Cruiser Day
We often get asked what we do on the weekends at camp, and people are often taken back when they hear that Tuesday is our weekend! Tuesdays, known here as Cruiser Days, offer a break from our regular programming and allow campers to enjoy cabin-based activities on a more relaxed schedule. While we had our first Cruiser Day on Thursday of last week, today we resumed our normal weekly schedule with a Cruiser Day on Tuesday.
Cruiser Days begin with some time to sleep in and a leisurely breakfast of fresh donuts, fruit, and a variety of cereals served by Dan and Beth in a come-as-you-are morning picnic. Following the meal, each cabin embarks on an extensive cabin cleanup, doing a deep clean and mop of their cabins. Once the chores are complete, it’s time to dive into the activities planned for the day. This morning, we also sent out the brave cabins of I-3 and I-6 to take on the Upper Nam and the Flambeau River for their canoe trips!
Before Cruiser Day, each cabin works together to plan a variety of activities for their Cruiser Day, which we work hard to turn into a custom schedule for each cabin to follow. These options span from familiar camp favorites like tubing, arts and crafts, and Musky Fun (where they can canoe out into the middle of Spider Lake for delicious candy and snacks), to creative hijinks like camp-wide treasure hunts.
Today, cabins got the choice to add to their schedules options like Cabin Plaque making, where our boys get to memorialize their group with a memento that will hang in their cabin for the rest of camp history. Traditionally, they are given a piece of wood that they burn their names into and paint however they like, with total creative freedom for whatever design they choose to represent themselves. Some of our more creative campers take it to another level, like today, when the campers of S3 made their cabin plaque out of a flip-flop!
If you take a look around any cabin today, you’ll find the walls and rafters covered head-to-toe in plaques made by cabins from decades upon decades ago, storied with names that go back generations and made out of all sorts of awesome and unusual designs that I’m sure any member of those cabins could still tell you the story behind. Campers also got to choose whether to add Slip and Slide Tennis Baseball to their schedules, which after last week’s swinging success, has become our latest Cruiser Day tradition.
Cruiser Day is also our time of the week to make certain special requests happen––cabins come to us all the time asking for certain things that might require a little extra planning, and if we can reasonably make them happen, Cruiser Day is the perfect day for our staff to make their wishes come true. Today was our oldest campers’ final Cruiser Day here at camp (next week they go on their Village Cruiser Day), and the many talented chefs of our Pine Manor asked if, as a special privilege, they could go in the kitchen and cook up some smashburgers and Tollhouse cookies.
It was such a delight to watch the smiles on their faces light up the kitchen, as they spent their afternoon serving a delicious meal. They truly made the best of their final Cruiser Day at camp as campers, and we were so glad to make their wishes come true.
In other news, our upper-ridge and lower-villa campers had their Village Cruiser Day today, where all of the cabins go together on an excursion. This week, they headed to Amnicon Falls State Park for some outdoor fun involving a scenic hike and a swim beneath a waterfall! When they were finished, they headed nearby to Duluth for some bowling and arcade fun and a pizza dinner (with bottomless soda!) at the Skyline Social. It was a great time for all.
Every Cruiser Day ends with cabin cookouts, with each cabin gathering at their own campsite to prepare a delectable campfire dinner. Tonight was a North Star classic, Tinfoil Surprise: a tinfoil-wrapped potpourri of potatoes, carrots, hamburger meat, cheese, and onions. For dessert, everyone’s favorite: S’mores.
On Cruiser Days, after all the campers are asleep, the whole staff gathers for a meeting. We talk about what’s going well and what we can do better. We discuss the past week and the week coming up. We compliment each other on a job well done. We also talk about how we can support each camper the best way possible. At the end, we all dine on a delicious staff snack prepared by our phenomenal kitchen staff.
