This year, the first day of Summer Camp is July 4th!
And what does that make July 3rd?
Why, it makes it CAMP EVE, of course!
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| We even had a batch of campers in early, | 
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| After our Lantern Family BBQ, | 
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| To celebrate Camp Eve, And an early start to Session #1. | 
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| We started with some campfire songs (of course)... | 
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| And then called for the Camp Spirit (safe in our lantern from last season) to light the fire. | 
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| Wait. Who had the lantern last? | 
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| It was Tyler, right? T-Nivi, you had the Lantern? | 
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| But Tyler says Nurse Tosti had the Lantern last! | 
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| And oh no! Nurse Tosti says I had the Lantern last! | 
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| Me!? | 
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| We should have known better than to leave the Lantern with me! I can't remember where I put it! | 
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| Fortunately (as always) our Coordinator of Fun, Julia Langone has a pile of clues to lead us to the Lost Lantern of Camp Spirit. | 
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| We assemble into groups. | 
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| First step of Camp problem solving is always to assemble into groups. | 
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| So we dispersed! | 
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| Into the twilight lit Camp... | 
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| In search of our missing spirit. | 
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| That's a pretty smiley face for a serious spirit-hunt, Curtis! | 
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| That's more like it, McBride! | 
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| And so, treated with a lovely Lake Shawanni sunset... | 
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| We waited. | 
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| As the groups scavenged. | 
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| And then, just when we were losing hope our Lantern would be found... | 
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| Wait, what's that glow!? A lantern? | 
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| No, several lanterns! | 
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| That's right! Now we remember.  | 
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| We put the spirit in many lanterns this off-season to be sure we'd keep track of it.  | 
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| That plan kind of backfired. But it's okay! Because we found them all. | 
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| And followed the final instructions of our Scavenger Hunt clues to all converge at the Waterfront bridge. | 
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| Which, it just so happened... | 
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| When lined with campers holding spirit-filled lanterns, turned out to be the perfect setting... | 
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| To tell the true (actually true) tale of the very first Camp Eve... | 
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| When the waterfront bridge was completed by lantern light, just in time for the first campers to arrive on the first day of Camp in the summer of 1951. | 
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| And so we too again prepared, by lantern light, on yet another Camp Eve, for yet another summer, and yet another very first day of Camp. | 
 
Thank you so much for these wonderful posts! I was a 4H camper growing up, and this is my daughter's first year at camp - it is so great to see her and the others having such a great time! :)
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