Friday morning delivered a beautiful sunny sky and the opportunity to try out 2 half day activities such as rock climbing, mountain biking, sea kayaking, caving and fly fishing. Our father-sons had a great time and after the evenings night hike everyone was ready for a good nights sleep after such a busy day.

Saturday morning was rafting day! We loaded up in the CCB bus “Big Jon” and headed out to the Tennessee border to the lower pigeon river for lunch and then an exhilarating raft down the rapids. Saturday night was a great chance for our “campers” to try out camp by themselves for a few hours while their dads headed up to Ec and Alfred’s house. The boys spent some time playing on the water front aqua toys before showering and heading up for dinner where they sat CCB style with counselors. After dinner it was time for camp fire and s’mores where they were joined by their dads for some Camp Carolina songs and trip reports.

Sunday morning we offered some in camp trips such as fly fishing, mountain boarding, mountain biking and even got the hang glider up and running for our excited campers before everyone headed on home after a delicious dinner of burgers. We cannot wait to see our campers return for the summer and are excited for our second father-son weekend starting this Thursday.

WHAT A DAY!

Tonight we have a delicious feast planned along with some get to know you games and introductions before a good nights sleep before Friday’s activities. Stay tuned to see what our father’s and son’s get up to this weekend…

One exciting addition to CCB’s awesome facilities is a brand new TRIPLE zip line. Yes, triple! We have been busy building the cool new tower and zip line over the past 3 weeks and it looks great! So now not only can you play on the aqua trampoline, aqua slide and blob during your water front time- you can also zip down the cable with your buddies into the lake!

Over the next few weeks we have all of our in camp staff arriving to take part in either the raft guide or the lifeguarding course followed by their activity specicfic training in prepartion for the campers arrival. We also have both father-son weekends to look forward to as well as as a school group who come all the way from Louisiana for 3 days of fun in the mountains.

28 days until summer starts!

Filed under: Counselors and Training, Waterfront Tagged: camp carolina aqua slide, camp carolina aqua trampoline, camp carolina blob, camp carolina zip line, camp carolina; ccb water front ]]> http://campcarolinablog.com/2013/05/06/how-about-a-triple-zip-line-this-summer/feed/ 0 campcarolina DSC_0221 DSC_0217 DSC_0230 http://campcarolinablog.com/2013/04/10/summer-2012-what-great-memories/ http://campcarolinablog.com/2013/04/10/summer-2012-what-great-memories/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:09:17 +0000 campcarolina http://campcarolinablog.com/?p=2854 ]]> We recently released the 2012 summer promotional video which we are sure has got many campers, counselors and parents remembering all the good times we had at Camp Carolina. Our photo-video team did a fabulous job collecting all of this footage and turning it into such an amazing video as well as producing weekly “update” videos for our parents at home to see just what we get up to at Camp Carolina. We have another fabulous photo video team for summer 2013 so everyone stay tuned for more fun updates! In the meantime-enjoy the memories of 2012…

He was in the “Midget” tribe…back then the four tribes were called the Mites, Midgets, Juniors, and Seniors.  Now they are the Newts, Waterdogs (Dogs), Salamanders (Manders), and Mollyhuggers (Huggers).

Robert King is about the same age now as John was when he was at camp in 1956.  Robert is going to be a Waterdog this coming summer, taking part in some of the same activities that his grandfather was doing back in the ’50s.  What a cool family tradition!

I wonder if anyone else’s grandfathers are in these pictures..?

I also found JB Ernest who was Head of Riflery that year on the next page.  He’s the one who signed John King III’s certificate!  Back in the earlier years of camp we didn’t have the Old Man of the Mountain award.  The campers didn’t receive a canoe paddle as reward for their good citizenship until Nath Thompson implemented that practice for the first time in 1964 and called it the order of the Old Man of the Mountain.  I showed Nath these pictures, and although a great deal of his memory is fading at the age of 83, he and his wife Mary definitely remember A.W. Norman who was the Associate Director in ’56 in the top right of this scanned portion of the ’56 catalogue.

Send an email to rosser@campcarolina.com if you’d like for us to try to find you, one of your relatives or some of your old camp buddies!  It’s always fun delving into a bit of Camp Carolina history, all 90 years of it!!  We have a lot of the old Camp Carolina catalogues, but not all of them.

Guy Sloan who is an outstanding mountain biking counselor (also helped with climbing, mountain boarding and caving in 2012) is from the Isle of Arran, Scotland. Last week most of the UK experienced abnormally cold and snowy weather but Arran was one of the worst hit spots!

Morgan, Guy and Ross from 2012

Around a week ago Arran was hit by a freak blizzard and ice storm conditions which knocked out the mains power to the entire island (the island isn’t huge!) and with winds in excess of 50mph th ferries that would normally have helped supply the island could not help them. Guy tells us they had 200 engineers shipped over to fix the damaged electricity pylons which had collapsed under the weight of ice stacked on them. Food supplies had to be airlifted to remote parts of the island until the wind had died off enough for the ferries to begin working again.

Guys workplace was turned into an incident control room housing all the emergency services, engineers and mountain rescue volunteers so Guy was put to work coordinating phone calls. Guys home town set up a free food shelter which helped everyone who had no electricity to keep warm and cook food. He says everything is now getting back to normal with the snow slowly melting…

Guy said it was like a “never-ending cabin day but with snow rather than heavy dew”

These experiences and stories that our international staff members bring with them is what makes CCB a truly international experience for our campers who learn so much about such a wide rang of places around the world.

Guy-It’s warming up at CCB, we will see you in a few weeks!

He is really excited for experiencing the adventure activities, meeting new people and seeing kids dominate new activities as they learn them this summer at Camp Carolina. The coolest place he has been is New Zealand where he went skydiving over Fox Glacier and Mount Cook.

His role model is his dad. “He’s competed in elite sport, he’s a teacher, he’s survived cancer and he’s supported me all along the way.”

We asked Tim what his favourite quote is…“Nature plays music for people who listen.”He says  ”It’s simple at face value, but it has deeper meaning to me as well, in terms of not getting caught up in the rat-race of the modern world, life’s challenges and learning from them, going with the flow, etc.”

Tim says he loves playing guitar for the simple-ness of it, but in terms of sport probably mountain biking as it’s just you, your bike and the trail… and a lot of fun with mates!

Well Tim-There isn’t much time at all until you arrive at Camp Carolina and we can’t wait!

Last summers’ camp experience was outstanding for him and he developed so much in so many different ways as you probably see in a majority of the boys each year. I must share that even if he does not come back in the future to Camp Carolina, his experience was a great turning point in his life. To this day, he talks about the counselors and excursions that they all experienced together. We are very grateful to all who made this such a positive experience.  You and your team do an incredible job of recruiting some outstanding staff and planning what boys want to do at their age.

Perhaps in a future summer if he does not play lacrosse he will be back to Camp Carolina or maybe as a counselor. Next school year Cameron is looking at attending a boarding school and we will say that if he does choose to go to boarding school we will value ever minute we have with him this summer. Hopefully with our cancellation another young man will get the same growth out of camp as Cameron experience.

We all believe that Camp Carolina really provides our CCB boys to grow and develop into young gentleman with passion and drive in life. As the weather starts warming up we are getting more and more excited for summer 2013!

Sean Mc Caffery is from Belfast, Northern Ireland and says he is famous for his personality and enthusiasm. He  is passionate about travelling the world and taking amazing photo’s as he explores as well as coaching children in a variety of different activities.

He tells us what he is most excited about spending his first summer at CCB  ”The Camp experience itself I would say. In Ireland we don’t really have anything like Summer Camps, in fact we barely have a Summer! I have always loved embracing and exploring different cultures and to be part of a summer camp and  work alongside American colleagues and children really interests me in what we can learn from each other”

The coolest thing he has done? “It was my first big adventure to Thailand. On my first trip out I got to experience two very exciting things. One was a trek through the mountains to a hidden water fall, were I got to climb up the side of it and follow it to the source further up. The other was one of the scariest but most exciting experiences- I got to pet an Adult Bengal Tiger!

Seans role model?  ”I would say my Dad. My dad has always pushed me to try new things and to explore, he is one of the reasons I have seen as much of the world as I have. He always taught me that there are no boundaries, the life you live is your own, you live it by exploring it, you grow by exploring, and most importantly if anyone says you can’t do it, prove them wrong. He has always provided words of wisdom to me that has helped me through school, college and university.”

“Since I was around 14, I discovered a quote that sums me up as a person and the way in which I approach life, it has stood by me all these years and I have stood by it in times of need, it is short and simple, but the greatest quotes always are, it is:“Sempre Fidelis” – It is Latin for “Always Faithful”

What is your favourite activity/sport and why? ”GAA is probably one of my favourite sports, probably because it was the first sport I ever played. Coming from a strong Irish family, I was given a Hurley stick the moment I could walk, however I did not start playing Gaelic and Hurley until I was 8yrs old. . Hurley is one sport I truly love and would find myself constantly picking up the stick and hitting the ball with friends or off the wall. It is also considered one of the fastest ground sports in the world. It is something I love and continue to play to this day.

I’m sure everyone is excited to not only meet Sean but also see his incredible summer pictures!

One of our new recruits is Brandon 19 and says he is from “the ‘Lucky Country’ (Australia). I’m famous for making friends easily, being a mini master chef and having a good sense of humor ” Brandon is really looking forward to experiencing the sense of community and companionship at Camp Carolina. He says “allowing the focus of camp to be all about the campers sounds very rewarding. I’m excited to take on that responsibility and to show the campers an awesome time!”

He adds “I’ve been to so many places, which makes it hard to pick. At the top of the list would probably be snorkeling off the coast of Koh Samui, Thailand. The water was warm, crystal clear and home to a plethora of tropical marine life. It was such a picturesque place, but unfortunately my camera couldn’t go underwater.”

His heroes and role models? “My Dad is such a good role model to me and I have learnt so much from him. Whether it be about human relations or the importance of hard work, my Dad has always be someone to look up to. My Mum is a very strong and independent person and she has taught me how to take care of myself making me the independent person I am today. She is a very intuitive person who has shown me how to have a high level of awareness of other people.”

Favorite quote? I have a few.“You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for failure is not the falling down, but the staying down” Mary Pickford “He who asks a question is a fool for 5 minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever” – Chinese Proverb”

Finally Brandon what is your favorite sport to play/hobby?

“Two main things I love are photography and soccer. I have always loved taking and editing photos from all of the amazing places I’ve been. Soccer is a sport I played for years. Soccer is a very rewarding sport, and the camaraderie involved is what makes it my favorite to play.”

Brandon-Your arrival day is getting closer, we can’t wait for you to get here!