Welcome to 2-Week Camp!
We’ve been waiting all year for our 2-Week campers to arrive, and yesterday we got the party started!
Sunday morning after you drove up camp road and dropped your boys off for 2 weeks of fun and adventure, we hit the ground running! There’s 312 boys from 20 different states and 2 foreign countries who arrived on the mountain yesterday. We spent the first part of the morning moving into cabins, greeting new friends, and reconnecting with old ones. Counselors helped each boy settle in as they arrived, so it was a seamless transition into games and activities right away. You can read more about our all-star counselor team here. The energy was contagious, and before lunch even started there were already games on the field, the tennis courts, and under the Dining Hall.
Even though we have many boys return, 2-Week is a session length that is ideal for brand new campers to check out Falling Creek for the first time. We had plenty of boys who were wide eyed and excited after arriving on camp property today, eager to try new things and meet new friends. 150 of these boys have been here for at least one summer before, so about half are brand new to camp and eager to soak it all in, while half are returning for another summer of fun!
The activity schedule of this session is similar to June and Main Camp, with six daily activity periods, and the opportunity to go on out-of-camp trips. Over the next two weeks, campers will enjoy a wide variety of activities, and generally use 2-Week as the foundation for a longer session in the future. Regardless of how many summers these boys have been with us, the next two weeks will be memorable for all.
After you all started heading back home today, the action began with no hesitation. Before a hearty lunch, the boys had a quick cabin meeting to officially meet each other and do initial introductions. With a full salad bar and rice & bean station in addition to the meal at every lunch and dinner, no one’s going hungry at camp! We then all gathered at Morning Watch for our welcome meeting - the first time gathering together as a full camp community.
In the afternoon, boys signed up for their daily activities. Everyone has 3 morning activities and 3 afternoon activities at camp each day, but they can also choose to leave these behind and sign up for any of our trips out of camp. Adventure trips go paddling, biking, hiking, and climbing in some of the most beautiful places in the Southeast. Campers can also choose special signup activities daily (like sailing, horseback riding, fly fishing, or blacksmithing). Having this freedom of choice is what makes the camp experience so rewarding, and gives boys that independence they crave away from home!
During the afternoon, everyone also went on a camp tour, got swim checks out of the way, played games around camp, and took cabin photos. After a big day, we refueled with dinner (pasta with meatballs, broccoli, and garlic bread!), and played exciting Green vs. Gold relays in the evening. Finally, we wound down by enjoying an opening Campfire together. This week’s theme is “adventure,” which is certainly true for us at camp, getting to try new things and expand our horizons. The Evening Embers discussion question was also based on the weekly theme, with cabins discussing “what makes an experience an adventure?” together last night. This session is already off to a great start, and it will be hard to sleep tonight, thinking of all the activities we’ll jump into tomorrow.
Going forward, you can expect a blog from us every morning, telling a story about the previous day’s events. If you’ve been reading the previous blogs already this summer, you know that the daily blogs won’t necessarily be a recap of the full day, but will instead be a snapshot or brief story of camp life. They might be about a certain adventure trip, an activity highlight, a story that relates to our FCC Code, or a special event at camp - no matter what the blog is about for the day, we hope the words and images give you a small window into what happens here at Falling Creek.
For more details about keeping up with what’s going on at camp, please stay tuned for an email that Paige, our Communications Director, sends out at the start of the session. It explains camper mail, the upcoming “parent notes,” and online photo details. We can’t wait to share all the excitement and fun that is to come during these next two weeks - thank you for sharing your sons with us for the 2022 2-Week Camp session!