Take a Hike Day

Happy Take a Hike Day, Everybody! Hiking does more than just keep your body tuned up and feeling good. It’s also good for your mind. Incorporating a beautiful trail that twists and turns and leads to new landscapes is a nice little treat for your eyes and eases your head. Most people live within a reasonable driving distance of cool trails just waiting to be discovered and explored by them!

And it’s really something remarkable that there are so many routes that have been established and groomed through wooded land and remote wilderness. In honor of today, I thought we could consider all the labor that goes into creating a woodsy trail.

Saw and Chain
Woods don’t grow with those winding carpets navigating through them. Somebody at some time came along and cut down any trees or other vegetation that couldn’t be easily wrapped around. Nowadays people do this job with a chainsaw which makes for a pretty strenuous job. But people did a job like this before gas-powered equipment existed to make it that much more manageable. That’s some back-breaking work.

Careful with that Axe
Once a path has been cleared, there will be plenty of brush roots and tree stumps to remove from the ground. Along with the chainsaw yet, this job can be achieved with a shovel and axe to create a clean pathway along the surface and just below—eliminating most, if not all, tripping hazards.

Rakin’ up is Hard to Do
While, at this point, all the big stuff has been removed, there’s still a good amount of work to be done to truly CLEAR the path. The sticks, viny vegetation, roots, rocks, woodchips, and whatever else there may be remaining all still needs to be raked off of the path. It doesn’t require the same kind of intensity as felling trees or stump and root removal, but it’s still a heck of a lot of work.

Like a Bridge over Swampy Water
Depending on the type of land you’re working with, there’s a possibility that you still have a lot of work ahead of you in order to make a traversable trail. If you have a wide enough stream or marshy land that you need to cross, a bridge must be built for reliable crossing.

It’s an astounding amount of work; like I said, it’s amazing that we have so many in national state parks and simple, local trails all over the place—sometimes in places you’d least expect, smack-dab in the middle of a bustling city. Enjoy discovering trails around you and appreciate all the effort that went in to making them possible. Happy National Take a Hike Day! As always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Comfort-Seekers!

Check out the new stuff we’re bringing on board and offering from iScream here at Everything Summer Camp. This place always has the best, most colorful, most unique, and brow-raising products that are great additions to your comfort collection. Check out these great new pillows as well as a pair of socks from iScream, now available here on our online site.

Tic-Tac-Taco Pillow
Rest your head on this spicy hot plush Mexican dish and compete with your bunkmates over a simple game of Tic-Tac-Taco! Stowed away in the back pocket are 10 super soft, velcro pieces that you and a friend can use to play Tic-Tac-Toe right there on the shell of your Tic-Tac-Taco Pillow!

Tic-Tac-Donut Pillow
Go nuts with donuts on this Tic-Tac-Donut Fleece Pillow from iScream for a morning treat or evening dessert! Stowed away in the back pocket are 10 super soft, velcro pieces that you and a friend can use to play Tic-Tac-Toe right there on the front of this dreamy Pillow! You doNUT want to miss out on the this fun!

Swirl Tie-Dye Crew Socks
Stretch your toes out into these Swirl Tie Dye Crew Socks from iScream and sink into a swirling world of cool looks and sweet comfort! These socks are made to stretch up to about mid-calf with one size fitting most kids of 6 years old and up. Be part of the crew and get your pair of 100% cotton Swirl Tie Dye Crew Socks for your summer camp adventure and beyond!

iScream is the queen of comfort. Get your lounge on with these awesome pillows, awesome socks, along with plenty of other cozy products from iScream here at Everything Summer Camp. Check out their entire selection we have available when you click right here. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Folks!

- John

Hey, Camp Girls!

Nowadays, summer camps can be found in every state across the country. But the initial camps that started the whole idea of summer camp all began along the East Coast. The very first summer camp, The Gunnery, was started in 1861. It was rather ahead of its time, though; camp popularity didn’t really start spreading until around the end of the 19^th Century. Today we have an earlier, East Coast camp to shine our spotlight on—Camp Wa-Klo.

Off in the woodsy southwest corner of New Hampshire and a breathtaking view of Mount Monadnock, Camp Wa-Klo got its start more than 80 years ago back in 1938. You may think the name of the camp is borrowed from some Native American culture or a magic word—an abra-cadabra of sorts. Camp Wa-Klo, however, is just the end result of the camp’s co-founders smashed together: Miss WAtkinson and Miss KLOberg.

It was Miss Kloberg who, after operating one of the very first day camps in the country back in 1927 paired with her experience working at other residential camps, decided to join forces with Miss Watkinson and find a camp together that they could call their own.

The came across the beautiful site that would come to be theirs and they envisioned a magnificent waterfront, striking playing fields, and outdoor courts for Tennis. They saw girls going down the Zip Line and traversing up a mountain. They saw proper activity venues designated for Archery, Field Archery, Gymnastics, Field Hockey, Soccer, LaCrosse, and Volleyball—all of it set with the required equipment.

The reality of their vision is there in New Hampshire, ready each summer for a three, four, or seven-week adventure. Wa-Klo campers stay in comfy cabins—airy and bright. They offer a sink and toilet located within each bunk. Younger campers typically get a bunk with a shower while older girls (ages 10 and up) are able to shower in the shower houses that have individual stalls.  

Check out the same vision Miss Watkinson and Miss Kloberg had when they first set eyes on their own space. Give Camp Wa-Klo a closer look by checking out their website when you click right here. Give them your consideration for next summer’s camp adventure and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

It was great reading all the camper submissions we received this year for our ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest at Everything Summer Camp. It’s been a lot of fun going through them all and publishing them right here on the Blog one-by-one to share them with our online! We had ten lucky prize winners to this annual contest that we announced back in September and we’ve been posting all our entries since.

The submission today is a little light so it wasn’t eligible for our contest. A cool poem nonetheless, I thought this submission would be a great way to close out this year’s ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest submission posts. This poetic post features a poem from Karen K. Check it out right here, right now:

7 weeks.
We spend weeks packing them
We fill out forms.
We buy them everything on the list. And then some.
We drive them to camp
We drop them off at the bus.
7 weeks.
We hug them goodbye.
The fun begins for all of us.
7 weeks.
We wait for the first letter.
We look for the smiling picture.
Then we are good. They are great. They are where they have waited to be all year.
We feel their joy.
Friends ask why send them to camp?
Our answer: 7 weeks.
And we who send we know why.
And so do they. 

Thanks for sharing this with us, Karen. Sounds like you know exactly what summer camp is all about! Knowing all that, who wouldn’t send? It’s been another great year for our ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest, but we’ve never wrapped up our submission posts with a poem! Pretty great way to close out this year’s contest! Thanks again, Karen. And, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

There are more stories to share from the Everything Summer Camp ‘Share Your Camp Story’ Contest! Your camp stories were so great and were such a fun time reading through them all and it’s been exciting to share them with all our readers online! We’re publishing  each submission individually on a post right here on the Blog one by one!

We had ten lucky prize winners and now it’s time to publish the rest of your submissions. The following post is from Caroline C. who wrote in to us about her first time at Camp Hollymont. Check out what she had to say:

This summer I went to sleep away camp for the first time, and I had so much fun! I went to Hollymont with one of my best friends. We live in different states, so it was really fun to be together at camp. My favorite part of camp was being able to try so many skills—like tennis, swimming, crafting, dance, baking and cooking. We were SO busy all day every day. I loved it!

Caroline’s submission is a little light for our contest, but I still wanted to share her submission here on the Blog. How nice that you got to spend your summer camp stay with your best friend that lives out-of-state. What a great way to get to spend some great summer time with her! They really have a lot of fun stuff to do at camp, don’t they?! I’m glad to hear that your first go at summer camp turned out to be such a success with so much fun and the opportunity to do so many new things. Thanks for writing us, Caroline. For everyone else, you can give Camp Hollymont a closer look by clicking right here and, as always, thanks for reading!

- John