30Eshaan

Hello Readers! Today I’ll be talking about my YMCA Camp Kirkwood experience. So, you’re probably wondering what I’m talking about. Let’s start from the beginning.

Day Before Arrival

On August 29, 2023 right after school I get home and start finishing up my homework. After 1-2 hours I finish and it’s about 5:30 P.M. I run upstairs and tell my mom that I’m done with all my homework. Then I ask her if I can go to Camp Kirkwood with mostly all the other sixth graders. I show her the permission slip that my parent/guardian has to sign. She knows most of the information because parents got told about it in our school website, Veracross, and last year me and the other fifth graders went to Camp Hanes. After a little bit of persuading and pleading she says yes, so she signs the paper and I go play outside for one hour. After I come home we eat dinner and I finish my Kumon so at 8:00 P.M. me and my mom start packing for the trip we stop every now and then. We ended up stopping at around 10:00 P.M. and my mom told me we would finish packing in the morning because my mom didn’t want me to be tired in the morning, I read my book for 15-20 minutes and then headed to bed. I probably ended up falling asleep at 11:00 P.M. This was because I was really excited for the trip and it was my birthday tomorrow.

Camp Kirkwood

I ended up waking up at around 6:50 A.M. I quickly shower and get ready. My mom gives me my luggage and the next thing you know, I’ve been dropped off and I’m sitting in the bus, pumped with excitement. After the two hour drive we arrive and the first thing we do is grab a random student’s luggage and run to the pavilion since it’s raining outside. That’s not the best start but it gets better. After we get introduced to the camp and the staff we are assigned a cabin, cabin mates, and a teacher and then get sent off to our cabins. We unpack and then go to eat lunch. We have a ham and cheese sandwich. Then we get assigned activity groups and are sent to go do different activities. Since I don’t remember the exact order I’ll be talking about all the activities in the end. After the activities we had to go to our cabins until dinner because it was raining really hard. After fooling around we went to eat dinner which were hot dogs and they were alright. Then we had a choice to either play a version of dodgeball called battle ball or to watch the Lorax. I picked battle ball because I had already watched the Lorax. After playing for a little bit we all went inside where the other students were watching the Lorax to eat snow cones for dessert. We played card games and talked and at 10:00 P.M. it was lights out.

I think woke up at around 7:00 A.M. and my cabin fooled around until it was time for breakfast. For breakfast there was a variety of foods. I think we were mainly having eggs, but you could eat other foods. We did more activities and then had lunch. After lunch we did more activities according to my memory. We had dinner, which was chicken which was good and then for dessert we had a huge birthday cake because there were four kids, including me, that had birthday’s either yesterday or that day. After that we went to cabins and played games and at 10:00 P.M. it was lights out.

We woke up at around the same time as the day before and went to breakfast. This time we had waffles, which were alright. After that every single group did three different activities and then we had our final meal which was pizza. After lunch we went to our cabins and started packing up  and cleaning up. After that we all went to the pavilion and our teachers told us our buses. Then we boarded the buses and left Camp Kirkwood. We arrived at school 10-15 minutes before dismissal. After I got picked up the first thing I did was change, shower, and finally lay in my bed.

Like I said earlier, since I don’t fully remember which order we did the activities I am going to talk about my top five activities in order, my most favorite to my least favorite activity.

Number 1 on our list is the pool. The reason I liked the pool the best is because we had it twice, we didn’t have to wait in line we were in the pool for all the time, and lastly we went to the pool twice, we ended up having four hours of pool time and that’s way longer than what we had for all the other activities we did. Here is a photo of the pool ⤵️

 

Number 2 on our list is just the activity where we got a bunch of games to play. This is number two because in this activity, like the pool, you don’t have to wait in line you can use up all the time. In this activity our group first played a rock paper scissors tournament. I ended up getting third place which wasn’t bad at all. After that I used up all the time playing Yahtzee. Here’s a photo of another group doing this activity, but we were outside on picnic tables ⤵️

 

Number 3 on our list is a hard one between Kanga Jump and V-Swing but I ended up picking Kanga Jump because thsi, like the other top two activities you don’t only go once and you don’t wait in line. You’re probably wondering what is the Kanga Jump, well I thing the Kanga in Kanga Jump is short for Kangaroo Jump, but that just what I think. So it’s basically a big blob and when I say big I mean it It’s big enough for 20 kids to jump on without bumping into each other normally. Here’s a photo of a group jumping ⤵️

 

I think you already know what number 4 on our list, yes you guessed it’s the one and only V-Swing, and if you didn’t get it it’s fine buddy you’ll get it next time. When you get hooked up to the V-Swing your other classmates start pulling the rope back and you go higher and higher until you say stop. Then you just reattach yourself and the rope makes a click and you go swinging. I was the only boy in our group and one of the 4 people in our group to go to the top. The reason this is so low on the list is because we could only go on it once, if we could go multiple times then it would be first or second on the list. Here’s a short video of a fellow classmate in a different group going on the V-Swing ⤵️

Finally Number 5 on our list is the Zipline. It’s down here because it was a little bit less fun than the V-Swing and you could only go on it once. You had to first climb a mini obstacle course to get high enough to go on the Zipline, which was fun. Then you got hooked up and ziplined down across a lake. Here are to photos of kids ziplining ⤵️

 

These were my top 5 favorite activities, but we did way more. Some others we did included Canoeing, learning to navigate with a compass, learning about trees, team building, meeting bubbles the pig and playing basketball and Gaga Ball, and maybe some others that I forgot.

Thanks for reading!