Stories from Camp!
Better Together
Wow I missed camp this year. Seeing all the campers and staff is the highlight of my year. I feel alive and happy when I”m able to be around a community that is so positive and loving. We truly are better together.
As the Program Director at Camp Southern Ground, I get to hear and see so many awesome and fun stories that happen when we are together each summer. I will be sharing stories from camp and even having some of our campers and staff sharing their stories from camp that will hopefully make you laugh and learn something! I’m calling this blog series: “Stories from Southern Ground”.
Stories from Southern Ground will highlight things we learned, friends we met, skills we developed, and fun times we had at Camp Southern Ground. I want to start off by telling you a story from my own experience at camp.
A Story from Southern Ground:
The first summer at Camp Southern Ground we did not have a pool. “It’s way too dang hot to not have a pool”, said our camp director Scott. “Caleb figure out how we can stay cool this summer”.
I got to work looking for all sorts of different ways to have fun in the sun. I found the coolest inflatables I had ever seen and had an idea that we could hook up sprinklers to the inflatable to make it a sweeeeeeeeeet water obstacle course.
It was about a week prior to campers arriving that our inflatable arrived and it was massive. All of the program coordinators and I tried to lift it but it was not moving. We eventually had to get a tractor to move the massive obstacle course. It took us about 3 hours to get the whole course set up, but once it was set up we were excited.
We had about 5 sprinklers drenching the entire inflatable and of course I wanted to be the first one to try it out. Myself and Will(Aquatics director) gave it the first shot. We both raced throught the couse in record time. We got all the way to the slide and we shot off the slide like a rocket.
WOOOOOOOOOSH. We flew off the slide about 5 feet in the air and landed about 15 feet away right on our butts. “OWWWWWWW!” screamed Will. “That was incredible!” The slide was way too fast for kids to ride it and someone could definitely get a butt bruise going off of that slide, so we had to fix it.
When we all work together…
We Can SAVE CAMPER’S BUTTS!
The whole team came together to figure out how we could “save campers butts” literally off of the slide. We tried slowing the slide, putting blow up mattresses on the end, more water slides at the end, and everything else you can think of to make it work. It wasn’t until one of our shyest staff told us about an inflatable gymnastic mat that she thought might work, that we had a solution we thought would work.
We set up this 10 foot long inflatable gymnastic mat and it was perfect. You still were able to go fast off the slide and had a nice comfortable ending on the gymnastic mat. It was a fun and tough problem that our team was able to overcome. I don’t know if we would have found a solution like that without the entire team's help.
When you take time to listen to others and hear everyone’s voice, it can help you see the problem from a different viewpoint. We should all take the time to listen and hear other people’s point of view. I love when you can learn together. It makes problems fun and solutions more satisfying when you do it with friends. We truly are better together.
Can’t wait for Camp Southern Ground 2021.
PS We will have a pool :)