Hi there! I’m Humming Bird, the new reporter for the summer, working with Olive Oyl! It’s a beautiful day on camp to work on our safety drills and more staff training!

Wednesday night’s evening program was Big Circle Night! The staff got to know each other better by talking about our year’s accomplishments, and sharing our goals for the future– what wonderful bonding for our new and returning counselors!

Last night we had a blast with the staff training favorite, the contra dance! We had lively live music and tons of fun dancing with new and old friends. There was lots of sweating and lots of hydration throughout the evening. What a fabulous way to wrap up a busy week of trainings and counseling meetings!

Today is an exciting day as we take our staff trip to Camden for the afternoon! We’ll leave in the early morning and have a picnic lunch at the beautiful Camden State Park. Afterwards, we are free for the day to explore the adorable seaside town or venture other local areas. Staff will enjoy their first official night off and we’ll reconvene on Saturday morning for a day of lesson planning and teacher training. We can’t wait for campers to arrive in almost a week!

Always humming along,

Humming bird & Olive

Greetings, friends! Olive Oyl here with your staff training news on this warm and sunny day!

We’ve been quite busy here at Hidden Valley this week, with area trainings and counseling meetings underway. Counselors are getting trained in areas ranging from stained glass to mountain biking. We’re also learning about counseling challenges and how life on camp works. In the evenings we have time to bond and hang out with fun evening programs and red barn time.

Two nights ago we had cabin night, with many wacky activities going on, like painting from the Tipi Zip line, making mason jar terrariums, splatter painting from the Tree House, and poker night, just to name a few. The fun hasn’t stopped since, with a staff training favorite, Booth Night, taking place last night. Returners shared their camp knowledge with our new staff, explaining things like off time, evening programs, lazy days, interest groups, and teen programs in exciting ways. There was a fortune telling booth, a slumber party tent, a puppet show, and a dance floor. It was a very informative and fun night.

Today we have more priorities trainings, like darkroom photography and glass beads. We’ll reconvene for a yummy lunch followed by some more meetings this afternoon. Tonight is a special evening, with Big Circle Night happening in the Old Dance Studio. Big Circle Night is a time to reflect on our year’s accomplishments, what we’re looking forward to this summer, and share quirks about ourselves. It’s a great time both to introspect and to get to know our fellow counselors.

For now, we’re enjoying trainings and this beautiful (according to weather guy, a perfect 10) day! Be sure to check out lots of photos of area trainings! More to come soon!

Warmly,
Olive

Kitty phone call!

Greetings, earthlings! Olive Oyl here with some Monday afternoon news for you!

Most of our staff is enjoying their day off while a few of us are holding down the fort here at camp. We’ve got a lot of new arrivals, some of the kitten variety and some fellow humans. The kittens are currently at the vet getting their check ups, but will be back on camp this afternoon, along with around ten new counselor arrivals. 

Tonight is cabin night, where returning staff have been planning a bunch of special activities all over camp for their cabin-mates. More photos and details of this sure-to-be-spectacular night to come soon! Until then, enjoy these photos of camp’s furry friends!

Professor Bizarre and his parading companions!

Good morning, friends! Olive Oyl here with lots of photos and the most recent news!

Last night we had a fantastic evening of electives (be sure to check out all the photos!) that concluded with us gathering at the gazebo and singing The Farthest Field, a camp favorite. Today’s been a special day as it’s Sunday, which means bagels for breakfast! Once campers arrive we’ll have the complete Bagel Sunday setup, with beautiful dulcimer music brought to us by Tom and Meg. After enjoying a delicious breakfast of bagels, homemade cream cheese, soft boiled eggs, and fruit, we were off to our area trainings. Returning staff concluding their returner training and the ropes, horses, and lifeguards are all working hard in their respective areas.

Tonight is a special night, with Belfast Bus night happening after dinner. There’ll be time to walk around town, grab some food, and enjoy the view from the docks. It will be a much-deserved break from the business of training this past week.

Tomorrow is cabin night and we can’t wait to spend some time with our staff training cabins and have some fun all over camp! More news and photos to come next week, as always.

Lots of love,

Olive

Howdy, folks! Olive Oyl here chock full of staff training news for you this fine evening!

We’ve had a busy couple of days, with lifeguard, ropes, and horse trainings all in full swing. It’s been beautiful weather here at camp, which has been perfect for going for a dip in the lake, hanging out in the trees down at the ropes course, and going for trail rides across camp. All of our new staff are quickly becoming integrated into camp life, bonding with their co-counselors and co-teachers and learning the lay of the land.

We’ve had loads of fun evening programs this week, with Llamapalooza on Thursday and Trivia last night. Llamapalooza is a Hidden Valley tradition that takes place on Deer Meadows field and features a variety of wacky stations. There was Sheriff’s Laugh, an obstacle course, Dizzy Bat, Water Balloon Toss, and Blind Llama Sculpting, just to name a few. Afterwards we all gathered back together for a giant game of Ninja, another camp favorite. We’ll have plenty more opportunities for Llamapalooza fun when campers get here first session. We can’t wait!

Last night’s Trivia was another wonderful event, with eight teams of our staff answering tricky trivia questions, featuring categories spanning from HVC trivia to world geography to name that tune. While certain teams may have known more facts than others, we all came out on top, as we here at Hidden Valley believe that everybody is a winner. After our evening programs we’ve had relaxed “Red Barn time,” where we talk, play music, and get a chance to get to know each other and unwind before bed.

Tomorrow is another busy day of area trainings before a much-deserved night off in town for Belfast Bus Night. New and returning counselors will get to explore our cute nearby town and get in some fun, social time before Monday, when the remainder of our summer staff will arrive. Until then, counselors are enjoying tonight’s evening program of electives, where staff had a choice of participating in a range of activities happening all over camp. There’s disc golf, the spontaneous parade, a dinosaur creek walk, a trust hike, sardines, a jam session, linoleum printmaking, the hot tub, a llama trek, the tipi zip line, and of course, Peter’s secret Hidden Valley tour. We’ll rejoin tonight at the gazebo to hear what our fellow counselors got up to and sing a few camp tunes before headed off to bed.

More news and photos to come as our staff becomes complete and we venture into more area trainings!

Until we meet again,

Olive

Hi, friends! Olive Oyl here with lots of exciting staff training news!

We had 17 new staff arrive yesterday, where they were greeted by lots of smiling faces and a warm fire in the barn. There were friendship bracelets, sing-a-longs, and a game of Party Host. Since then new staff have been settling into their cabins, getting tours of camp, and doing boring but essential things like tax forms. Last night we had an amazing dinner of homemade pizza oven pizza with veggies, sausage, pepperoni, and various combinations in between. For dessert we celebrated a new staff birthday with some yummy cake. To top it all off, we ended the night with some s’mores by the fire.

Today marks the first day of lifeguard training (and a beautiful day for it as the sun is out and shining!), while our ropes staff has been busy preparing camp on various work crews. Our horse folks are in their element down at the barn, hard at work and getting to know new staff. Our amazing kitchen staff, featuring the wonderful Chris and Lillian, gave us our inaugural meal at lunch, which was unsurprisingly delicious and fueling for our afternoon ahead! This afternoon we’ll have more relaxed get-to-know-you time in the backyard and the red barn. We’ve had 20 new staff trickle into camp today and we can’t wait to get to know them all! Everyone’s been diving right in and becoming acquainted with camp life.

Tomorrow we’ll have our first staff training evening program, Llamapalooza, which is sure to be loads of fun. For now, check out all the awesome photos!

Lovingly,

Olive

Our fabulous work crew

Hi there, friends! Olive Oyl here with lots of camp updates for you!

We’ve had an exciting past couple of days with lots of new camp additions (humans, buildings, and otherwise). Today marks a big day as 18 (!) new staff are arriving! Staff training is starting to kick in, with people filling out Red Barn surveys and enjoying our last few meals in the Barn before we transition into Chris and Lilian’s delicious dining hall fare. Tomorrow will be a day of both new chefs and new trainings, with our Lifeguard staff coming in and getting started on their certification for the summer.

Camp construction has been in full swing for the past few weeks, with the new Buckhorn and Glass Blowing studio coming along beautifully. We can’t wait to get our new and returning staff in there for trainings next week!

Speaking of new things, camp received four shiny-new vans yesterday, Norma, Andromeda, Vela, and our minivan, Aurora. Our older vans have been lovingly renamed as Sokka, Katara, and Appa. Be sure to check out the photos of all our new things (we at camp think the vans resemble spaceships and the baby alpacas remind us of little lambs)!

More updates to come soon as staff flood in and staff training is underway!

So long,

Olive

Claire doing some gardening on the ropes course!

Howdy, folks! Olive Oyl here with an update as pre-camp is coming to a close!

We’ve had a busy day on camp this week, with our horses, ropes, and arts areas setting up for the summer. The horse barn welcomed in many new horses, making the barn nearly-full with almost twenty beautiful horses. Our horse staff has been riding and caring for the new horses, in addition to preparing for teaching lessons this summer.

Yesterday we completed set up for the ropes course, with our ropes director, Seth, and some experienced ropes staff helping out. We even had to do some gardening on the course (check out the photos!) to trim some branches along the zip line. We can’t wait to put all our new and returning staff through the course during staff training!

While it’s been a little chilly here in Maine, it’s still springtime/almost summer, so many gorgeous flowers have been blooming all over camp. Be sure to check out the photos to see some of camp’s lively colors this time of year!

We’ll be sure to check in next week as staff training begins with ropes, waterfront, and horse staff trickling in!

So long,

Olive