Carrying on the tradition

Whenever a Girl Scout goes to Camp Juliette Low, Daisy’s dream continues. I just made that up, it’s not an official slogan or anything, but I think it’s true. It was a packed week. They were at their maximum 112 campers and a slew of CITs (counselors in training). Girls who have completed the ninth and 10th grades can be CITs and learn to be counselors. Katy said they had a regular camp option for the oldest girls who wanted to come but not be a CIT. But when the tent unit they used started to slide down the mountain they had to cut back on their program some.

Katy was in the Sherwood tent unit

The camp has upgraded to all flush toilets but they left a latrine at each unit just for old times sake. I told Katy she needed to use it once. Well, someone found a snake in it at the beginning of the week and she scratched that right off her to-do list.

Then each  unit has a pavilion, outdoor kitchen, covered and uncovered fire rings, showers and so on.

A central building is the Juliette Low lodge, which was built in 1922 and is on the National Historic Register.

The land was was donated but Daisy still picked it out and insisted on the swimming hole. The owners didn’t want to give up the swimming hole but Daisy said “The rocks it will be or nothing”. And the rocks she got. I don’t know exactly where that specific area is. This is where the girls doing canoeing and sailing. They’ve dammed up part of a river in another part of the camp and have that for a swimming hole.

Heath noticed the bridge on Google Earth and was really interested in it. You couldn’t go across it without a counselor, though. The swimming hole is around here somewhere.

There’s a trading post where the kids can buy a snack (candy or ice cream) each day after lunch and the after dinner they can buy things like sunscreen, batteries, etc. Katy ended up buying a tote bag to carry her pool stuff and her boots for riding. She had a little knapsack but it wasn’t quite big enough for those things. She also was excited to buy a song book. She learned a lot of really neat songs and is actually remembering them.

Wednesday night the units made dinner over the campfire and Sherwood did a pasta bar.

Katy with some of the counselors and kids from her unit on the last day.

This camp really stresses letter-writing. They have a rest area every day after lunch and they are really encouraged to write letters during that time. One of the Atlanta TV stations actually did a story about that a few years ago. (The video is here: http://www.11alive.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1084928903001)

A girl in Katy’s tent really wanted to win the letter-writing prize so she wrote 38 letters. In four days. At 47 cents a stamp. Maybe some were postcards. I knew Katy wouldn’t write so I didn’t even send her any stationary or stamps. This showed up in the mail after we got home Saturday.

She told us about it before we got it. Camp mail is routed to Chattanooga for sorting so everything takes at least one extra day. She’ll write a letter if it’s her ticket to food!

They had unit and individual portraits taken and made a nice keepsake that you could buy. Actually, they just deducted it from your trading post balance. But I would imagine everyone would buy it anyway. We thought it was very nice.

A couple of months ago Heath bought Katy the US Mint’s Girl Scout Silver Dollar. He decided to give it to her after she got back from camp and I thought it would be nice to give it to her at camp. So here it is.

A few photos from camp

It was a good week. I asked Katy if next summer she wants to come back to CJL or go to Space Camp and she wasn’t sure. And one of her counselors overheard and piped up to say her dad is an astronomer and teaches astronomy and physics at Agnes Scott College. I also asked Katy if she’d like to go to a two-week session and she said she wasn’t sure if she could do two weeks in a tent. She was worried she’d roll out of bed and fall out of the tent. We asked her how she slept and she said she slept better every night and she also slept later every morning and nearly slept through the bell Saturday! I don’t think she’d survive two weeks unless they let them sleep in on Saturday morning.