Day Cramp

My goodness, it's over.

Yesterday finished part one of this summer's day camp saga. In the end, I almost missed the joy of working with Gordon at Agawam. At least there I knew where to get any supplies I needed. The joy of Day Cramp began with low attendance--a whole 39 kids, just a tenth of what I am used to. This, in theory, makes things easier except that it takes as many staff and programs for 39 kids as it does for 100. I had an almost one-to-one ratio of staff to kids.

The big issue was supplies. All throughout the process I had heard of the "trailer" and seen a list of the supplies it contained so I figured that we would be able to set up camp from there. After arranging for the trailer to be brought to our site I was not able to be there for the initial setup. Given the initial inventory I had seen you can imagine my suprise when the volunteers called to tell me that most of what we expected (tarps, tent poles, archery targets, etc) were not there. This was Thursday, the day before day camp. So began the weekend at the improv. Thankfully I had some great volunteers out who were good at improvising from things they owned and we made it work. The irony was that while we lacked basic camp supplies, we had an over abundance of trading post stock that would make many Scout Shops look bad--over $2000 in inventory, most of it useless in relation to Day Cramp. Despite these challenges, we were actually certified as a functional camp--thank goodness.

Another high point was that Friday, day 1 of camp, we set a record for the high temperature in Sheboygan of 101 degrees with about 60% humidity. It was grimly amusing to watch the weather station at the environemental center where HQ was as the temperature and humidity climbed. Amazingly only 3 kids ever felt bad enough from the heat to seek medical attention and they were all just in need of time to cool off and drink a Gatorade.

It seems that the kids all had a good time in the end and we had no major complaints, but it was more adventure than I sought. Much to my enjoyment, we get to repeat the experience in August, but this time it will be a 40 minute not 4 minute drive from my home.