Pancake Saturday

For as long as I have been here, we have had pancakes on Saturday.  Throughout High Rocks history, there was a time that the director himself would cook pancakes on Saturday since our head cook was off that morning.  I tried that for a while, but the program has become much larger and more complex than in those days.  Nonetheless, we still have pancakes on Saturday.  The best part is that these are scratch-made with fresh buttermilk (none of that fat-free buttermilk), the real stuff! 

Now that we have that sorted, we might as well go into the menu 😊.

Breakfast: Scratch-made buttermilk pancakes, sausage, hard-boiled eggs, home fries, fresh berries, oranges, and assorted cereals.

Lunch: BLT’s: Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, assorted bread, couscous salad, Mexican corn salad, kettle or corn chips, scratch-made French onion dip, watermelon slices, tossed salad with homemade ranch or balsamic dressing.

Dinner: Pack out pan pizza, chips, scratch-made chocolate chip cookies, and a soda of choice.  Each cabin could have dinner anywhere they wished tonight.  Most sat on the lawn and just enjoyed hanging out while eating a ton of pizza.

I enjoyed watching the paddlers enjoy some more time on the lake today. While there was a bit of just frolicking around, there is still instruction going on as well.

Our paddling program always starts out in canoes and always on flat water. The canoe gives the boys a good vantage point for when they first hit the river and it gives them a bigger craft that is not as edgy as a solo canoe or kayak.  It is a tried and tested tradition in these parts that go back for over a hundred years.  The boys will learn both the bow and stern positions on the lake and on the river. All of their strokes and maneuvers are designed to take them down the whitewater river progression. Once the boys have moved up to the second or third rivers in the canoeing progression, they can move into a solo boat like a kayak, C-1, or OC-1 (solo canoe). They will continue their progression in the canoe and the solo craft.  Year after year these boys are challenged on new rivers with new skills.  It is still one of our most popular activities. These boys in the two-week session are just starting along that progression that can eventually take them to Class III and IV white water a few years down the road.

The boys are starting to enter the next phase of their camp life, particularly in the cabin.  Boys are making friends, having disagreements, and feeling very comfortable.  This is a time when cabin meetings have a little more “meat” to them.  We find the cabin meeting is one of the most important parts of cabin life.  Each night the boys talk about their day.  They may speak about their favorite part of the day or something they are looking forward to tomorrow.  They may even bring up what they thought was the “downer” of the day. These early meetings set the stage for later, more important, meetings where boys may want to bring up a concern or issue, they have.  We are teaching these boys to share their feelings, concerns, and joys with each other. We are also helping them learn about empathy and understanding.  It is not what they signed up to do at camp, but it is most certainly helping them with their camp experience. If boys learn to talk about things and use their words, they feel like they are understood, and they learn to understand.  It builds community.  A pillar in the High Rocks experience.

Tomorrow, we sleep in a little longer, bring up our much-needed laundry, and have a blast all day long!

Have a great night!

Don

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