Shady Creek Family Camp
We spent a week at family camp called Shady Creek and had a great time. Next year we'll go again and really hope some of our friends will join us. Here's my review:
Positives: The mission ("to create opportunities for families to grow stronger by sharing challenging outdoor experiences without the distractions of home, work or school, and by experiencing adventurous and meaningful activities"), the environment (beautiful nature of the Sierra Nevada mountains), the buildings (very cool adobe huts or small cabins or rooms in the lodge for those who want to be closer to the bathrooms and beautiful dining hall), the facilities (very comfortable; real bathrooms and showers), the food (very good overall; veggie option and a chef who is quite accomodating of special needs), the activities (archery, swimming, ropes courses, arts and crafts, campfires, talent show, ping pong etc. etc. all geared towards families doing it together...fun!), the freedom (babysafe everywhere except the pool of course and total freedom for 6+ yo; K had his run of the camp).
Negatives and Room for improvement: Shared bathrooms (at least they're fairly nice and mostly pretty clean until the end of the week), staff energy (counselors are very sweet but they need to do a little more work on the energy, connectness and spirit coming from them. The week we attended they'd just has an unusually large crowd the previous week so perhaps they were tired), price (worth it to me but kind of expensive compared to what you'd normally think of as camping; about halfway between a city-run family camp where you sleep in your own tent and the cost of our week in Hawaii last year).
Also, I'm not sure how to categorize this; for me it was a positive, for others it might not be: There is very limited cell phone access and no computers or tv's. (Big downside: they put on movies in the childcare more often than I liked in spite of the "no-tv" statement on the website...apparently some of the kids in the childcare could not be happy without it. I just told them to call me when they were going to put it on and I came and took S out. I barely used the childcare anyway but I think the other kid should have left instead. :)) As a result of the technology limitation J actually separated from work and completely sunk into activities like the archery competition (he practice for it and won) and arts and crafts (he made the coolest gourd musical shaker, for example).
Overall, highly recommended! Here are some pics (Blogspot is tempermental so I'll keep adding as it will allow). I can't for the life of me figure out how to put these notes beside the pertinent pictures, but below you will find photos of the adobe cabins, different activities including archery, the ropes courses (the second one shows K climbing "Leap of Faith" and Joe doing the balance tight rope on the left hand side), the dining hall and the Talent show (Joe reciting poetry, K performing Tae Kwon Do:
Positives: The mission ("to create opportunities for families to grow stronger by sharing challenging outdoor experiences without the distractions of home, work or school, and by experiencing adventurous and meaningful activities"), the environment (beautiful nature of the Sierra Nevada mountains), the buildings (very cool adobe huts or small cabins or rooms in the lodge for those who want to be closer to the bathrooms and beautiful dining hall), the facilities (very comfortable; real bathrooms and showers), the food (very good overall; veggie option and a chef who is quite accomodating of special needs), the activities (archery, swimming, ropes courses, arts and crafts, campfires, talent show, ping pong etc. etc. all geared towards families doing it together...fun!), the freedom (babysafe everywhere except the pool of course and total freedom for 6+ yo; K had his run of the camp).
Negatives and Room for improvement: Shared bathrooms (at least they're fairly nice and mostly pretty clean until the end of the week), staff energy (counselors are very sweet but they need to do a little more work on the energy, connectness and spirit coming from them. The week we attended they'd just has an unusually large crowd the previous week so perhaps they were tired), price (worth it to me but kind of expensive compared to what you'd normally think of as camping; about halfway between a city-run family camp where you sleep in your own tent and the cost of our week in Hawaii last year).
Also, I'm not sure how to categorize this; for me it was a positive, for others it might not be: There is very limited cell phone access and no computers or tv's. (Big downside: they put on movies in the childcare more often than I liked in spite of the "no-tv" statement on the website...apparently some of the kids in the childcare could not be happy without it. I just told them to call me when they were going to put it on and I came and took S out. I barely used the childcare anyway but I think the other kid should have left instead. :)) As a result of the technology limitation J actually separated from work and completely sunk into activities like the archery competition (he practice for it and won) and arts and crafts (he made the coolest gourd musical shaker, for example).
Overall, highly recommended! Here are some pics (Blogspot is tempermental so I'll keep adding as it will allow). I can't for the life of me figure out how to put these notes beside the pertinent pictures, but below you will find photos of the adobe cabins, different activities including archery, the ropes courses (the second one shows K climbing "Leap of Faith" and Joe doing the balance tight rope on the left hand side), the dining hall and the Talent show (Joe reciting poetry, K performing Tae Kwon Do:
posted by Lisa at 7:52 PM
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