Summer Camp! Swings and Things!

Both my children's favorite camp is the YMCA Adventure Guides Summer Camp at Lake Casitas, CA and its Water Park. Funnily enough, you can't swim in the Lake... so it makes sense that someone built a water park. Seems a bum deal to drive all day to fish... and you can't put a toe in the water. You can't swim because it's a source of drinking water for the area however, has anyone SEEN this lake lately? Natural and unnatural gross stuff abound. No one should drink out of this water anyway.

Starfall (formerly Sparkly Dolphin) said that "Yesterday my shoe got stuck in goo, mucky mud so we found another shoe that was pink in my size but I left both of the sticky shoe mud and so I saw a ship curtain that goes on a boat. I was going to use it. Too bad I left. And I saw the geese and the ducks near Lake Casitas. And my Dad forgot the boat because it was broken. So we didn't go on the lake but we could swim a little bit and I could find seashells but I found clamshells when I took the hike. I liked it very much. And there's this place called Water Park and there's this river called the Lazy River. It's like a River and it has a waterfall coming down and these strips going like crossed and it shoots up and there's these water guns which you fill up and squirt. And there's this playground that filled with water shooting out."

My son, Albatross (formerly Little Puffin) "There was a creek and we hiked up all the way to the end of it. My sister's shoe got stuck so we had to leave it there. And there was also a duck teaching a baby duck how to swim and dry off. At the Water Park I got a Big Squirt, the "official souvenier" and it's really cool. And I asked the lifeguard why is the Adventure Park (the playground in the center) colder than the Lazy River and he said because the Lazy River circulates and the sun warms it, and on the playground it gets the water straight from the ground". I have another theory as to why Lazy River is warmer. It's just a scary thought at the back of my mind. I just use goggles and hope for the best.

My best memory is my daughter, Starfall, packed this bright blue length of rope and brought a wooden board. I had no idea. Honest. Until we got there on Friday night, super late. My son (surprise!) was helping me to unpack when I couldn't find my daughter. I wasn't worried. I assumed (correctly) she was nearby "doing something". "Where are you?" I called into the dimly lit playground. She was there, fussing with a tree. Well, in ten minutes she had that rope slung over a branch and was trying to attach her board to it. A swing. Clever. But not quite. The board had no holes or anything. She didn't get frustrated. She just changed her plan and proceeded to swing, one-footed, from her rope. The following day, after my husband arrived for a day visit, I mentioned her failed project to him. He used a camping knife to whittle a hole into the board and the campfire to melt the ends of the rope... and voila! He hoisted a swing over a small gully next to the campsite. How exciting! He didn't get to see her proudly show it off the next day, sharing her "swing my daddy made" with neighboring six and seven year old campers. It's a nice memory.