Junior 1

See new pictures in the gallery.

This was such a busy week. Last Sunday after church we went to a wedding reception for Caleb and Emily MacGill. I worked on Program Team with Caleb summer 2003, and Emily worked at camp summer 2004. It was another Red Cliff romance. I’ve never been to a post wedding reception, but Emily wore her wedding dress, and Caleb wore his tux.

A work group came to camp the Friday before. There were 40 of them from Wisconsin. They cut all the firewood for the next year. A few of them were problematic and caused extra work for us. Sunday night when Andrew and I were heading down to our cabin we noticed a campfire by the boys cabins where the work group was staying. Sure enough, someone had built a poor fire ring and used branches lying around to build a fire on the grass. Not only did they have a fire in a nondesignated place in the middle of a national forest (where the chance of a fire at camp this summer is very high) they left it unattended. We put it out by throwing dirt on it. Some also went to the bottom of the cliffs and scratched their names and some other things in the area we rappel. We breathed a sigh of relief when they left this past Friday morning.

We knew the week was going to be busy for the SALT counselors because there were two shifts for every meal. A wonderful blessing was when the speaker, Bill Cornett, told us that he wanted his two teenage boys to minister and work while they were here, so we had 2 extra people on our crew. They were hard workers and even came to help in jobs we said they didn’t have to do. The oldest boy, Sam, really liked it here and asked to stay the rest of the summer. After much prayer Mr. Dean and the Cornett’s decided he could. We will now have 3 kids on each team.

The week of camp had 39 kids in grades 4-6. This week of camp is different from any other in that the kids have Adventure Groups instead of games in the afternoon. They rotate between hiking to the cliffs, hiking to the tie hack camp, hiking to the big rock, and fishing. The kids really enjoy it. Our week was so busy we didn’t get to go on any hikes until Friday (after the work group left), and even then I stayed at camp with a camper while Andrew went to the tie hack camp. In the late 1800s this area was used to cut ties for the railroad. There are remains of cabins throughout, but this particular area has several cabins, a bigger meeting room, stable, and several rusted tools. None of the buildings have a roof, but it’s a really neat piece of history.

Thursday morning a skeleton rappelling crew took the work group rappelling. I stayed at camp, but Andrew got to go. As Andrew was sitting at his job one of the other staff members yelled over to him, “Andrew, you’re about to have a mountain goat in your back pocket!” Sure enough there was a mountain goat about 5 feet away from him. The Loftus’s were amazed there was a goat around there. Apparently it was scrawny, and Mr. MacGill mentioned it could have been chased to that area by wolves. The rappellers also saw a B-1 Lancer supersonic bomber flying down the valley. It was about eye level with the top of the cliffs and was banking from side to side as it followed the Green River.

My brother Matthew had a wild cabin. On Friday night one of the boys put barbecue chips in his pillow and crunched them all up. They got his pillow and pillowcase all greasy. Another camper had his magnifying glass taken away because he was using it to burn things. He said they were fun though. One of his campers got saved Friday night. There were one or two other campers who were saved during the week. One scary situation was during rest time a girl swallowed 2 quarters and started choking on them. Thankfully they had slid just right so she was still able to breathe a little bit. She threw them up and ended up being fine.

This weekend most of the staff went various places. On Saturday after everyone had left we went to New Fork Lake. We wanted to go tubing, but didn’t have a lot of time. Everyone got in the lake at one point on a tube and at least floated in the lake. The water was a little cold, but not too bad. Andrew and I basically got our legs wet. It was very relaxing and beautiful.