Welcome to another amazing summer at Camp Menzies! My name is Unicorn and I’m from England–just one of the many international staff members working here at camp. I’ll be your virtual counselor this season, bringing the Menzies’ Magic and memories through the GSHCC blog series: Tales From Camp.
Throughout the summer, I’ll be posting updates to the blog with awesome stories, pictures, exclusive staff interviews and all kinds of other fun stuff. Be sure to share in our Camp Menzies journey and feel free to leave your comments on each post!
A little about me: I am currently in my second year studying Civil Engineering and I am very excited to be back at camp! This is my second year at camp and I can’t wait to meet the new campers.
Our first session started last week and it was so much fun! We’ve had many fantastic groups: Camp Olympics, Snack Wars and Extreme Cuisine, Creative Expressions, Girls vs. Wild, Fairy Lights, Shutterbug, Elementary, Night Owls, You Can’t Do That at Camp and our first travel group Wild Seas.
We’ve had a very busy session with great activities taking place all week long. Taking into consideration that it was chillier than usual, the girls were great. Everyone was so enthusiastic and full of energy during the whole session.
We’ve had many great activities happening at camp. On Monday we had the opening campfire with all the different units at Pine Haven. The campers got to know their new counselors and sing many camp songs. At the end of campfire, Shasta told a story and Bones played her guitar. It was the perfect end to a great first day for everyone!
All the groups participated in activities related to their program. The Fairy Lights campers had a tea party in the dining hall and invited other staff members by making cute little invitations, which were received gratefully by all. It was very lovely and fun! The You Can’t Do That at Camp groups got to order pizzas and eat them in the canoes; that’s something you definitely shouldn’t do at camp! Camp Olympics got to participate in events such as archery, a three-legged race and tug of war. Night Owls got to sleep in tents in the meadow as well as spend the night up in Big Trees State Park.
The campers have been busy becoming experts at archery, riding horses, swimming, canoeing, earning badges, creating all kinds of things during arts ‘n’ crafts time and, of course, learning about the natural world around them.
It has been tremendous so far and the fun has just started.
Until next time,
blog.girlscoutshcc.org 
Hi Unicorn, this is one of Camp Menzies’s first two Lifeguards in Training (Jennie Aubert). Boots was the best counselor I’ve ever had because she put up with me and was always there. She agreed to jump in the canoe lake just to pretend to be a dying person so we could practice our lifeguarding skills, needless to say I was not the best at it 🙂 She helped me when I needed support. She didn’t just give up on the girl who complained like she was 5 years old like most of my other counselors have in the past. She always was willing to do whatever. If I didn’t want to go on a trip she found a way for me to be integrated into the other thing the C.I.Ts were doing. She always incliuded the L.I.Ts even when it was clear that a few of the C.I.Ts wanted nothing to do with us. THANK YOU SO MUCH BOOTS!!!!!!!!!!!! You really made a difference in my experience this year. I know I am a LOT of work. If you see this, Unicorn, please show it to Boots. Please!