Chateau Tobasco!

Hey everybody! It’s Luna Bug here buzzing back in with the deets on what’s been going on here at HVC and what’s to come in the next day or two!

Yesterday’s Departure Day went off without a hitch. The buses got going early in the AM, and by midmorning all of the campers traveling by car were picked up by their folks. As everything goes here at HVC, as soon as one thing gets done, another thing gets going, and Departure Day was no exception. Just as soon as our last first session camper departed, our AWACs arrived, and of course our Intersessioners were all still hanging around camp. The intersessioners are the campers who are staying for part of both sessions, FYI.

Speaking of Intersession, it was awesome! A few counselors took the whole crew to Moose Point state park yesterday to hang out and decompress a bit, and then they got sandwiches for dinner. Once back on camp they all watched the first Despicable Me movie in the Foothills, which is where they slept as well. It was pretty fun for them to watch the original because the whole camp got to see the 3rd film in the series earlier this session. Today, the intersession campers and counselors packed lunch on camp and headed to Bangor, Maine to do some escape rooms! After that they drove to Belfast and got ice cream at Wild Cow Creamery.

While all that was going on yesterday and today, the staff had a little bit of time off before we all were back on camp today at 1pm. From then on we’ve been gearing up for our second session campers arriving tomorrow! After a general staff meeting we all broke up into our individual cabin groups to talk about the new campers, and how we want our cabin life to be! Importantly, everybody also came up with cabin themes. Not all of them have been decided yet, but here are the first round of themes:

Taj Mahal Tree Huggers

Camelot Caramel

Down Under Daisies

Gimme Shelter Surfers

Chateau Tobasco

Shangri-Land Before Time

Paquatahnee Sock-watahnee

French Quarter Favorite Things (Sound of Music!)

Alive Underdogs, Dogs Under Things

LCH Meat and Cheese

Loons Wizards

Atlantis Mantis

Valiant Valhalla (influential women throughout history!) 

Wabanaki World Wanderers

We’ll give you an update on the rest of the cabins’ themes in the next few days!

After the cabin groups met, the staff all broke up into our afternoon priorities. Whether that was the PK work crew, shift heads, art areas, or archery, each member of staff worked during the afternoon to prepare their areas.

At 5:00pm the staff from the youngest cabins gathered in the Backyard in order to meet their new AWACs! Each of the AWACs was placed in a cabin and moved in before evening meeting. Just after this, the Intersessioners joined their new cabins- the first campers of second session!

After a delicious dinner prepared by our fantastic Alive staff (the teen arts program here), everybody returned to the front yard to make cubby tags, welcome signs, bunk tags, and decorations for the cabins. Afterwards, a few of our staff will be staying up to greet the new Japanese campers and help them into their cabins for the night. The rest of the staff will head to bed, because tomorrow is arrival day, after all, and we need to be well rested!

Later tonight, a bus full of campers from Spain, Korea, and Japan are arriving. Tomorrow, campers will be arriving from 8:30am onwards, and by around 6pm we should have all of our campers for the first two weeks of camp!

Exciting things are happening here today, and everyday.

Over and out,

Luna