Hey, Camp Fans—Hard brake! *URRRRrrrrrrrr!*

If you’re reading this and you plan on participating in our ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest but have yet to actually enter your story, then stop what you’re doing and visit our submissions page right now—click here! Take your entry, put it into the submission field, fill out the other fields, and hit submit. Or you can opt to upload your camp story too—whichever method you prefer.

Today is the last day for taking submissions, however, so make with the haste before the cutoff cuts you out of this year’s contest!

We want to hear from as many of our readers as possible! This has quickly become one of our favorite times of the year; not only does it mark the close of our busy season, but we also get to hear about all the accomplishments and friendships you made as well as what fears you may have overcome or simply what your favorite part was about going to summer camp!

We hope you’re as excited as we are to find out who among our participants will be winning the gift card prizes. To reiterate the breakdown from previous posts, there will be the first round of winners made up of six participants who won the $50 gift card to our site. Next, there will be three $100 gift card winners. And then we have our grand prize winner of a $300 gift card.

Make sure you don’t miss out on the fun! Tune in a couple weeks from now on Tuesday, September 7^th when we reveal our first random winner and publish their entry right here on the Blog to kick off this year’s ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest collection. Maybe it’ll be yours! Looking forward to it, Camp Fans! And, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

Summer gets busy fast—especially near the end; we all want to fit in as much fun in the sun as we can before the season ends. But make sure you don’t miss out on the opportunity to share your camp stories with our widespread camp community, not to mention win a cool participatory prize from Everything Summer Camp!

Throughout the month of August we’ve been and will continue to be taking your submissions into our ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest here at Everything Summer Camp. Get your memories written up or make a video and send your submissions into us—our final call is just exactly two weeks away on the last minute of August 31.

Don’t forget: Everyone who submits gets a $20 gift certificate to Everything Summer Camp as well as a chance to be one of our ten, random, and lucky winners! Once we have everyone’s submissions, we’ll randomly select our winners and publish each of the winners one day at a time leading up to our grand prize winner of a $300 Everything Summer Camp Gift Certificate.

We’ll also have three winners of the second-place, $100 Gift Certificate and six winners of our third-place, $50 Gift Certificate.

Storytelling is an extremely useful means for campers to cement all the fun memories and valuable skill sets that they learned at camp. It’s great to review the new experiences you’ve had to help yourself process and reflect on what you learned. Need help with some ideas of what to talk about? Check out the initial Contest announcement I wrote last month. 

Please include in your submissions your first name and your last name initial, the camp you visited, and how many summers you’ve spent at camp. Parents are more than welcome to send us their submissions based on camp from their perspective or their own camp experiences as well.

We love hearing your summer camp stories and can’t wait to receive a fresh new collection of stories from this year! Share your stories by clicking right here. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

Not only are kids back from summer camp, but summer camp itself is back! Yes, the vast majority of summer camps are back up and running for the 2021 season after shutting down for the summer along with the rest of the world. I hope you all had a blast with camp reopening this year. And, along with the reopening of camp, comes the reopening of our ‘Share You Camp Story’ Contest!

We can’t wait to hear what a blast you all had this summer! With our return, we’re making just a couple adjustments to the contest. First of all, we’re upping our prizes—including our participatory prize which, as of this year, is a $20 Gift Card for our online store! See the rest of our prizes for ten lucky winners below. Secondly, we’ve created the option this year to submit your camp story to us in video format. Tell your camp story to a camera, upload your recorded video to YouTube, and leave a link to your video in place of your written submission.

If you'd like to submit your camp story in video form, maybe you'd want to include some props. You can deliver your story while sitting on your camp trunk or wearing your summer camp tee. Or show us the stuffed animal that brought you comfort while you were away!

What About?
There’s an endless list of things you could write about for your submission—a list of everything you ate while at camp, for instance. But the best submissions are written about the parts of camp that meant the most to you. Take your time to really set the scene for us. Tell us about your most memorable moment or talk about all the great people you met. Maybe you want to write about the camp you went to and why you think it’s the best!

Maybe you want to include what it was like to be denied the opportunity to go to camp last year and how it was to have the opportunity back this summer. Maybe you DID go to camp last year. In that case, how were things different this year? It may be a crummy part of our history, but we ARE recording history with these camp stories.

If you're still unsure what to share, take a look at our previous submissions by clicking right here and maybe you'll get some inspiration!

No matter what you choose to share, we’d love to hear it! Include your first and last name as well as the name of the camp you visited and how long you’ve been going to camp. Submissions must be 150 words to qualify, but go for more if want! If you're submitting a video, make sure the video is at least one minute and thirty seconds.

Submit your entry by clicking here. There is no entry fee. If you're under the age of 18, you'll need permission from your parent or guardian to participate in this Contest. We’re taking submissions from now until the very last minute of August.

And speaking of parents—we certainly love hearing from you as well; so don’t hesitate to enter your own submission if you’d like to share your own story. How did the experience go on your end? Has your kid shown a positive change in character and behavior? How did you cope with your camper being away? Did you learn any lessons? Tell us anything you want, really—we’re all ears!

The Prizes!
For this contest we’ll be picking ten random winners. Our randomized winner for first place will receive our top prize of a $300 gift card to use on our online store! Three more winners will receive $100 gift cards to our site. And six random winners will receive $50 gift cards. All other participants will get a $20 gift card to make everyone a winner! 

Tell us how camp went and submit your stories to be shared right here on the Blog! Check out the entry form for further details and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Folks!

Here is our last submission from our August ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest entries. The coronavirus has had a huge impact on everyone—camp included. And, though many kids were unable to attend camp this summer, we still wanted to hear from you. We asked to hear from kids who weren’t able to attend camp this season to record this very unusual time in our world.

This last submission for our ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest comes from Kathryn M. who sent her two kids to Camp Ozark. Here’s her submission:

 
“Our 2 week epic family vacation was cancelled as a result of COVID and so finding something to fill summer while being safe was difficult. We felt at ease with all the precautions and testing that Ozark planned to do and were able to sign our two kids up last minute as a result of so many cancellations. It was the first time at sleep away camp and they LOVED it. To have time to play and celebrate with new friends and forget about the global pandemic for a few days was such a blessing. Aidan & Cavan came home raving about their experiences and talking about all the future years they will be able to go to Ozark - Bleed Blue (they were assigned the Osage team...for life!)”


This pandemic certainly has put the kibosh on a lot of typical summer fun that families look forward to each year. I’m sorry that your epic family vacation turned out less than epic, but it’s very cool that you were able to send your kids to sleepaway camp before it was too late! That’s great that Aidan and Cavan are now registered 'bluebloods' and that they had such a positive experience for their first summer camp stay! Hopefully next year your family can fit in an epic vacation and Camp Ozark for your children! Thanks for the sharing your story, Kathryn!

If anybody else is interested in Camp Ozark for a future camp stay, you can visit their website by clicking right here. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John

Hey, Folks!

We’ve been thrilled to hear from our participants for our August ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest. Though some were, many kids weren’t able to attend camp this year. Nevertheless, we still wanted to hear from kids to see what their experiences have been this year.

Our next submission for our ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest comes from Jonah N. who wrote in to tell us about his virtual camp experience with the Tin Mountain Conservation Center. Jonah is our grand prize winner of a $200 gift certificate to Everything Summer Camp. Here’s his submission:

 
“I really wanted to go back to New England Frontier Camp, but it was closed so my mom found a nearby virtual camp. All we had to do was drive up every Monday morning (it was about 30 minutes away so my little sister Noelle and I would play eye spy out the window a ton) and find a box of stuff on the Tin Mountain Conservation Center's porch with our name on it. The awesome part was that the STUFF had bug nets to find macroinvertebrates in our NH and ME streams, ponds, and yup, puddles! Another week we had a bag of mustard seed powder and sprinkled it to do a worm survey in our yard. The coolest thing was the awesome video we'd watch that the counselors made up for us about it all each week. We even got my cousins from PA into doing the activities. Bug Olympics was one of my favorites. I guess you can have fun and not actually be at camp, but learn stuff and feel like a bigger team member. The summer ended with things to build our own solar oven to make s'mores. Now, that is what I call camp. I'd even talk with my friends on the phone about it, and we were all trying to help learn about the environment and see who found more creepy crawlies and other weird stuff none of us knew was in our own back yards! So thanks to COVID I learned so much. Next summer I'll need to do both camps...Yikes! How long is summer anyways?”

 
Cool submission, Jonah! And way to find the silver lining in a situation as crummy as the coronavirus pandemic! That’s awesome that you got to learn so much and have fun doing it through this virtual camp program from the Tin Mountain Conservation Center! I’m sure it wasn’t quite the New England Frontier Camp experience that you’re used to, but the Bug Olympics sounds like it was a really cool and educational summer activity!

For folks interested in the Tin Mountain Conservation Center, check them out by clicking right here. Or visit the website of New England Frontier Camp for your own future camp stay. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans!

- John