Celebrating Third Session 2010

It’s easy to celebrate the session when you look back on all that we’ve done over the last few weeks. It’s celebrating, though, that we do today, our last full day together. Foremost, perhaps, the girls mark their place as a cabin group by designing and painting a plaque for the inside of their cabin, something with all the their names and the date that can be hung in the cabin for girls who come after them to see. The girls spend so much time together as a cabin group, and share so much (at every meal, for example), it makes sense to want to preserve that group feeling. Of course, there’s always the cabin photo, but this is something extra.

Down at the barn, the girls who have been riding celebrate their experience by presenting the “Horse Show” for the rest of the camp. This is a chance for the riders to show off their new skills, ride their favorite horse again, and perform horseback riding drill team routines. Instead of a competition with prizes and ribbons, this is a real show with everyone welcome to demonstrate their horseback riding abilities and to have fun doing it. It really is a cheerful atmosphere, complete with popsicles to help everyone to stay cool as the late morning sun came up over the mountain.

We also celebrated the amazing dramatic, vocal and dancing talents of our campers with the presentation of this session’s musical, Annie. After weeks of working on their parts, rehearsing, building scenery and designing costumes, everything came together for an amazing show. We had more than 80 parents attending, and with the entire camp also there, the gym was packed! If you didn’t get to see it, you’ll be able to catch it on this year’s DVD yearbook. No worries.

We’d held off long enough for another “Rockbrook Surprise” everyone loves: Biltmore Train! That’s our special all-you-can-eat ice cream bonanza recalling the Biltmore Dairy’s ice cream truck and its camp visits. Think tubs of ice cream, stacks of cones, and the campers going back for more and more. Certainly a little decadent, but it was also a great way to celebrate everyone’s success with the play and to enjoy some time socializing with the families who came to see the performance.

Perhaps the biggest celebration of the day came at the end when we held our Spirit Fire closing campfire. Since it’s very first summer in 1921 Rockbrook has closed its sessions by gathering everyone around the fire ring on Vesper Rock to reflect upon and appreciate everything we’ve shared over the last few weeks. Through songs, memories, tributes and recognitions, we all celebrate each other and what camp means to us. It was remarkable to see these girls choke back tears as they hug each other and about their love for each other and for Rockbrook. Camp, how it makes them feel and how it helps them grow, is so important to them. It’s humbling to see it in action.

The final day of camp is full of celebrations. Throughout the weeks of camp, these Rockbrook girls accomplish wonderful and amazing things. They learn more than they can say, and grow more than they realize, but most importantly, feel at home at Rockbrook. It’s their camp.

With all of that, it’s easy to celebrate.

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.

A Rafting and Riding Fiesta

For a bunch of Middlers and Seniors, today was a big day of whitewater rafting on the Nantahala. Right after breakfast we loaded up three buses of them, and with a picnic lunch packed and ready to go, we set out to meet our regular team of rafting guides at the head of the river. Rockbrook is fortunate to be the only girls camp to have a US Forest service permit to run trips on the Nantahala River. This allows us to hire excellent guides (people we know are great with kids), have our own equipment (top of line Avon rafts for example), and schedule trips when we want. It also allows us to take every camper rafting who is old enough (5th grade and older) for no additional fees. The weather today was absolutely perfect for rafting. Warm and sunny is ideal when it comes to the chilly water of the Nantahala, and also for inspiring splash fights between rafts. The girls had a great time paddling the river, singing camp songs during the calm sections, and screaming their heads off when heading down the rapids.

Down at the equestrian center, the riding lessons are going well. The beginners already have their favorite ponies to ride— “I love Annie, and I love Cool Beans!” And the intermediate riders are working on posting, while the advanced lessons the girls are practicing their canter and jumping. It seems the barn is always a popular place to hang out.

Lunch today in camp was a delightful picnic on the hill. Rick served up hot dogs and hamburgers with all the fixins. He made a giant batch of macaroni salad, had coleslaw, potato chips and pickles to round off the plate. Same weather here: sunny and warm, but cooler than the past few days. The girls brought out their Crazy Creek chairs and spread out across the hill to soak up the mountain view and chat over lunch. It was one of those great, classic summertime feelings we always enjoy at camp.

“Happy Birthday Everyone!” was the theme for dinner. It was a special event called “Birthday Night” where we rearranged the dining hall tables so everyone with the same birth month can sit together. It’s really fun to find out who shares your month and maybe even the same birthday as you, and even more so, to share the special cake for each month. You can imagine it’s a busy day in the kitchen for Liz as she bakes 12 cakes! Fortunately, the Hi-Ups help decorate all of them. To make the event even more festive, we served Mexican food (tortillas, quesadillas, beans, steak fajitas, rice, salsa, sour cream and homemade guacamole), decorated the dining hall with brightly colored piñatas, posters and balloons, and had the girls dress up for a “Fiesta.” Latin music played over the sound system, and we all wished each other happy birthday (and other celebrities we could think of… “Happy Birthday Justin Bieber!”). Yummy good fun.

We spotted this article in USA Today about the art of letter writing, and how camps are a place where kids, and parents, can practice that skill, reconnecting to an important form of communication. We’re always encouraging letter writing at camp, both from parents to campers and vice versa. Go check out the article, and you’ll see why!

Rockbrook Profiled in Horse Magazine

Great news! Rockbrook has been selected by Horsemen’s Yankee Peddler for the cover story of their current edition. Located in the Northeast (as you might guess), HYP is a print magazine covering “all aspects of the equine industry, from dressage to hunt seat to reining and barrel racing.” Given all the other horse camps in the country, it’s quite an honor for Rockbrook to be selected and profiled.

There is a short digital version of the magazine available online. Go check it out and read the spread about Rockbrook’s equestrian program (on pages 14 and 15). It’s an excellent article!

Jump, Flip and Weave

We’re seeing great horseback riding down at the barn this session. Cara, our Equestrian Director, has been keeping everyone busy with three and sometimes four simultaneous riding classes going on each activity period of the day. The beginners have been riding our smaller ponies (e.g., Annie and Cool Beans) and learning to walk, start and stop them on command. Intermediate riders are working on their posting and canter technique. It seems everyone wants to learn how to jump too, so when the riding staff thinks they’re ready (being able to canter securely, for example), campers can begin learning jump techniques as well. There are several new skills involved in jumping, and the girls really work at it a long time before they actually jump an obstacle. What a thrill when a girl clears her first jump!

Everyday down at the Alpine Tower, groups of girls are tying into a belay rope and balancing their way to the top. Starting behind the gym, the walk leading to the tower is a magical, winding path through the woods with ferns, mosses and wonderful big trees. The tower is hidden in the woods and is such a surprise when you first see it along the trail— an impressive 50-foot structure of thick telephone poles bolted together in a complex triangular pattern of two inverted pyramids. There are ropes, cables and climbing holds arranged on each pole creating different routes to the top. Altogether, there are almost 100 different ways to climb up! The view from the top platform provides a nice birds-eye view of the treetops and of the “tiny people” on the ground. Coming down is also part of the fun. The belayers slowly lower the climbers on their belay ropes (which are rated to hold 7620 pounds, by the way!), stopping part way to let the girls do a “spiderman” flip if they want.

Over in the fiber arts cabin, “Curosty,” the girls are hard at work weaving. Our arts guru Kimberly has set up the looms to make belts at the moment, yarns and string woven into different colorful patterns. These table-top looms have 4 levers to press that change the warp and allow the shuttle to alternate through the “shed” (the space between the warp layers). It’s a little challenging to maintain an even amount of tension on the weft, but with practice that becomes easier. It’s fun to make a narrow project like a belt because it doesn’t take long to see progress as the woven pattern emerges. Seeing them at work, it’s easy to predict that weaving will become a lifelong hobby for some of the girls. That’s so great.

Dinner tonight was a special themed restaurant night called “A Night at the Oscars.” We sent out word for everyone to arrive at dinner dressed in their best red carpet attire, so we saw all manner of glamor, camp style. Outrageous wigs, audacious make up, sparkly dresses, and very fancy shoes emerged to transform the girls into parodies of Hollywood stars. The counselors, of course, were also dressed up, and as they served their cabin (a Restaurant Night camp tradition), they would impersonate certain famous actresses or movie characters. The food was also special: eggrolls, bacon-wrapped scallops, and Danish Havarti, bread, and Spanikopita. Liz had lemon bars for dessert too. Yum! The whole meal was a sea of energetic creativity, and very big fun.

Rock Climbing Grannies

Mallory, our head climbing instructor, is doing a fabulous job inspiring the girls to sign up for the rock climbing trips she’s planned all week long. Everyday girls are climbing at Rockbrook. They’re on the climbing wall in the gym, all over the Alpine Tower (something super popular, even with the littlest Juniors), and up on Castle Rock. If you’ve studied the map of Rockbrook, you’d have spotted the two huge outcroppings of granite on the camp property, Castle Rock and Dunn’s Rock. While Dunn’s is larger and a known Peregrine Falcon nesting area, Castle Rock is perfectly suited for rock climbing. We’ve developed six excellent climbing routes ranging from a beginning grade through a cool, more challenging (and really high!) route up the face of the rock. The shortest route is about 25 feet, but the longest is over 100 feet long! Rockbrook is very fortunate to have this caliber of rock climbing right in camp, literally in our own backyard. It makes it very easy for us to go rock climbing a lot.

Another activity that remains one of the most popular at camp is horseback riding. That’s probably not too surprising, but it seems like we’re seeing lots of excitement down at the barn these days. The equestrian instructors are teaching between 8 and 12 mounted lessons a day, and the stable club is meeting twice daily. The stable club is an extra activity time when girls can stay and help take care of the horses—bathing, brushing and even trimming them. With all that attention and so many girls working closely with the horses, petting them and talking to them, it’s no surprise that we have very attractive horses at Rockbrook, sometimes with braids in their manes or tails, but always clean and shiny. Certain favorite horses are so pampered!

What’s more fun the playing bingo with your friends? Playing bingo for fabulous prizes? Yes. But even more so, playing bingo dressed up as a granny or a grandpa! That was our evening program tonight: a classic event we call “Granny Bingo.” Dressing up for this event involves wigs, glasses, strategically placed pillows in clothes, bathrobes, walking sticks and powder in your hair. Add to that a scratchy, thin voice and you can have a pretty convincing character. The counselors dress up as well and perform while calling the numbers. “B29… oh deary, how I’d like to be 29 again!” “Turn up your hearing aid girlies, and let’s play bingo!” It’s really funny stuff to look around and see the dining hall filled with old ladies and men carefully matching their numbers. It didn’t take long to hear “BINGO” and excited cheers when someone from a cabin filled a row.

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Cabin Day Fun

Wednesday at camp follows a different schedule than other days of the week. It starts with the campers attending their regular activities, the set they signed up for on opening day. Kathleen, our camp photographer, spent some time down at the Equestrian Center (or simply “The Barn”) taking pictures of the different lessons going on. Today our farrier was there as well, so the girls were able to learn a bit about shoeing a horse. Cara led one of the classes that was working on drill team riding. In the class, she had 5 riders, plus herself, making 3 rows of 2. They worked on staying in formation and spacing as they walked and then trotted in a figure-8 pattern. By the end of the lesson they were really doing well, starting and stopping on command perfectly. Good work!

For lunch, Rick and his crew had homemade macaroni and cheese for us. The girls absolutely gobbled it up, though were less enthusiastic about the steamed broccoli! With the salad bars, it was a yummy lunch. Oh and today’s muffin flavor (for our “muffin break” at 11am) was chocolate chip, made from scratch by our baker Liz. Boy, those were popular. After rest hour, we began “Cabin Day,” a special time on Wednesdays that replaces the regular afternoon activities and allows each cabin group to do something together. It might be a group craft project, hike to Rockbrook Falls, or baking cookies, but the cabin group decides. We also sometimes plan something for an entire age group, like today when the Juniors had a Beach Party down at the lake. They pulled out all the lake toys, swam and played a bunch of relay games like the classic greased watermelon, and a funny game that involved blowing through a straw to move a small ball across the water. With beach music and bright sunshine, it was a great afternoon “mountain beach party.” To cap it off, we all made a quick trip to Dolly’s Ice Cream stand for a sweet treat.

Later, all the senior girls took a trip to Sliding Rock. This always means big excitement for the girls. The water is so cold and the anticipation of the final plunge into the pool below is so great, you hear plenty of screaming as the girls slide down the rock. Coming up from the water below, there’s even more urgent screams of “Ah, Ah, Ah, It’s so cold!” But as they hop back in line, you also hear, “That was sooo fun! Let’s go again!” Most everyone slides once, but I think some went 4 times in all. Next stop? Dolly’s again. Pulling out of the forest, we stopped so everyone could enjoy a cone of their favorite flavor, like “Rockbrook Chocolate Illusion” or just some soft-serve Vanilla. Dolly’s ice cream is legendary at camp (“This is the best ice cream on earth!” one Junior put it to me), so everyone loves a trip there. Don’t be surprised if your camper asks to stop by on the closing day of camp. It really is good stuff.

Campers on the Move

The weather has been absolutely perfect these last few days with bright sunny skies, lower humidity, and milder temperatures. First thing, we all layered up with a fleece or sweatshirt to temper the fog and cool 65 degree morning, but later happily swam in the lake and relaxed in the sun.

Today the kitchen crew made us all a delicious lunch of tilapia tacos, homemade guacamole, rice, beans, salsa and cheese. With corn chips, our regular salad bars, and the peanut butter and jelly station as an option, everyone was nicely stuffed for rest hour. Dinner was also excellent. We had baked chicken breasts (or tofu) and basmati rice, Otis’s amazing peanut Gado Gado sauce, spinach salad, and brownies for desert. Oh, by the way, Otis says fresh lime juice and coconut is the secret to his sauce.

A group of the senior girls took an all-day kayaking trip to the Nantahala River with Clyde, Kelsey and Christine. This is a more advanced kayaking river, so these girls knew their stuff. They are comfortable in their boats, know how to catch eddies, ferry, and handle the class 2 and 3 rapids of the river. Back at camp, we heard that the trip went great with everyone making clean runs, and no one flipping their boats. Another, very different, trip also went out today: Juniors rock climbing Castle Rock, one of the huge rock faces on the camp property. Katherine took them up to hop on the route called “Bam.” This is the longest and most exposed route. Towards the top, you can turn around and see the French Broad River Valley from what looks like 1000 feet up (even though it’s really about 80 feet from the base of the rock). It took a while to make the climbs, but even these 2nd and 3rd graders could tackle this climb. Pretty cool.

The afternoon riding classes enjoyed bareback riding today. The girls love this because it allows them to ride several horses in the same lesson (musical horses!), and to really feel their horse while riding. Cara, our Riding Director, plans this every so often to mix things up a bit, and because it helps the girls work on their balance while riding.

A short walk from the center of camp is our “Outpost” camping area where our juniors can sleep out. Tara took 2 more cabins out there after dinner. This is big fun for the girls. Imagine a slumber party with sleeping bags all lined up, pillows, a couple of stuffed animals, card games, flashlights, and lots and lots of giggles and chatting. Now imagine it out in a dense forest on a tent platform under a tarp. They build a campfire, roast marshmallows, and of course sing songs and tell stories into the night. Everyone’s a little tired when they get back to camp in the morning, but it’s the “good” kind of tired we thrive on at camp.