Did you go to summer camp as a kid? (1 Viewer)

[Optimus Prime]

I've known people who loved summer camp and went every year from like 6 to 16 then became a camp counselor for a few years after that

I did a 2 week long day camp for a few years (I want say between 2nd and 5th grades) It was from morning to mid afternoon, did a few field trips and one of the days was a sleepover at a campground

It was called Camp Conquest and I loved it but for the life of me I can't remember where we met

When I was in Boy Scouts we did a whole week way in Goshen, Virginia

A few people said their summer camp was a month long, and they did that for years

Did you do summer camp? Is summer camp still a thing for kids today?

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

I went once - up near Natchez I think - don’t remember much about it

But mostly I played baseball in the summer (and read comics and watched tv)

 

[SWJJ]

I was poor and my family couldn't afford to send me to camp, I went to a church camp when I 10 and 11. I started working the summers when I was 12.

My kids go to some sort of camp most summers. Until this year they were day camps. My oldest 2 are going to overnight camps for the first time this year and it's not cheap.

My middle kid just got back from his and he had a BLAST. He went to https://carolinacreek.org/

There is also Camp Fern in east Texas, it's where a lot of well-to-do people in the NWLA send their kids to camp.

Summer camp is still a thing, for those with means.

 

[Paul]

Growing up in New Orleans, my siblings and I attended NORD summer camps, which were basically extensions of the school year for public schools. There were some fun times, but overall, it was different for us because we attended private school and while kids are kids and people are people, there were some differences between kids who attended public school and the classmates that we were used to.

My kids attended all sorts of summer camps growing up, from Audubon Zoo Camp which was their favorite, to camp at the Louisiana Children’s Museum, Boy Scout and Girl Scout camps, and some with our church. We were members of Cross Gates Family Fitness in Slidell and they put on an excellent summer camp which my kids loved as well.

Most of these were day camps. As far as being away from home for extended periods of time for summer camp, that was only with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and my wife and I were always chaperons for those.

 

[TheRealJRad]

I went to....Kidz Camp? Whatever St Charles had during the summer. I honestly don't think I could recall a single detail of it, so it obviously had a deep profound impact on me. Or because it was 30 years ago.

 

[superchuck500]

I went to summer sleep-away camp four times. One of them was a church camp (Camp Hardtner in Grant Parish LA - a somewhat hellish place to be in the summer), two were basketball camps (at colleges) - those were each for just one week. The fourth camp I went to was a two-week camp in the mountains in North Carolina that is probably the most traditional 'summer camp' that I went to.

I enjoyed the basketball camps but they weren't really set-up like the NC summer camp was. - they were all about basketball (drills, games, etc.). And while I have fairly fond memories of that NC summer camp, I didn't "love" it and was unhappy for most of it . . . due to what I now know where logistical failures on the camp's part. But because I did not want to return and I know that people that find a camp they love, they go back every year, I'm pretty sure that I just didn't want to go back.

But yes, it's definitely still a thing! My girls (now rising 4th and 6th graders) are about to have their second year going to summer camp, two weeks at a camp outside of Brevard NC where they ride horses and do crafts and sheet. There are a few all-girls camps in NC that really focus on building confident young ladies, which I think is great. Actually quite a few girls from NOLA/SELA go there. My wife never went to camp so she pretty much put it on me to make it happen, but I have been making it happen and I think my girls enjoy and benefit from it.

 

[superchuck500]

A few people said their summer camp was a month long, and they did that for years

I know kids that go for a month. At first it seemed to me that their parents were shipping them off - and in fact I know one kid (a classmate of my older daughter) whose home situation sucks and that's exactly what is happening. Others go because they just really like it and want to be there that long.

But my older daughter keeps saying she wants to go for four weeks, the idea of being there that long is entirely appealing to her. She's very easy going and enjoys just being social and doing the camp thing. So I definitely think that for some kids, a month is appealing. My other daughter is not interested in going that long and I doubt that will change, she's just not wired the same.

 

[Booker]

Never did the sleep over camp, but did day camps for a week or two at least a couple of times. One was "Vacation Bible Camp," in which we were taught how to make macaroni art by people that looked right out of "To Catch A Predator" central casting. The other was BREC camp, which was mostly playing sports with a few field trips mixed in.

My best friend down the street went to an actual summer camp for a few weeks every year, where they slept in cabins and would go hiking, canoeing, fishing, etc. It sounded like something out of Meatballs -- I was very jealous.

 

[Sailorsaint]

When I was a pre-teen, my summers were spent in the Dixie Youth League playing baseball or just screwing around. Once I became a teenager, it was time to work in the fields. Making $50 week, then spending it during the weekend.

 

[Nisey55]

My friends and I thought it would be fun to go to a sleep away camp, we were 12-13 yrs old. I think it was called camp Marydale, don't know where it was. While we enjoyed each other's company seems like the the conditions and the food were more prison camp style than summer camp.

 

[Optimus Prime]

My friends and I thought it would be fun to go to a sleep away camp, we were 12-13 yrs old. I think it was called camp Marydale, don't know where it was. While we enjoyed each other's company seems like the the conditions and the food were more prison camp style than summer camp.

Bug Juice (very watered down Kool Aid) and hot dogs that were 2 minutes away from being charcoal

 

[SaintInBucLand]

No that is something people with money did.

 

[Nisey55]

Bug Juice (very watered down Kool Aid) and hot dogs that were 2 minutes away from being charcoal

Only on special occasions.

 

[Nisey55]

No that is something people with money did.

Not Camp Marydale! It was the dollar store of summer camps.

 

[livefromDC]

My oldest, now 16, has been doing camps for awhile now. It started with summer camp at Ursuline a few summers before we moved. Here in Atlanta, she's done a ton of different camps with mixed but mostly positive results. I'll highlight the most memorable...

We tried camp at the Y once because it was literally next door and super convenient. Having said that, of course that only lasted a couple weeks. The first day she came home complaining that no matter what the camp "theme" was for the week (dance, cooking, basketball, they had many), ALL campers ended up in park under the shelters after lunch. I thought maybe it was for the first day. Turns out she was right. She did her time and that was it for the Super convenient option.

Her favorite camp would probably be an all girls Orchestra camp. This was a sleep away camp at a local college in Northern Georgia. She did this one a couple summers up until COVID. She had a blast each time. She also gained the reputation as someone who could get things. Unbeknownst to me, Costco and I were unwittingly operating as her suppliers for the black market snack cartel she was running after curfew. She was done in by pictures saved to the cloud. She had taken pictures of her ill gotten cash laid out on her bed. Smh.

I don't know if it count as camp, but last summer she did 2 weeks in Germany "studying" German in the morning and doing field trips in the afternoon with her classmates. She loved it, but I was a nervous wreck the first week she was gone. It's one thing for your kid to be in another state. I can still get to them in a few hours. In a different continent!?! I didn't sleep the first 48 hours she was gone. About a week into the trip, she calls us about 1AM in the morning her time. Her first words were, "just want you to know I'm fine, I'm back home now, but this is what happened." Apparently she and 2 friends got separated from the group on the train and they ended up missing their stop. Long story short, it was a good reminder that yeah, she's been paying attention all these years and knows what to do and not do. This experience actually helped me relax a little bit. She's going to be OK, LFDC, relax.

The coolest camp was also the hardest camp to get her into. There's a children's bookstore here that runs these amazingly immersive summer camps. To get a spot in this particular camp, you have to enroll in person on the day registration opens. So that's how I found myself camped out in front of a bookstore at 3am on a cold January, winter morning to hold a spot at Hogwarts camp. 8th in line with 6 hours to go. Well worth it though. They went the whole 9 yards. She received a letter, was sorted, triwizard tournament, anything you can think of...they found a way to do it. Perhaps the most impressive thing about it according to her was the butterbeer. We've had butterbeer at Universal Orlando and at the Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio Tour in London. She claims the camp's version was the best one. We were both really big (she's less forgiving of the author who shall not be named, I should be too) Potterheads still. The smile on her face every day of that camp was priceless. Definitely worth the wait in the freezing cold.


Did I do summer camps as a kid?
No. I played in the sugar cane fields and fished cans out of ditches using mop sticks with a nail in them. ...like every other kid who lived along Bayou Lafourche.