We did a LOT of camping this summer. Way more than I usually do. But when my good friend Emma texted that she was back organizing the Manassas Ward campout, I couldn't say no. This didn't happen the last couple years (ironically, it was not canceled due to Covid; the camp out happened in the fall of 2020, but then it didn't work out for Emma's family), so I HAD to go now that it was back on!
Craig was uncharacteristically unenthusiastic about the whole thing. He'd been busy at work getting teachers and schedules and everything all ready for school to start and we're still pretty worn out from everything else we've had going on this summer. But he knew it was important to me, so he agreed to go. I threw together a bunch of foil dinners and even pulled Kendra out of band camp early. Craig loaded all our usual stuff into the van and we were off!
Each time we do this it surprises me how long it takes to get there. Shenandoah is so close, and yet so far, especially when you have to drive through town at 5pm on a Friday. It was slow going. But we'd left way earlier than in years past (it helped that Craig didn't have to be at a football game like back in 2016!), so it really wasn't too bad. The Johns family and Betsy were already there, so that was nice to get started visiting right away. And we still had plenty of daylight when we got there to build a fire and put up our tents. By the time the tents were up we had good enough coals to get those foil dinners cooking (and they turned out pretty good! It helped that we also brought plenty of condiments to go on them). Everyone also roasted hotdogs for themselves while they waited on the foil dinners.
Yup, the foil is on fire here. But the food inside (wrapped in another layer of foil and parchment paper) was fine!
Craig and Betsy
Other people started arriving as we were eating. Some we didn't know, but our friends the Atkinsons came, and we've met the Haights at other campouts. So there were MORE than enough people to hang out with!
After dinner and s'mores, the kids were having the best time ever playing hide and seek in the dark until we finally chased them off to bed way too late. Bentley and Kendra decided to sleep in hammocks, which meant Ryder, Colton and Camille had one tent to themselves, and Craig and I had the other tent. Which was great! No one was too crowded!
Who decides how many people fit in these tents, anyways??? Those numbers are always ridiculously off!
And then the grown ups and big kids sat around the dying fire talking more and watching a possum come nosing around eating all the food we'd dropped.
Those things are so creepy. And it was NOT afraid of us or our flashlights!
Next to seeing my friends, my next favorite thing about camping is getting to really see the stars at night. There were too many trees to see a lot of the sky, but what I could see was spectacular. (It even made up for having to get up at 3am to use the bathroom.) The weather was chilly, but in a very refreshing sort of way. Burrowing down into my sleeping bag was cozy and nice.
I woke up early to the kids making noise and tried unsuccessfully to shush them from my tent. But then I guess I fell back asleep, because an hour later I heard someone announcing that breakfast was ready. Oops-- I'd meant to actually help out! It was nearly 8am, the latest I've ever slept while camping!
After breakfast we got a group photo:
We quickly packed up our gear and then headed off on a short hiking loop around the campsite. It was still cool enough that the gnats weren't out. Usually those gnats are the bane of my existence, so that was great.
Scenic overlook where a tiny baby bunny hopped out in front of our van and a rough-looking biker dude got super excited and made heart hands at it. Also, our clothing colors are surprisingly well-coordinated here!
These little flowers were so pretty!
Christina and Emma, some of my besties!
Large rocks are always a big hit when we hike!
We had to leave at check out time and give everyone hugs goodbye. Plus it was getting hot and the gnats were finally appearing. We stopped at the base of the mountains at our favorite hamburger dive for lunch, then Craig drove us all home and I nodded off as I we went through town. Craig was happy to admit that he had really enjoyed himself-- it was nice to not being the bishop and being in charge of running everything and making sure everyone felt welcomed and greeted. So I was glad he could have a break! And for me, it was nice that it was such a quick trip, not multiple nights!
We got home and unloaded the van, hung the tents to dry, everyone showered, and I started laundry before I took a real nap. That that evening I drove a van full of youth to a multi-stake dance in Waynesboro with my friend Megan. It was fun to see the kids having such a great time together, but boy, was I tired by the end of the night! Funniest moment of the evening was when we were just leaving the parking lot, and I noticed some sort of film on the inside of my windshield and was complaining about it to Megan. She took one look and said, "I think that's all the hormones." 😂
Once again, I slept pretty well for camping. All the reports I heard were that the cabins were hot, stuffy, and (in the case of the boys' cabin, but maybe a little bit in the girls', too) pretty stinky. My tent was just perfect, though, and it was so nice getting a few minutes to chat with Craig before we fell asleep.
In the morning, we had a quick, cold breakfast for everyone (cereal, bagels, breakfast bars, muffins; that kind of thing) and then everyone had to pack up and clear out of the cabins. We drove the kids to the field where they had paintball and dropped almost everyone off. After watching the boys wrestling at the water park, I decided to skip paintball. I didn't need to go to battle against these maniacs. Instead, I headed to the main welcome cabin to get us checked out and pay tips to all our guides (something that was really bothering me! We hadn't thought to bring cash so we couldn't pay them in the moment, and I was desperately trying to keep track of everyone who'd worked with us!). I also tried on a cute shirt I'd seen at the gift shop and quickly decided it was NOT worth $70.
Then I went back to the paintball field to see the carnage. And oh, my, I was glad I hadn't participated! If you weren't wearing padded clothes (and it was pretty hot to be wearing anything extra), those paint pellets absolutely left a mark! A couple of the kids were very bravely trying their best to not cry.
This was taken through the netting, so it's a terrible picture, but you get the idea
It took all my filtering abilities to not point out that these looked like hickies...
I got all the kids who were finished back to our campsite so they could sit in the shade and calm down from the paintball. A bunch of them decided to play Old Maid, which seemed like a perfect calming down activity.
Luci, Ryder, Madeline, Sabrina
Once everyone came back to camp, we had a final devotional and then loaded up the cars and walked all around making sure we hadn't left any garbage behind. We began driving and then stopped to do one final head count, then we drove to the closest Chick-fil-A for lunch. Chick-fil-A was incredible-- they knew exactly how to handle a large group like ours while still taking care of their other customers. Whatever your thoughts are on their food, no one does customer service like Chick-fil-A! (Craig and I also got to walk one girl across the street so she could get Taco Bell. I'm pretty sure it took them longer to get her one order than it took Chick-fil-A to help the other 33 of us...)
And then it was just driving home! This time I was in the van with Craig, and I played DJ while he drove. Everyone got picked up at the Dick's parking lot and we tried to send them all home with their stuff, but there were a lot of odds and ends-- like a camping chair???-- that were never claimed.
Tom and Donna brought Colton and Camille home a little after we'd arrived and it was so good to see my kiddos again!!! The following day was fast Sunday, and Craig had challenged all the youth to get up and bear their testimonies about the things they'd learned on High Adventure. (He rather pointedly explained that a testimony does NOT mean saying how much fun you had-- it had to actually be about the gospel!) AND THEY DID!!! The whole meeting was ONLY the youth getting up and talking about the things they'd learned-- it made me so happy. I'm so glad I got to be a part of this whole awesome weekend!
That first night on high adventure I slept really well for camping, so that was awesome. We woke up to more grey and gloomy weather. And, when I retrieved Craig's phone from where I'd left it charging, it was completely dead! (At the time we thought it was actually broken, but it revived once we got home, so I guess it just didn't want to be camping any more.) But this means we got NO pictures of the day. So this post is going to be all words-- I'm sorry!!! Regardless of the weather and phone situation, we were still going whitewater rafting, so off we went! Putting on your swimsuit at 8am in the cold and damp feels very wrong. (Unless you're on the swim team, I suppose?) But once we were outfitted in our life jackets and helmets it wasn't too bad.
There was about a half hour bus ride to the river, and then we had to divide into various rafts. I went with the older teenager girls and they put us with Christine, the only female guide on the river, so that was cool. Yay, girl power! (And she was great-- we really liked her!) One of the girls, Jadyn, had never rafted before and was pretty nervous starting out. I've gone rafting a bunch, but I still get a bit nervous! But we hit our first rapid and it was fun and then everyone was just happy. During a calm spell in the river, Christine told us we could jump in and swim around. She assured us that she could pull us back into the raft, which was exactly the thing I was worried about. For all my exercising, I do NOT have a lot of upper body strength, and pulling yourself over a giant inflated tube while wearing a bulky life jacket and with no floor to kick off from is HARD. But with Christine's encouragement, we all jumped in!
And the water was GREAT! It felt so nice swimming around in that river! I found out later that the New River actually winds its way through North Carolina before arriving in West Virginia. The area it covers in North Carolina is very flat, so the river spreads out, becoming very shallow and getting warmed by the sun. Most of the rivers I've ever swam in are comprised of recent snow melt so this river felt wonderful!
We paddled around for a bit and then, true to her word, Christine managed to yank us all back into the raft. I watched her technique and was able to help pull a few of the girls in, too. Then we did something I'd never done before-- we surfed the same rapid about five times while a photographer stood by grabbing shots of us. Basically, we'd go through the rapid, then swing around to the side where the water eddied and paddle back upstream and into the rapid and stay put as long as we could. It was really fun, screaming and getting drenched with that not-too-cold water!
So yes, we surfed the rapid for quite a bit and that was awesome. Then we continued on down the river. Around noon we pulled off the river and the guides set up lunch for everyone. Barbecue chicken and pulled pork sandwiches with veggies and hummus and a brownie for everyone. As we were waiting to eat, the sun had come out and day just turned glorious. One of those moments where I was sitting on a rock munching my food and realizing that everything felt perfect and right. How often do we get to recognize those moments when we're in them? I was so happy.
Once the food was gone it was time to get back in the river. More rapids, more swimming, a little more surfing. We got to go under a huge bridge and learn about how they catapult people off it once a year for some festival. (In case you were wondering, West Virginia is still wild and wonderful!) And we stopped at a big rock and whoever wanted to could climb up on it and jump into the river. I figured I had filled my quota for scary heights stuff the day before, so I just stayed in the raft. A couple of the girls did flips off the rock-- just watching that terrified me-- but they didn't hit their heads on anything, so I guess it was all good.
And then we finished up with a few small rapids after that. The river was so fun, and it was a much longer rafting trip than I'd ever done before. It was perfect.
We headed back to our campsite, built a fire now that everything was nice and dry, and let the kids roast hotdogs for a very early dinner. Once they'd eaten, they all headed to Ace's water park to play. I stayed behind to keep an eye on the fire and wait for the other group to return. A few of the kids were pretty nervous about this rafting and had opted for an easier trip on the upper river. Their trip left and returned about an hour later than ours, but since there was absolutely no cell phone coverage, we didn't really have a good way to communicate with each other. So I was the messenger!
I sat in my camp chair enjoying my book and the breeze and the birds singing and I may have even nodded of for a bit, which is absolutely weird for me (I pretty much only sleep in my bed). But the peace and quiet were so nice.
Once the other group returned, I told them they could cook hotdogs, too, and then get going to the water park, but they decided they didn't want to waste any time eating when there was a fun park they were missing out on, so we headed out immediately. You can see a few pictures of the place here, if you're curious. But basically, it's a manmade lake with a bunch of inflated obstacles and such to climb around on. I did a bit of the obstacle course and it was hard-- I think if you're a kid and lower to the ground and weigh less, it's probably easier? But it was hilarious watching people stumbling around and falling into the water all over the place! It also was awesome watching Craig launch Ryder off the blob. Most of the boys in our group settled down on a large float and started wrestling and throwing each other into the water. They were pretty crazy, but no one got hurt. Boys are weird.
I stuck around for an hour or two and then went off to shower. That felt pretty nice, although I always hate trying to get dressed while I'm still half wet and trying to not touch anything or drop my clothes in the puddles. Better than YWs Camp where I didn't shower the entire time!
We ended the evening with more kids roasting hotdogs and eating anything else that was around while Kendra helped Megan make peach and chocolate-cherry cobbler in Dutch ovens. While those cooked we had a very long devotional, and it was really nice, drawing some great gospel analogies to our experiences rafting. The stars came out and you could see the Milky Way (or rather, why it was called the Milky Way!-- every star you've ever seen is part of the Milky Way galaxy), and that's one of the things I love most about being out in nature and away from all the light pollution of civilization. The devotional ended right as the cobblers finished cooking and they were probably the best thing I've ever eaten that was cooked in a Dutch oven! Then we let the kids hang out until way too late, but it's so hard to shoo them away from a nice campfire and so many stars and a chance to socialize when they aren't staring at their phones!
This photo is a little blurry-- one of the other moms took it, and apparently our phones don't play nicely together...
I got home from camp on Thursday, Craig got back Saturday, and then we had a few days at home, during which time I caught up laundry and grocery shopping, actually went to my job for a few hours, and then spent time with my friend Megan planning all the food for our next adventure. Wednesday I was busy shopping for all that food, and cleaning the house and basement/guest bedroom because Jason was staying for the night. Craig took him to this fun driving range near Richmond with a bunch of his friends while I went to book club with mine. Once we were all home we gave ourselves one (frantic) hour to pack before we allowed ourselves to stay up way too late talking. There was a lot from Jason we wanted to hear about!
And then Thursday morning we hugged Colton and Camille and Jason goodbye so he could drive them up to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Culpeper and we took all the youth in our ward to West Virginia to go whitewater rafting!
Because-- you know-- when we were planning out this summer, we figured there just wasn't enough camping! 😂
I should also explain that our ward entails two school districts that start and end their school year two weeks off from each other, giving us only 8 weeks when all the youth are on summer vacation. So we have to plan everything very strategically.
So! This time it was High Adventure, something Craig has done with the youth every summer since he became bishop. But this was the first time he was spending some real money on it, and it showed. We stayed at this awesome place, Ace Adventure Resort, and filled our time there with ziplining, rafting, a water park filled with inflatable obstacle courses, and paint ball. (And we didn't even have time for the ATVs or ropes course!) When Craig first started planning this, he figured we would have maybe 20 people, but with all the new people moving in, and then extra people coming out of the woodwork because it looked so fun, we ended up having 34 people (6 grown ups, 16 boys, and 12 girls). For comparison's sake, last year only 4 girls participated. So, yeah, I'm not sure he would have tried this if he'd known ahead of time just how many people would be coming!
He'd rented two cabins, which each slept 16 people, so the young men completely filled one of the cabins, and the other could fit the young women and the grown women chaperones. The grown men had to bring their own tents. I could have been in the cabin with the girls, but I wanted to share a tent with Craig. (My air mattress is probably cleaner and definitely more comfortable than the bunks in those cabins!) Usually when we use this tent, we have two or three kids in it with us, so it felt very roomy now! And unlike the tents at YWs camp, this one zips up and keeps the bugs out! So it felt quite luxurious! We also had flush toilets, sinks, and showers nearby, so this nearly counted as glamping, as far as I was concerned.
Craig got to drive the van full of girls, while I rode with a mom who was a little worried about getting sleepy and wanted company. I was sad to miss out on singing along with all the Young Women, though!
The drive there took about three hours, and the more we drove, the worse the weather got. We arrived to a cold, misty rain and it was a little disheartening. Fortunately, Craig had asked Scott Huff to be ready with some games we could all play, and there was a covered area where we could stay dry, so while we waited for our first adventure, we played several variations of wink killer:
Scott explaining the rules for each iteration...
And before long the rain had stopped and it was time for ziplines! We split into two groups, and I refused to risk dropping my phone, so all the pictures from here on out are Craig's (lucky him with a work phone that's much more easily replaced!)
Getting all geared up!
Don't let Ryder's funny faces fool you-- nothing scares this kid!
Isaiah, Topher, and Bentley
Liberty, Jadyn, and Kendra
Sabrina, Olivia, and Ella
Craig, Scott, and Perry. (These three helped out together after the flooding in Kentucky last year and have been buddies ever since!)
Craig's group!
Topher and Bentley getting all clipped in
Part of the tour included these two sky bridges. This first one was pretty cool-- you could pretend you were Indiana Jones or something while you walked across it! But the second one...
...was a LOT more narrow and way scarier to cross! Occasionally there'd be huge gaps between the boards, too! I was fine, but I had to go very slowly, and I made sure I went last so I wouldn't have anyone on my tail urging me onwards (which, I learned on the first one, just made me nervous). I can do things like this, but I have to go at my own pace!
And then, after that last terrifying bridge, we came to our 9th and final zipline and it was... almost a dead drop of 30 feet? Did I already mention that I'm afraid of heights? Actually that isn't totally accurate-- just standing on heights is fine. And ziplining off platforms was kind of scary, but I was mostly okay after the first one. But jumping from heights truly scares me. How did I end up here? But there wasn't really any way to back out of it now. So I sat on the platform facing the drop and told our guide that he was going to have to push me and that I was definitely going to scream. He told me he was going to count and that I needed to lean forward on three, and all it took was the littlest of nudges from him and down I went, fully delivering on that scream!The kids wanted me to flip upside down and act like Spider-Man once I'd passed the platform a couple times (as everyone else was doing and which the guides had told us was perfectly fine), but just dropping from that height was as much as I needed to do to prove myself. I was done. Whew. How do I end up in these situations?
So, yes, I got to go to YWs camp this year! I've been in YWs tons throughout the years, but I've always had small enough children that I didn't even try to go (except once when I stopped by for a few hours during the day-- but if you aren't spending the night, I don't think it really counts), so this was exciting and scary! Other than those few hours, the last time I attended camp was when I was in Young Womens, a thousand years ago.
I didn't really know what to expect or what I needed to be doing to get ready, so the higher ups kept asking me what questions I had and I'd have to admit that I didn't know enough to even have questions. Fortunately, I have a counselor and advisor with more recent experience and they were on top of things. They got me through it and I was so grateful to them!!!
Things were also complicated this year because the YW were using the same camp as the Young Men, and the two overlapped by a night. This made for something of a logistics nightmare for all the people planning it, as they tried really hard to never let the boys and girls see each other. (That might sound oddly puritanical, but I thought it was a great goal since the girls arrived at camp on Monday, but the boys came Wednesday, meaning the girls were already pretty gross. I was glad that we weren't setting them up to suddenly feel the need to preen for the boys-- it's camping, for crying out loud! Also, I'm a firm believer that girls need time away from boys to be free to be their own wild and wacky selves, so I didn't want that time intruded upon.)
But. This meant that I was gone Monday through Thursday (with Kendra), while Craig arrived on Wednesday and stayed until Saturday (with Bentley and Ryder). We originally told Tom and Donna we needed them to babysit Colton and Camille Wednesday to Thursday, until we realized (in one of the biggest duh moments ever) that Craig would still be working 8 hours on Monday and Tuesday while I was gone, and maybe it would be a good idea to have a little adult supervision, especially since Bentley was also working one of those days. So they were very gracious about adding that to their schedules. We have REALLY put them to work this summer! We also had to negotiate who was driving the van when and finally settled on me taking the van to camp, and then it stayed until Craig drove it home at the end of the week, so we could offer the girls rides to camp, and the boys could get rides home from camp, but we needed parents to help out the other directions. See what I mean about the logistics??? It was all very complicated.
The other wild thing is that we had 14 girls attending camp from our ward! We had a few people move in, a couple visitors who joined us, and some girls who decided at the last minute to come (one doesn't usually come to church, the other usually attends in her mother's ward about an hour away). My guess is that last year we had about half that number. So it was AWESOME to have so many girls, but it also made everything a bit more complicated: one girl had a lot of health issues (probably related to her habit of staying up until 4am and then eating bread soaked in butter even though she was lactose intolerant); one girl has mobility issues from birth and her dad had assured her we would have a golf cart for her, but we had no way to get one so she felt pretty let down when she arrived (I felt terrible about that, but we did get things worked out by having the camp quarter master drive her everywhere that was too far for her to walk), another girls has a lot of anxiety from being around other people and would need down time to calm down a bit, and one girl just liked to follow the leaders around offering up terrible suggestions (such as waking me up at 6:15 to ask if we should start waking everybody up since they were supposed to be up by 6:30... Um, NO?)... And then we had some issues with a couple of the girls just not wanting to do anything and then being really angry with me for trying to get them moving... So, yes, things got a bit messy at times. I suspect with less girls it would have been easier to keep track of and manage everyone's various issues.
But. Having said that, the girls were also wonderful in so many ways! They all got along really well with each other (which is HUGE. SO HUGE!). And the girls who were leaders were out there working with their girls and just being amazing.
I had no way to charge my phone, so I was trying to use it as little as possible. This means I forgot to take very many pictures, but here's what I did get and a few pictures I stole from other people...
Working on name tags to go outside our tents
This year the wards all slept in tents near each other, but then during the day the girls were divided into battalions based on their age. The girls had mixed reactions to this, but I thought it worked really well!
Avery, Kendra, and Liberty
Avery, McKinley, Violet, Sabrina, and Lina
Gaga ball was a HUGE hit
As was Nine Square
Marianne doing bottle rockets (with our friend Chris Shaw!)
Sabrina cradling the rocket she'd decorated with her sister, Luci
I was trying to film McKinley launching hers, and it kept not working and then when it finally did work, some random girl walked between us right as it launched. Such an epic failure of videography!
The whole gang at the mess hall, l-r: Ella, Marianne, Frankie, Lina, Missy, Megan, McKinley, Madeline, Avery, Kendra, Liberty, Violet, me, Teagan, Luci, Elise, and Sabrina
So, yes, the difficult part was just managing so many people. The part I'd actually been worried about-- the camping aspect of YWs Camp-- was SO EASY!!! It turns out, after sleeping under a handcart for a couple of nights, sleeping in a boy scout tent on a cot feels pretty luxurious! I even had a tent all to myself, which was great. And most of the food was cooked for us and it was pretty good to boot! The weather was fine, too-- hot if you were in the sun, but pretty pleasant in the shade. We had a quick rain storm, but I managed to run back to camp and close up everyone's tents before it hit, so that wasn't a big deal and that rain cooled things down very nicely, too. That night it actually felt good to be snuggled in my sleeping bag!
It was weird having Craig show up on Wednesday! I was so excited to see him, but we were both pretty busy keeping track of all the kids we were in charge of, so we could only chat for a few minutes while we swapped cars and gear. He was scheduled to spend a half hour with all our girls, but he needed to be focused on them, not me, so I had to not be my usual co-dependent self. (I did get to sneak over to the boys' side and give Ryder and Bentley hugs, which made me happy.) The day I headed home, I was leaving the camp just thinking, "Bye, Craig, wherever you are! See you in a couple days?" So, yeah, that was weird. On the plus side-- in years past when Craig has been at camp, I've been pretty upset if he didn't manage to call me. Now I have a much better appreciation for just how busy the leaders are, and how hard it is to find a place to make a phone call where you have a signal and everyone isn't just listening in from their tents! So that's probably a good thing to understand.
Bishop time!
One of the really fun things about doing camp shortly after trek was getting to see the girls who were in my trek family again! (Especially when a few of my ward girls were not happy with me, it was nice to run into Emily and listen to her telling me I was the best trek mom ever. See, Rivanna girls? I don't suck!!!)
Speaking of which-- there's big sister Martha! (Also, you can see our scout tents back there!)
The girls had to cook for themselves one night. Since that was the day it rained and all our firewood got soaked, we were very fortunate that Megan planned for that and brought her camp stoves for us to use!
Camp stoves for the win! Also, Yum!
I brought my speaker and the girls were very excited to get to play their music. And I tried not to think too much about my draining phone battery...!
Making friendship bracelets for each other
Getting ready for skits!
Kendra, Libby, and Madeline
Sabrina, Elise, and Luci
This wasn't how they actually learned archery, but it makes for a cool photo!
All the leaders
I got to observe the self defense class, and I thought it was really well done. The woman running it did a wonderful job talking about boundaries and how you get to decide what makes you comfortable. Once she'd covered the basics of how you enforce your boundaries (she described how your reactions can progress from Classy, to Sassy, and then if that doesn't work, to Nasty!), then she went over some basic punches, kicks, and how to get out of various holds. It was really good information that I want to revisit with the girls in my ward soon. I love seeing girls learn to be tough and take care of themselves!
The last night they did what was called a "faith walk" where we walked along the trails in the dusk singing hymns and holding tiny tea candles. Every so often we'd come upon a person or two who would share their testimony or a story from the scriptures. It was really lovely, definitely my favorite thing about camp by far. Pictures really couldn't do this one justice, though, so you'll just have to imagine it!
So, overall, camp was really great. And I'll have a better idea of what to expect and how to better set up expectations next year, so hopefully it will just keep getting better! (Also, the girl who gave me the most grief came up to me and apologized after church the following Sunday. And while I'm certain that her mom made her do that, I also have a much better idea how impossible it is to make that girl do anything she doesn't want to do, so an apology from her totally counts. All is forgiven.)
One of our ward members, Gabe, was at camp the whole time running the archery class. He also took a lot of drone footage and put together this video, which does camp a LOT more justice than my photographs, if you want to watch!
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