children.

Opening Third Session

Welcome, welcome, everyone to Rockbrook! We are all very excited to see you and to begin your session of camp in the “heart of a wooded mountain.” Over these next few weeks we’ll be creating something everyday, taking adventure trips, playing all kinds of games, learning to ride, shoot and flip, and more than anything, having a great time laughing and goofing around with friends.

Getting settled into the cabin is the first step— moving trunks and dufflebags, setting up a shelf of things near her bed (flashlight, book, photos, stationary for writing letters home, etc.), meeting her counselor and other girls in the cabin. While most of the campers are returning to camp from last summer, we’ve taken care assigning cabins so there’s always a mix of new and returning campers. It’s a good way to ensure that everyone will have new friends to make.

Rick and his kitchen crew prepared our favorite comfort food for lunch: homemade macaroni and cheese, with a tomato and cucumber salad, carrots and sliced peaches. Along with our regular salad bar and peanut butter and jelly station, everyone had a great first meal at camp… just right on a warm summer afternoon. It’s during meals that all those crazy camp songs come out too. The Hi-Ups (10th graders) got everyone going with big powerful versions of the “Coconut song,” “the Milk Song,” “An Austrian Went Yodeling” (Paola, our Australian who lives in Vienna, gets a chuckle from that one!), and others.

After lunch everyone headed out to the main hill in camp, some with their Crazy Creek chairs, for an assembly under the shade of the big walnut tree. This was a chance to learn more traditional camp songs, meet some of the Line Heads and other lead counselors, and to find our more about camp. We also were treated to a series of skits performed by the activity instructors and counselors, short songs and scenes they put together to explain what happens at their activity. It’s a fun way to let the campers know their options when it comes time to sign up for their activities, but also a good way for everyone to meet the other staff members at camp. My favorite was the swimming skit where Gracie performed a dramatic reading of a short story she wrote while the lifeguards danced and interpreted the scenes in the background. It was hilarious!

Next, each cabin of campers comes down to the lake to perform their swimming demonstration. This is a simple check of swimming ability were each girl receives a personal buddy tag if she can swim out 25 yards, back another 25 yards, and tread water for 1 minute. Meanwhile other cabin groups are taking tours of the camp, learning where all the activities meet, how to go through the tunnel to the equestrian center, and the trail to the alpine climbing tower. This is also the time, right before dinner, that the girls sign up for their first set of 4 activities. After meeting the counselors, finding out what the activities actually are, connecting with friends, and knowing where everything meets, the campers are now much more prepared to make their own choices about their activity schedule. By the way, all of this is why we don’t “pre-sign up” for activities before arriving at camp. We’ve found over the years that campers get so much more from making their own activity selections after arriving. It’s a big part of camp at Rockbrook.

After an awesome dinner of chicken fingers, baked potato fries, and sauteed local summer squash and zucchini, with Liz’s chocolate chip cookie bars for dessert, we enjoyed a relaxing evening on the hill before each Line’s (age group’s) evening program. It’s always amazing to see how quickly the girls settle into life at camp. Everywhere you look, it’s easy to see friendships forming, enthusiasm for what’s going on (even for clearing the table after dinner, for example!), and excitement for all the opportunities around them. It’s a cool thing. We all tend to stay up a little later the first night of camp. All this bottled up excitement keeps the cabins chatting late into the night, anticipating the first full day tomorrow. It’s gonna be a good one.

Thanks for a Great Session!

It’s really difficult to express the strange combination of gratitude and sadness we all feel at the close of a camp session. After these weeks of common experience filled with moments that deepen our relationships with each other, saying goodbye is really hard, and yes, definitely sad. We know there’s nothing quite like camp, and that it’ll be impossible to explain to all of our friends and family back home. We know we’ve done really cool things (rafting, riding horses, learning to weave!!), met people from all over, and found out a lot about who we are and how to enjoy life together. So we’re thankful for all of that and all that it may represent down the road.

It’s a true privilege for all of us at Rockbrook to spend a few weeks each summer with your camper. Thank you for sharing such great girls! We will miss them, but look forward to next summer and another great visit to Rockbrook.

Disney World Banquet

Tonight the second session banquet was finally revealed to all of the campers and staff members at camp. After weeks of working and keeping everything secret, the CA campers (9th graders) transformed the dining hall into Disney World, and called it “A Day at Disney World.” The dining hall became Animal Kingdom, the Magic Kingdom, and Epcot Center. The campers entered through the porch decorated like a monorail, and found themselves on Main Street USA with Cinderella’s Castle, Space mountain, and toward the back, the Animal Kingdom Tree of Life. There were Disney attractions and rides painted on every inch of wall space! Music from the parks, and dance numbers with the characters really added to the feeling of actually being at Disney World.

It was particularly impressive to see the costumes the CAs had prepared. They had 31 different Disney characters, including: Chip and Dale, Ariel, Jack Sparrow, Mickey Mouse (of course!), Princess Tiana, Peter Pan, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Mad Hatter, Jasmine, Captain Hook, Pooh Bear, Mary Poppins, Pocahontas, Piglet, Goofy, Aladdin, Minnie Mouse, Lilo, Belle, Tinker Bell, Cinderella, Alice, Wendy, and Simba… just to name the main ones! They were all so realistic and well-suited for the girls playing each part. Many of the younger campers even thought several of the girls were the real characters. We really had Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella at Rockbrook! The character were also signing autographs, just like at the Magic Kingdom.

For dinner they served “Magical Mozzarella Sticks” and “Goofy’s Corny Corndogs” as appetizers, “Mickey and Minnie’s Pasta Palooza” with chicken for the main dish, and “Razzle Dazzle Crispies and Cotton Candy Kisses” for dessert. Of course there was plenty of candy and other treats on the table too (like a souvenir banquet sticker and decorated cup).

The CAs often say they’ve just put on the “best banquet ever,” and in this case, we think they are right up there at the top of the list. It was amazing, excellent fun.

We Swim, Dress Up and Slide

It’s hard to say which flavor of muffin is most popular at camp. With Liz, our baker, creating so many new varieties from scratch— not to mention the traditional kinds— there are too many to choose from. There’s blueberry, but also key lime muffins, cranberry walnut, but also chocolate chip, and sprinkles, and white chocolate almond! Liz arrives at 6:30am each morning and gets to work right away to have the muffins baked and cooled by the mid-morning muffin break. Since there are more than 300 people (campers and staff members), that’s a lot of muffin trays, papers and individual dollops of batter to prepare! The muffins are always so good the girls literally run to the dining hall when they hear the bell announcing “Muffin Break.” For everyone at camp, Liz is a hero!

In fact, the entire kitchen crew are heroes at camp. Rick and his crew are really working hard to create great balanced meals for us, and this isn’t “camp food,” pre-processed, frozen, nuggets of whatnot fried and served with ketchup. Nope. All the main dishes are homemade, from the pizza dough, to the pancakes, to the chicken and dumplings. Rick puts together every meal’s menu, so for dinner yesterday we had baked tilapia, wild rice and a spinach salad. Each tilapia fillet was spiced individually, and the salad included a homemade sesame salad dressing. It’s also amazing how Rick takes time to make special vegetarian options. So for example, he made vegetarian dumplings combining green tomatoes, goat cheese and a light sauce with the dumpling dough. It was a pleasantly surprising combination, and with a big green salad, made a great meal. Sorry to talk so much about the food at camp, but after being away for a couple of nights camping, it’s hard not to!

Wednesday we took cabin photos before lunch and during rest hour. Gathering everyone in each cabin, dressed in their camp uniforms, and taking their photograph is a long tradition at Rockbrook. Part of the fun is that each cabin gets to select where it would like the photo taken and how to arrange each person. There are so many different places at camp to pose— on one of the many huge rocks, down by the lake, standing in a creek, or on a porch or set of steps. It’s fun for campers to keep their copy of their cabin photo and to collect them over the years in a scrapbook or camp photo album.

For Wednesday afternoon’s cabin day activities, the three lines split up. A few junior cabins went on short hikes to Castle Rock and Rockbrook Falls, but one stayed to put on a dress up fashion show in the Junior Lodge. Silly, silly stuff. Meanwhile, several cabins of seniors took a quick trip into the Pisgah Forest to take a dip in a swimming hole. The water was pretty chilly (like all the creeks and streams in these mountains), so it took a while for most of the girls to get wet. After dinner, all of the mini session Middlers took a trip up to Sliding Rock. Many of the girls had never been to Sliding Rock before, so it was particularly fun to see them zip down the rock and funny to hear them scream when they plunged into the cold water below. There are lots of photos of this in the RBC gallery. Naturally, on the way home, we had to stop at Dolly’s for a cone, a yummy sweet treat of some kind. Being all things chocolate, the Rockbrook camp flavor is still one of the most popular. It was a little bit of a late night for these Middlers by the time we got back to camp settled down, but we all enjoyed ourselves in true RBC fashion.