Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Welcome to the new "Misplaced & Found"

By: Chris Aderhold
Assistant Director


Hello friends!

Welcome to the new Camp Gray Blog - still affectionately known as "Misplaced & Found"! We hope you'll enjoy the changes we've made to the blog, and we invite you to peruse the new features. With the addition of the slideshow and the Camp Gray video bar, we're hopeful a visit to "Misplaced & Found" will make it feel like you never left Camp Gray.

Also, we invite you to become a "follower" of Misplaced & Found, making it easy to keep up with everything going on here year-round.

Lastly, we'd certainly love your feedback, so shoot us an email at bigfun@campgray.com with any suggestions, comments, complaints, etc.

Happy reading!

- Chris Topher

Monday, April 27, 2009

Camp Gray Spring Work Day

By: Chris Aderhold
Assistant Director

This past Saturday, in an effort to spruce up the grounds at Camp Gray, we held our annual spring work day. The spring work day has been a tradition at Camp Gray for many years, and we're always humbled by the amazing turnout - even during inclement weather.

Heavy rain didn't deter us, as the crew of 60+ started the day deep cleaning our summer camp cabins, the Pav and Helen Hall. Sara headed up a tremendous effort of organizing the Arts and Crafts room, as well. The rain halted enough during late morning to allow us to start some much needed raking. Thankfully, a delicious mid-morning muffin snack kept us working hard all the way to lunch.

After a scrumptious lunch of pulled pork, baked beans, and salad - graciously prepared by our co-head cooks, Pat & Mo-T - we were able to get back outside to finish our outdoor projects. In addition to the dozens of truck loads of leaves that were raked up around our main camp area, the crew also did some repair work on the rope swing dock at Lake Jake, and a massive wood pile reshuffle took place over by the maintenance shed.

On the whole, it was a great day, and we're thankful to everyone who braved the cold and rainy weather in an act of service. We couldn't do it without you!

Without the leaf stomping of these two volunteers, we'd still be raking the main camp area!

The final project of the day: The Ampitheatre Rake-a-thon.


Thanks to the crew from St. Ann's Parish in Stoughton!

Monday, April 20, 2009

First Time Blogger

By: Pat Andera
Co-Head Cook

I am new to blogging. I have been trying to figure out what to write about. Thankfully, I saw something this morning that gave me an idea. I was watching a morning sports talk show when the 2 hosts got into a discussion about the Titanic. One of the hosts claimed he had no idea that the Titanic was an actual ship and thought it was just a movie. It got me thinking about what are normal things that most people should know. There was a documentary that came out a few years ago that showed kids looking at different pictures of famous people. The host claimed that more kids recognized Ronald McDonald than Jesus. I sure hope this isn’t the case. I suppose I could fall into that category of not knowing things I should and having a vast knowledge of things maybe I shouldn’t know. I could tell you who played 3rd base for the Twins in 1991 (Scott Leius, by the way) but couldn’t tell you the name of any of my great-grand parents. So what are the things we should know? People, places, things in history, ingredients in Susan’s Super Spaghetti? Maybe there is a book out there that I could get. The 100 things every person should know. If not maybe I will write one.

In spite of my questions of random knowledge I need to know, life is great up here at camp. The weather has been absolutely beautiful. After a break for Easter, retreats are picking up here again, which is great. It means that kids are coming back to camp, which always makes this place joyful. In the words of one of my favorite Christian songs, "You give me joy that's unspeakable And I like it.”

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Up, up, and away!

By: Sara Knutson
Program Director

The weather is warming up here at Camp, and that means an exciting return to our outdoor ropes course! We ushered in the new season with a fantastic group of students from St. Ambrose Academy in Madison. They teamed up on our hgh-flying Nitro Crossing element (translation: getting all students from one platform to another using only a suspended rope) and had total success! We captured some of the fun on camera…