A few weeks ago, my brother & I went to a summer camp for 2 weeks. Camp Quinebarge is my happy place. This blog is to talk about the amazing times I had there.
Every day at Camp Q, there's a schedule. You get up at 7:30 a.m. If you're a waiter, you go to the dining hall and set tables. You will be a waiter all day for every meal time. Then you would go to breakfast at the next bell. After that, you would head to your cabin for cabin cleanup. Then, you'd head to your 4 morning activities. After that, everyone would go to lunch. Then you get about an hour or so of cabin time. When cabin time is over, you go to General Swim. You would go get changed and head over to your final activity. Then you would have 30 minutes of cabin time, then dinner. Waiters repeat their job at every meal time. Then you get to go to the evening activity, which varies every night. Last but not least, there'd be Friendship Circle, showers, candle pass, & lights out.
Seems like a fairly complicated schedule, but you get used to it. So when you first get to camp, you get assigned a cabin that you will be in for the rest of your stay. You have from 4-12 people in a cabin, maybe more. Each cabin has 1-2 counselors, and sometimes a counselor in training. I got lucky and got a cabin with a total of 6 people in the cabin.
The 3 daily meals change every day. In your cabin, the counselors will most likely have made a chore wheel. You and your cabin mates will switch between daily chores such as sweeping, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the porch, etc. Waiter is the only job where you have to leave the cabin's porch, making it so you only have one job to do during cabin cleanup. I am very proud of my cabin, Senaca, because we earned the title "Cleanest Cabin." We got to go on a pontoon boat ride with ice cream sundaes! Oh, and all the counselors came and looked at our cabin.
After you've cleaned your cabin, you go to your first activity. When you arrived at camp, you got to choose your schedule from these activities: Horses, Sports, Drama, Boating, Adventure, Woodshop, Ceramics, Arts & Crafts, and Nature. I only had the chance to do 8 of the 9 activities, so I didn't get to do Arts & Crafts.
So with the activities that I did, my favorite was probably Nature or Horses. In Horses, each camper gets about 10 minutes or so on a horse. When your turn is up, you and the other campers that aren't riding either play games, clean, or learn. The 4 horses that are in the barn currently are Rain, Spuds, Licorice, and Reggie. That's just the overall idea of what I did during Horses.
When I was doing Nature, I had 2 little boys in my group: Ben & Owen. Both only ever wanted to play with the chickens and bunnies. Which, by the way, I didn't mind. That meant that for most of the week at Nature we would just goof of in the animal pen. We also caught frogs in the frog pond, which was pretty fun as well!
Drama was also one of the best, because I found it really fun! I only did all of my activities for a week or less, so most of Drama that week was improv. Improv was very entertaining and we did a lot of skits. In one of the skits, I injured myself (no surprise,) but we won't discuss that.
Adventure is awesome. Period. At Adventure, they have a high ropes course, a ropes course, and a Ninja Warrior kinda thing. I didn't get to try the Ninja Warrior thing because they added it on the second week, and I did Adventure the first week. Anyway, I got to go on the low ropes course once. On the ropes course there was a zip-line which I got to go on twice! Oh, yeah, and another thing there was the rock wall. I got to go rock climbing once, and that was pretty cool. I hope next year I get to go on all the equipment more.
I only got 3 days of Woodshop & Sports, so I didn't get to do much. I also only got 2 days of Ceramics & Boating, which kinda sucked, but oh well.
Woodshop was fun. I got to paint a heart that the counselors cut out for me. Unfortunately, that is the only project I was able to complete. But I had a good time socializing there!
Sports was good, but we really didn't do much. I played 2 games and Archery. Archery was the main thing there at sports. I was bad at it, but I had a great time shooting arrows onto the edge of a target.
Ceramics was one of the best. I enjoyed creating and painting whatever I wanted out of clay. It would have been very relaxing if there weren't people yelling & throwing clay, but it was very entertaining anyways.
I had so much fun boating. I got to go tubing on the pontoon boat, and then I got to go with a cabin mate on a paddle board! Plus the time we got on our ice cream reward trip.
That's all I have to say about the normal activities for now, but there were so many more activities that I don't even know where to begin!
As I've said before, there is an evening activity every night before bed. I participated in 12 evening activities for the time I was there. However, I will only talk about some of my favorites.
On every Sunday, they have a fun campfire at an area in the camp. (I forgot the name of the place) It was a ton of fun because we sang songs and roasted marshmallows! In the middle of the week, we also did a skit that was quite unique. We had a lot of fun nonetheless!
One of my favorites, Life Size Clue, was a new addition. A handful of counselors dressed up for a dinner party. One of them was murdered, and one was the murderer. It was very entertaining to run free around the whole camp looking for clues.
The second day of camp, we did Capture the Flag. This was unfair because the other team hid the flag on top of a Monkeytown building. ('twill be explained later) We lost, but had a lot of fun doing so.
We played Find the Counselor, where most of the counselors hid all around the camp. I found 4, so I was happy with that. You got Monketown Money when you found people.
The Color Run was basically you running down a trail trying to avoid getting pelted with balls of multicolored powder. My cabin got lucky and dodged most of what they threw at you.
The rest from here on are all-day activities.
Color Wars. Four teams competing for fun & bragging rights. The teams were Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. All the teams had to go and compete against each other in a 1v1 style. Plus, at the end, there was a relay race. Sadly, my team, the Green Team, got 4th place. It was tons of fun anyway!
Finally, it's time to explain Monkeytown. If you go past the boys cabins' and past the nature shed you follow a path to a big sign saying "Welcome To Monkeytown!" There, there are little roofless huts in the trees. That's pretty much all of Monkeytown. There are a few tents too. One day the evening activity is the Monkeytown Auction, where your cabin bets the Monkeytown Money you've earned on a food. Then, you wait 'till the day before you leave. That's when Monkeytown begins! It was raining while Monkeytown was going on, so we had to go to the Dining Hall. So we put our food on the table to begin with. Now, beforehand your counselor would have chosen a game. We got the fishing game.(Without water. XD) So for the first half of Monkeytown, you played carnival games. Then you got to go around and buy food and drink and eat way too much. That was pretty much Monkeytown!
Every night after your evening activity, everyone joins hands to form a circle. You then sang a wonderful song. I fear I do not remember ALL the lyrics, so I won't try. But it was the grand end to every night.
And finally, after shower time was the candle pass. It was the final step before lights out. You and your cabin mates would pass around a fake candle and tell about the best parts of your day. Then, bedtime. The next day, you repeat the schedule!
Sorry the lighting in this photo is very bad!
That's all I have to say about Camp Quinebarge for now, but I might make a part 2 next year!
Thanks for reading!
