Opening Day of 2-Week

It’s finally here! We’ve been waiting all summer for 2-Week camp (as I’m sure you and your families have been), and today we got to welcome everyone to the mountain for two action-packed weeks. The group for this session is younger than our previous two sessions, with every camper younger than middle-school age. This means plenty of energy and excitement, and our awesome counselors are ready to match all of that enthusiasm! While younger boys are excited for just about anything and filled with great curiosity, there also might be a little intimidation with the idea of spending two weeks away from home. For parents, this might be the first time your sons have been away from home for that long, so some nervousness is completely normal for you as well. Luckily, we have a fun packed session planned, and these next 13 days will fly by! With just two weeks here, there’s no time to waste, and everyone certainly hit the ground running today.

Happy Opening Day!

Bright and early this morning, campers and their families came up the old gravel road leading to the heart of camp, eager to start their summer. For some, the camp road is the last leg of a long journey here, with campers arriving from more than 24 different states and 3 different countries this session: France, Singapore, and England. They were greeted by Nathan and Frank, who had the very important role of telling campers their cabins for the session. Next, our own “Trunk Caddies” came to take boys’ trunks out of their cars and get them set up to be transferred down to the cabins. After getting checked in, cars were parked and families made their way down to the Dining Hall to be greeted by Yates. Staff were on hand to help with directions to cabins, man the camp store, and take photos of the excitement. If you’re reading along in anticipation of attending our Junior Camp session, and haven’t had the chance to experience an Opening Day at Falling Creek for yourself, this video gives a good look at what to expect.

Meeting counselors on Opening Day today!

After you all started heading back home today, the activities began with no hesitation. Before lunch, the boys had a quick cabin meeting to officially meet each other, created their own cabin rules, and then gathered as a camp community at Morning Watch for our welcome meeting. During the welcome meeting, Marisa and Yates officially kick off the session, and Kyle goes over the emergency plan as well as all other pertinent information for a safe and fun summer.

Settling in already!

Lunch today was our famous Sunday fried chicken, along with mashed potatoes, roasted green beans, warm rolls, and a full salad bar. We also had “confetti cake” for dessert. During lunch I talked to Graham from Birmingham, who was most excited for the climbing wall. He’s climbed all the way to the top in past years, and was already eager for another chance this year. “Do you think we’ll get to swim after this?” Jack from Austin asked me, excited to jump in the lake. He was most excited about swimming, and luckily boys will have two chances every day during Free-Times to swim, not including if they sign up for swimming in their daily activities. Lucky for Jack, everyone swam this afternoon, which was a nice way to cool off after a sunny Opening Day.

This afternoon, the boys got to move as a tribe through some activity rotations and take a camp tour. The rotations included getting their swim check out of the way, taking cabin photos, performing a health check, learning the Dining Hall procedures, and learning about upcoming trips they can go on! The boys were also able to go ahead and sign up for their six daily activities, choosing the programs that sounded the most fun to them. Having this freedom of choice is what makes the camp experience so rewarding, and gives boys that independence they crave away from home.

Jumping right into activities after mom and dad left!

For dinner, we had spaghetti and meatballs, with garlic bread, roasted broccoli, a stocked salad bar, and sherbert for dessert. This was followed by Evening Program, which was a “Welcome to Camp Scavenger Hunt!” The boys had to run all around camp with their cabin mates, exploring the property and performing funny tasks. These included silly things like finding three creeks, play a hole of disc golf, open and close 25 camp doors, rolling down the grassy knoll, finding five different types of leaves, building a human pyramid, creating an original cabin song, singing Sweet Caroline off the front porch, or leap-frogging the length of the lower dam. The cabin with the most items checked off their list at the end won!

Scavenger Hunt is always a hit for Evening Program

To wind down after the busy day, the whole camp gathered for Campfire. Campfire is a quiet and reflective time that we share as a community, and is a cherished tradition to sing songs and enjoy funny but meaningful skits. Kyle shared the theme for the week: “Joy.” He mentioned that Joy and happiness are wonderful feelings to experience, but are very different. Joy is more consistent and is cultivated internally. It comes when you make peace with who you are, why you are, and how you are, whereas happiness tends to be externally triggered and is based on other people, things, places, thoughts and events. He read James 1:2, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds”.

After campfire, the boys headed back to their cabins for their bedtime routine and Evening Embers. This is a time to talk as a cabin and check in with each other about how the day went, stories they want to share, or what they are most excited for tomorrow. The Evening Embers conversation topics are also centered around camp’s theme for the week. As you can see, it was a busy and exciting first day, and it will only get better from here!

Yates opening tonight’s Campfire

If you want to keep up with what’s going on at camp in a more visual way, our summer photo system within your CampInTouch account provides a great way for you and your family, friends, and guests to have a window into your camper’s summer experience. Our intention is not to try to be comprehensive and capture a photo of every camper and counselor every day, but give you a broad idea of what is going on at camp. CampMinder, our technology partner, helps us to offer an intuitive interface that we hope you’ll enjoy. We will post news and photos by lunch each day reflecting on the previous day.

When you access the photo system within CampInTouch, you’ll immediately notice the organization of photo albums. Trips are posted separately and by individual adventure. You’ll also see a season selector at the top of the screen, which gives you easy access to great camp memories from years past! Selecting a photo gives you a much larger view of that image, and from there, you can swipe or use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the entire album.

Downloading, sharing, saving favorites, and purchasing special photos or gifts is also very easy to do. Use the gray and white button (next to the yellow shopping cart button) for a menu of options including downloading of the photo to your computer. Downloads are free, so do not add photos you want to download for free to your shopping cart (Special prints and photo gifts are available for purchase through CampMinder, so use the shopping cart for those items). The “star” icon in the upper left corner of the photo is a quick way to select favorites to save for later viewing, downloading, or ordering. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or issues with the photo system features.

This summer we are also excited to remind you about Waldo, an optional photo delivery service where you can get all the photos of your camper delivered straight to your phone! Waldo is separate from your CampMinder account. It uses facial recognition to match your camper’s face to photos in our album, and then sends links to the photos to you via text messages. Parents, be sure to check your emails for more detail, but we hope that this can save you time and make it easier to see your son’s adventures.

We also encourage you to check out our news being posted daily on Yates’ personal Facebook page (yates.pharr), the Yates’ Yak blog on CampMinder, Falling Creek Camp’s facebook page, our Instagram site (@fallingcreek), and on the Falling Creek Website (fallingcreek.com/blog).

We hope that you all had safe travels today after we saw you at camp. We feel very fortunate that you chose to share your son with us for two exciting weeks at camp. Friday, August 2nd will be here quicker than the boys want it to be and we are ready to make the most of their time with us!

-Annie Pharr

It’s going to be a great session!