Progress made at September's Work Weekend at Camp Wa Wa Segowea!

After the summer comes to a close, a good sign for autumn is the first Camp Work Weekend! And that's exactly what took place last weekend. We didn't have as many people take part as we thought we would, but we still got a good amount of work done. Things were put away in storage for the winter, a few areas were cleaned up and the big chore for the weekend was getting all the docks in for the season. Mission accomplished! We also continued the insulation work on Page Lodge and hope to have that completed soon. If you missed this weekend, there's still October's Work Weekend to attend. It's October 22nd & 23rd. Set aside the date now!

Something else that was happening this past Saturday was the Smith Park Annual Meeting. Smith Park is the owner of the camp property in the Berkshires and has members as well as a Board that connected with the Capital District YMCA back in 2008 to reestablish historic Camp Wa Wa Segowea as one of the premier camp programs in America. Smith Park reelected some board members and elected new board member, Wyeth Drummond. Welcome Wyeth!

Other recent happenings of camp included a survey that went out to kids and parents from this past summer, finding out what everyone thought of camp. We're very happy to say that nothing but glowing responses are coming back!

"We love the small size, personal attention and the beautiful setting in the Berkshires. The staff are top notch and work very hard to deliver a traditional summer camp experience"

"We LOVE Camp Wa Wa Segowea!"

We are also seeing continual interest in the Blog Post from earlier in the year (March 2) "Where Are They Now". We still welcome all responses! If you know someone that should share what they're doing now, please encourage them to send something in (of course if you didn't send anything in, please do too!) It doesn't matter if you were a camper last year, a staff member from the 90's or a Friend of Segowea from the 50's, all replies are welcome. Here's the post-

http://segowea.blogspot.com/2011/03/camp-wa-wa-segowea-alumni-where-are.html

Lastly, we'd like to celebrate the Anniversary of Camping! Summer camping is 150 years old! Back in January of this year, the American Camping Association began a year long celebration of the first camping experience. Back in 1861, a school teacher, Frederick W. Gunn, took students from his homeschool program on a two-week trip. The class hiked to their destination in Maine and then set up camp. The students spent their time boating, fishing and trapping for the two weeks. The trip was so successful that the tradition continued for twelve years as the "Gunnery Camp". Here at Camp Wa Wa Segowea, we'll be celebrating our own anniversary in 2013, our Centennial! Any ideas on how we should celebrate 100 years? Let us know.

While you're thinking of ideas on how to celebrate 100 years of Segowea, here's some pictures from this past few weekends.

Time to Harvest the Camp Garden...

Put the books away...

Won't see these guys for that much longer!

Still plenty of fish in Harmon Pond though.

Chairman of Smith Park, John Dunn welcomes some Smith Park members.

And the work weekend wouldn't be the same without Norm on a piece of heavy machinery!

Just what is Liz helping with?

It's an elaborate plan to bring in the docks! (and a less back breaking one at that!)

Norm in the middle of it.

A plan in effect!

Lily, Betsey and Chris taking a break and catching up.

Tom getting into it, literally.

Covering the ditch to cut down on the leaves.

Lifejackets put away for the winter.

Tom checking to see how much of the pond is in his boots...

and he shows us!

And pretty soon, we all take that familiar road on our way home.

Till next time, Thanks for being Friends of Segowea!