The Sari Diaries- Sunday 6/23/24

Dear Chippies, Parents, Family and Friends,

As our first week of #TheRanch2024 comes to a close, I am feeling very good about what has transpired throughout these past seven days. Today was an excellent finale of week one and I am excited to share all of the happenings. So here it goes…

This morning began with our famous Sunday Morning Breakfast. When I passed by the lodge at 7:15am this morning, there was already a line formed…campers had been there since the early hours of the morning in order to be some of the first campers to enjoy our traditional Sunday morning breakfast. Lisa made pancakes to order, which include optional toppings such as sprinkles, Oreos, chocolate chips, blueberries and raspberries. Cliff made omelets to order- always a fan favorite. He is well known for his very cheesy omelets! Ruth’s Special this week was a chocolate/Oreo/marshmallow pancake, which was a big hit. And I made scrambles to order…possibly a little less exciting than some of the other options, but still popular due to the quick turnaround from ordering to eating. Overall, campers and staff seemed very happy with both the service and the food.

After breakfast, everyone got ready to head into Minocqua for our first session town day. The entire town was filled with Chippies and cabins spent time together eating lunch, shopping in the stores and hanging at the beach. As always, there was tons of fudge eaten, which is a staple if you are visiting Minocqua. Once in a while, the campers love to get out of camp and into the “real world,” but it wasn’t long before everyone was ready to board the buses and head back to CRC!

Once back at camp, we had a huge Fudd’s Challenge cabin clean-up. Due to the more relaxed nature of Sundays at camp, sometimes cabins need a bit of extra attention in terms of getting them clean. And so, we have Fudd’s Challenges on Sundays…an extra special cabin clean-up that is graded by a director. Today I was that lucky director, and I was quite impressed with what I saw. The cabin of Cactus organized their clothesline by category (bathing suits on one line and towels on another), and they even color-coated the items hanging! Meanwhile, in Silverspurs, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Campers had folded the clothes on their shelves…like retail store type of folding…it was insane! In the end, Silverspurs was the Colt Village winner of today’s challenge, and Boots was the Wrangler village victor.

Once cabins were clean, we were ready to move on with our day…onto age group bonding! All across camp, age groups joined together for some fun activities. Rafter^X was put into small groups and each group was tasked with creating a garbage bag dress. The rules were that they could only use garbage bags, toilet paper and nature. Their dresses were adorable, and quite fashionable if I do say so myself! Timber Walk and Copper Stripes enjoyed a cupcake war competition in the Cooking Academy. It smelled delicious and their laughter could be heard from well outside the confines of the Cooking Academy :). The tri-cabin participated in a scavenger hunt all around camp…they were excitedly running around in small groups racing to the end of the hunt! The bonding was in full force and the Chippewa Sisterhood was certainly strengthened this afternoon!

We then had a yummy BBQ dinner, which was a changeup for us…typically Saturdays are BBQ and Sundays are pizza night. But we changed it around this weekend because so many cabins were having pizza in town for lunch. Everybody did a nice job of being flexible with this meal change…phew!

And tonight, Tan & White games officially kicked off with Barnyard Bedlum. Both the Tans and the Whites dressed in crazy outfits singing TV show theme songs as they ran around the field trying to collect erasers (used to be candy and before that peanuts). Both teams did a great job, but tonight, the Tans came out on top. After the game though, each team sang the sportsmanship song and the sachems gave each other big hugs.

Basically, today was incredible. Sundays are a nice change of pace each week. While Mondays-Saturdays are majorly structured and jam-packed with action, Sundays give us a bit of time to chill, and take it all in. On Sundays, the Admin Team is responsible for feeding the horses…this morning, Sophie Friedland and Sara Margolis fed them, and tonight, Soph-Aloaf and I had the pleasure. While we are not exactly the crew that is typically seen at the stables, we all enjoy taking some time each week to head out there, and see camp through a new lense. It allows us a unique perspective- while we are lucky enough to have ten horses on camp grounds at CRC, the barn area feels like a completely different part of camp…it is a little bit removed from Main Street, and all of the craziness of camp…it is its own little world within our little Chippewa world, and it is nice to get out there sometimes!

Okay, that’s all for now- thanks for reading…talk to y’all soon!

Happy Camping and Love,
Sari