Back in the Saddle

So the work is on.  There is always stuff to do in the maintenance department at Camp Barakel.  Cut wood, cleanup paths, fix all kinds of maintenance issues around camp.  But I think our best work is when we have a project.  And we definitely have a project on our hands here.  Here are some pics with some explanations.

Here's how it looked to begin with.  The ceiling was very uneven and apparently no one likes the wood paneling when they're living in the house instead of camping for a weekend.  Either way, it's all coming down except the windows.

Insulation.  It's a lot of fun to smash the wood paneling, but not so much fun because of the insulation.  Masks help a little, but they don't help my eyes.  Then with a mask glasses fog up.  Anyways, we make it work and keep tearing.

This appears to be an addition to the house because of the foil backed insulation.  Also found a paper from 1959 in the attic of this area.  Apparently Congress gave Ike a bunch of money and wanted him to slow down inflationary system.  And something about the highway system... who's ever going to use that?

Here's a comparison of old and new.  See the cobbled together framing under the window, the different types of insulation, and most interestingly... the spruce logs in the ceiling.

 So that's it so far.  Lots more demo, but soon we'll be raising the ceiling about 4 feet on the side that opens up to the rest of the building.  Looking for some more head room in a building with 6'3" doors and 7' roofs.  I'll be sure to add more photos as they come up.

This weekend I hit most the activity areas.  Thunder express, waterfront and zipline.  Here are a couple nice views of the lake from the blob towers:

Oh yeah.  Team Seasonal (me and the seasonal here at camp) met at the Harris' to have dinner and we ended up watching Gran Torino.  Brad learned a lot of new racial epitaphs and it was fun to watch.  While watching a deer hobbled its way into the yard and we noticed it only had 3 legs.  Here's my best picture of it with my phone:

He seemed to get around pretty good.  Who knows how his Winter will go, he is already pretty skinny.

Camp is good.  Peace out til next week.

What's Up North?

I understand many people like reading these just to see what's going on up here at Camp Barakel.  I give a good summary of what's changing and being constructed around camp.  Well there will be none of that in this post.  But I'm here to tell you that it will be happening soon.  Next week hopefully.

So I've only been back up for a week, and most of that has been moving in and then running around on the zipline all weekend.  So now we have a funky week.  Because of Family Camp stretching into Monday, we get Tuesday (today) off, and then we have a shortened week before the Grandparents Camp this coming week.

On Monday afternoon the Seasonal Staff (Angelee Webster, Brad Smith, and myself) joined the Baker's and a couple Ford kids at the waterfront.  It was a gorgeous day out, but the water was frigid.  Once we settled in with the skip disc, and the frisbee it started to feel warm.  I feel like it's important to enjoy the nice days while we can, before Winter blows in.

So I don't feel like I said much of anything here.  I'm happy to be at camp for what is probably my final season for now at least.  Dunno exactly what God will bring in the new year.  I'm living in the now though, and this is my announcement that I'll be updating this regularly for the Fall now.

And if that's not good enough... here are some pictures from the waterfront.

Pretty much the whole crew.

Epic water mat battles.

Emma offered me some goldfish.  That skip disc is one of the coolest things ever.

Matthew was cheesing it up for the camera.  Good campshot.

Classic king of the raft moment....

It's hard to stay on with Matthew pushing them around.

That's it.  Peace out til next week.  Happy to have the opportunity to be "where God has blessed" for another season.

It's Over! The summer is at least.

Summer camp is over at least.  We wrapped up the summer with what we call HIS-ability camp.  It's a life changing week for many of the Summer Staff.  You have to see it to really have any affect.  Just hearing some of the testimonies, including one man who's happy he has a brain injury from a car wreck because it brought him back to Jesus.  At the same time he is sick of that body and is super excited for the return of the Lord.  Really good stuff.  Made me teary eyed a couple times.  

I enjoyed seeing a lot of the regulars this year, including my two former campers.  This time I programed with Rob, so I didn't get to spend a lot of time with any individual campers.  But I did get to meet a lot of others.  After that slow week the summer staff takes a bus up to Mackinaw and back.  It's a full day for sure, but a lot of fun.

But now I'm home.  I have about 10 days here, and I mean to relax for the most part.  I try to contact my friends and spend some time checking out Battle Creek, but most my time will be spent playing disc golf and watching movies.  Here are some pictures of my first full day here.

After watching some movies and going for a run I ended up at Begg Park disc golfing.  I was surprised my phone could snag the disc in the air.  I only played 10 holes because I wanted to keep moving around town.  

Some kind of International, or National Balloon championship is going on this week.  They were all over in the sky for sure.  Very pretty in the sunset light.  I went to my old school, Southeastern, to watch them from the hill top.  Crazy to think I was a Hilltopper 15 years ago.  

So I went up on the parking garage I like to try and see the balloon's or the sunset.  Didn't get either very well.  But I did remember the awful squiggly lamp posts and then I noticed the sidewalk is swervy as well!  It's quite odd looking.

 

Then I found this bench.  It's not finished, but it's quite ridiculous.  Pretty much Willy Wonka here.  Just need those cones to taste like candy corn.

And here was the sunset.  Wasn't great on the rooftop but the clouds came in and added a lot of texture.  This is after I went to get ice cream with my mom and her aerobics friends.  Kinda random bonus fact right there.

Thanks for following!  Hopefully I'll be back to posting about camp consistently soon.

Summer is Looming

Blogging gets rough in these summer days.  Almost all 16 of our waking hours are scheduled, and sometimes even more.  So I figured it would be fun to put an update quickly this morning.

A couple weeks ago we took about 30 trees from behind Crosscut to make room for terraforming.  We actually cut about 10 trees, then they fell on the rest of them.

The bottom of the tree is all busted up.

So we notch it and push it over.

 Then Mike and I spent 2 days working on split rail fence on the East Side.  4 of his nephews came along for the second day and I was impressed with the amount of fencing we could get in over such a short amount of time.

Big changes!  No more parking behind the Dining Hall.

Here's the choke point that cuts off the familiar parking area.

Now we have workshop.  We have something like 60 people coming and going around camp.  Learning Archery, Riflery, Counseling, Laundry and so many more camp activities.  It's busy, but it's a blast.

Swimmingly

Graham Lake at the beach our Youth Group usually spends a lot of time on in the summer.

Another of Graham Lake.  I've always enjoyed tubing here, or just sitting in the sun on the dock.

It's a busy couple weeks around camp.  We have cleaning assignments during the week, and then we still try to finish up as many projects as we can.  I also sneak off to water the plants periodically.

People think I'm crazy, but I love watering the plants.  Especially with the rainbow spread out on the spray.

Zipline training was last week and I enjoyed working on the tower again.  I'm really comfortable working with the campers and strapping them onto the cables.  It seems like the enthusiasm for the zipline has settled down, so we're not crazy busy the whole time.  We still keep a steady pace going though.

The normal view from the tower.

 So one more week of maintenance before my second summer as a programer on the West Side.  We have plans to work on some more parking lots, cleaning, and cutting down some more trees.  Really seem to be changing the landscape all over.

New dirt is here to terraform this parking lot into a path.

We're almost to summer.  Just one more retreat and the summer staff will arrive in full force.  We'll see if blogging continues as well.

A Walk Through the Creek

I was home for the week and enjoyed a walk down memory lane in Battle Creek.  I'll comment on the pictures as they go by.  Almost all of them were taken from basically the same vantage point, only changing which direction I take the pictures.



 This WAS Cereal City USA.  I never entered the building, but I did pass by it about a thousand times in the bus, on foot, biking, and driving.   You can see they are gutting it out in this picture.  Soon it will be the Battle Creek Mathematics and Sciences Center.  So when I visit my old teachers I'll have to get used to this new location.

 This is a picture looking West-ish.  I've always thought he weeping willows look really cool at this distance. 

 This is a view that is almost 180 degrees from the other one.  Another weeping willow draped over the river.  Both pictures were taken from a bridge.  On either side of the bridge it looks like city, but along this stretch of river it's really pretty.

 This is just to the right of the other picture (the same pine trees on the left).  It's Kellogg's HQ and it's a very interesting building in downtown.  I've been through the place a couple times back when Rob worked there.  One time we stopped there on a road rally to grab a laptop with a card that could grab internet from satellites.  Now most people have access to it on their phone.  Just one more thing that changes.

 The river.  I think they like to put rocks alongside of it because they're prettier than this scraggly stuff.  I kind of like this though.  I remember riding my bike as fast as I could down the path on the left (just above the rocks) and under the bridge.  Then it would turn out that the river was high and there could be as much as 3 inches of river passing by.  I used caution after that.

 The Cereal City building is just to the left of this picture.  You can see a construction barricade in the picture.  I like the stone work they did on that pipe.  Made it stand out in a good way.  Like someone might have made it centuries ago. 

 This is a bus stop.  Not the pillar in the middle, but at the first light post in the background.  Now the road just loops off of Michigan Avenue (the main drag) and then around back onto it.  When I took the bus it had access to the other main road in town.  It's kind of odd to have the road just stop in the middle of town.

Another angle of the bus stop.  I remember waiting here many times.  It felt safer than some of the other bus stops I could choose from.  It was also a good place to work on my skateboarding tricks.  Which consisted of riding my skateboard.  I could go down curbs well, but I could not ollie to save my life.

 This is the building across from the bus stop.  It used to be Rapid Eye Art Studio or something like that.  Now it has no markings on it and it looks generally abandoned.  I know my dad brought me here a couple times to get my brother some nice art supplies. 

 And this is Pizza Sam's.  My youth pastor works here on the weekends and I spent some time chatting with him while he swept and mopped.  Funny how much it's like camp.  Late night chatting while sweeping and mopping. 

Other highlights from the trip include a road rally, installing a hose hanger on the side of the house, cleaning up the gutters a little bit, and the Water Festival.  I should explain the Water Festival a bit.  It's sponsored by local businesses and several levels of government as a way to teach kids about water.  All kinds of lessons about water from where it goes when you flush, how we affect it with our construction projects and landscaping, and how to conserve/preserve it.  I went to the first one in 2002 as a high school junior, and now I help coordinate the high shoolers.  It's just a bit of running around Kellogg Community College along with some slight problem solving.

Blogging may hit a snag as summer catches on.  Two more weekends of retreats.  Pray that we finish preparing camp for the summer months.

This and That

Here is the opening for the new parking lot on East side.  You can see into the softball field.

Several of the new trees near Heritage.

I think I'm caught up on pictures from other weeks now.  Last week at camp included a variety of jobs.  We finished up the new walls on the new equipment shed.  We like to call it the cow pen sometimes because that's about what it looks like.  In fact, whenever people visit us, they generally greet us with a moo.

A new project that popped up worked out really well in the deluge of rain we experienced this week.  Heritage lodge is getting some work done for the sake of its name.  It's beginning to look a bit like the museum in the West Side Chapel, or the Blockhouse.

Ready for Winter?

Me and Mike spent our time working on installing the door of the old Girl's Dorm furnace in the corner of the Great Room.  It was interesting because it's very heavy and comes in several parts.  We think it'll be a fun addition to the lodge.

Pictures are terrible in the Great Rooms.  At least they are with my camera.   You can see the doors are operable.

I don't know which is better.  The flash, or no flash. This one shows the letters better.

With all of our projects we've turned to the outdoors a lot more lately.  And with that has come the need for holes.  Post holes that is.  Split rail fencing, 4x4's for the cow pen, and now some 6x6's for a new porch on Cedar Cabin.  Digging holes is a chore because every couple digs I have to dig out a couple big rocks.  It seems like whenever I get fed up with it, Mike will switch holes with me and then I'll find all the rocks in his hole.  On the 6x6's the holes were easy to dig.  Some rocks, but it went really easily, especially for Mike.

The new porch will be fun to work on.

Now I'm back to Battle Creek for the week.  Looking forward to the usual church events, and then making my way back up to the CoLabor Challenge at camp this weekend.