Photo of the Week Series
Photos from last year’s summer camp, family camp, and many of our retreats!
Your one stop shop for all of our photos of the week! We’ll be posting pictures from summer camp, retreats, and so many other of our wonderful offerings!
Is there such thing as too much Chocolate Pudding?
Pudding monsters invade Summer Camp It’s an interesting life, being a director who works at a summer camp that has a rather tribal song about Chocolate pudding, that serves chocolate pudding every week, and even sells t-shirts that say, “Chocolate pudding, Vanderkamp’s favorite dessert!” The pudding mania has grown so thick at our summer camp that a particularly strange species has emerged from the depths of Vanderkamp lake. That creature? The pudding monster. Here are some survival tips if you encounter a pudding...
read moreMaybe I DO want to be a Chicken!
Be what you want to be at Summer Camp! One of the coolest things about summer camp is watching everyone let their guard down and just get a little bit silly every once in a while. We really believe that taking a retreat from the outside world means unleashing our imaginations to their fullest potential. In this picture, our Sneak-A-Peek girls decided to imitate our chickens, and hilarity ensued. From time to time, a summer camper or staff member will get an idea – “Hey, let’s all be chickens!”, or “Should we all...
read moreHow Can it Be??? Summer Camp Songs
Amazing times around the camp fire last summer Every night at summer camp we have a contemporary worship service, but my favorite nights are Sunday and Thursday, when we sing around the camp fire. Here you see some of my favorite camp people singing, “Oh my God, this love, how can it Be?!?” To be honest I don’t remember the name of the song off hand, but this part really sticks out in my mind from this summer – campers and staff alike genuinely smiling and enjoying each other – asking in song “How can this...
read moreThe Best Things in Life are Free at Summer Camp
Can you believe the beauty of this world? Deep in the recesses of the woods at Vanderkamp, there is a phenomenal beaver dam that is more than 8 feet tall. Beyond it is a lake that houses at least two beaver families. It’s said that beavers are the animals that have the 2nd biggest impact on their environments. The first? Humans, of course! On one day during our camp outrageous, we hiked out to this wonderful beaver dam to observe these incredible creatures in their natural habitat. One of the most satisfying things we do during...
read moreFamily Camp Fun Last Summer
With all of the fun and excitement during our summer camp, we think it’s incredibly important to not forget the real reasons we all make the trip back to Vanderkamp each summer. Sure, it’s fun to use the bouncer on the lake, or act like a swamp thing and cover yourself in seaweed…but first and foremost, it’s all about relationships. During family camp, Amboy Belle Isle Presbyterian Church brought 11 people out for a vacation Bible camp, and they saw the awesome power of God moving through the entire week. People...
read morePterodactyl sighting at Summer Camp!
No game at summer camp is more outrageous than Pterodactyl. Not because of any wild physical activity. No – Pterodactyl takes place on the ground. Not because of any costumes – Pterodactyl is a “come as you are” sort of game. You won’t get wet during Pterodactyl. You won’t have to sing. You will have to wrap your lips around your teeth and scream “Pterodactyl” without laughing, and you might have to make a Pterodactyl noise to reverse the circle. Do you think this camper is about to...
read moreA Little Taste of Summer Camp Outrageousness
So, during Summer Camp, things can get more than a little Outrageous. One of the craziest games is known as Banana Relay. Now, Banana Relay is already a pretty outrageous game, involving the throwing and eating of bananas that inevitably get more than a little mushed up. On this particularly hot day, however, it got even wilder. Anyone who dropped a thrown banana or got mixed up in the rules of the game then had to try and retreat from counselor Allie, who was quick with the pitcher of water! Just as this camper went to finish the...
read moreLonging for summer camp – a photo of the week
On this particularly hot day during our summer camp week “Camp S’more,” we were so hot that we decided to just go swimming in our clothes after the evening camp fire. During this little retreat from the heat, we happened to catch a soaking in motion, as one camper got a face full of water as she went down the slide! Have a photo that you think should be a candidate for photo of the week? contact us and let us...
read morePhoto of the week for 9/21
This photo of the week comes from summer camp this year – During Camp Outrageous(could you guess by the outfits?) Children decorated their counselors with supplies from arts and crafts during our Survivor night to earn points for their respective groups. We then had a Vanderkamp style beauty pageant where the judges selected Joe(2nd from left) and Liz(3rd from right) as the winners…but the real winners were the kids, who had a blast making those counselors look...
read morePhoto of the Week! And a new article series…
For those of you who have a thirst to read about what our retreat center and summer camp are up to, we’ve decided to post at least one photo from this past summer per week, with hopes of more if we can convince Time Warner to come another quarter mile up the road and give us respectable internet! This photo is one of my favorites from summer camp. Perfect day for a swim! It was taken during retro week from the swimming docks. During this week, we worked with Refrigerator Door – a non-profit advocacy group from Syracuse – to give a...
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