Every Labor Day weekend we go to Camp Bethel, an incredible, rustic camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A friend of mine's husband is the Camp Director, and the family camp weekends for Memorial and Labor Day are the best value in camping in Virginia and are a huge amount of fun. Cabins rent for $16 a night and sleep as many as 16 people on bunk beds, and tent camping is only $5. You can make reservations for meals in the Ark Dining Hall, and there's a super new Swiss chef working at the camp now who makes extremely varied and tasty brunches (we haven't gone to other meals...). Things are definitely no frills here in general--bluegrass and gospel live music on stage at night, hayrides behind a tractor back into the fields and mountains behind the main camp, a barrel train (featured on the front of my blog), fishing in a stocked pond, a spring-fed, freezing cold swimming pool, and a very accessible camp area for biking, walking, and just hanging out. It's the kind of place where, for the most part, you can even feel pretty good about a 4 year old travelling around on wheels or foot with friends.

Family weekend is also an opportunity for everyone to pitch in to help close down parts of the camp for the winter. On Labor Day morning, there is always a polar bear swim as a final goodbye to the swimming pool for the season. If you ask me, though, it's always a polar bear swim at Camp Bethel, since the water coming from the spring is freeeeezing! It's definitely not for rarified specimens like myself who prefer 94 degree therapy pools! This was Frances after her swim this morning. She switched from polar bear to wannabee lifeguard after about 5 minutes.


One of the greatest pleasures of camp is catching salamanders in the main pond. Within 5 minutes, Frances had three of them in her net. I don't know what it is about this age, but suddenly my girl who used to love pink tutus is fascinated with trying to convince people that she is actually a boy. Now that I remember, "Tom-person" is the term that she used today to describe herself. Her proudest moment this weekend was when a boy at the lake asked her, "Are you a boy or a girl?" She was so thrilled that she immediately rushed back to our campsite to change into more obviously girl clothes so she could go say, "Ha ha." Hmmm.





Normally we camp in a field across from the camp's heifer barn. This year we might have experienced the same exciting birth of a calf as we did last year, but we decided to stay in a cabin with some friends. This is the Whispering Pines, and it is basically a room with nothing but 14 beds. We pulled mattresses down onto the floor for the adults, but we had a huge slumber party with 9 kids and 5 adults packed in. Here's our group's goofy photo. Rutledge had a total blast, since he had a whole group of boys to play with, and Frances had a girl posse of 8 and 9 year old girls. They spent the entire weekend riding bikes, fishing, and having adventures. Rachel, pregnant and in pink in the middle, was one of my LLL co-Leaders in Roanoke when we lived there. Wendy, on the left, attended meetings. And Amy is a homeschooling friend of Rachel's.


I set up the tent anyway because Rutledge couldn't decide if he wanted to sleep inside or outside, so we flitted back and forth between both for a while before I put my foot down and said we were definitely sleeping indoors and we couldn't waffle any more. It was rather pleasant to only set up a 3 person tent instead of our regular 9 person one!


This is my favorite camp building, the House of Pillars. In the front is a bunk room that can be rented in the off-season and serves as a camp cabin during the summer. But the main room is a huge, cooled room for conferences and events. Usually we have a movie night there during our camp time, and my first time at Camp Bethel was for a conference, so I have fond memories of time spent there. Plus it's just a cool looking place.

Tomorrow marks the official end of summer and start of the school year. Rutledge starts preschool in the morning. At the very last minute, I decided not to send him to the school we had originally planned and out of the woodwork came an opportunity to put him in a home preschool in a nearby neighborhood. What is great is that it's only 5 minutes away, the preschool has only 10 kids, and it's 3 days a week, which works out perfectly for me. We went to visit today, and he'll have his first day tomorrow. I have a good feeling that this is going to be a super experience for him. The rest of the gang, of course, will be buckling down just a bit and getting some work done in the morning before heading out to art class in the afternoon. Here's to another great year of learning and fun!