OEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The Outdoor Education season has officially begun with the arrival of eight new staff to begin their transformation into Outdoor Education Gurus. They bring with them an array of skill and talents that gives them a head start on the road to Gurudom. We start Monday morning and plan on spending the day taking a big hike around getting to know our classroom, so expect some pictures soon.

Two ways to keep in touch.....

On the right hand side of the blog you will see a new widget that allows you to subscribe to The Electric Spectacle by email. This will send you a quick email whenever we put a new post up, so it will save you having to remember to check back. If they get annoying, it is super easy to "unsubscribe" from us. Easy eh.
This one is a bit more complicated, but you can also set up a feed to us by clicking on the subscription links on the right. One good way to do this is to click on the Atom feed and if you have a Firefox browser you can put a little button with drop down box onto your web browser. Don't be scared to play around with the feeds, you won't break them and if all else fails just use the email subscription.

Snow Day

Snow Days don't really work out too well for us at Camp. With a lot of us living on site we don't have much of an excuse for staying at home. A pretty big storm hit the Northeast last night, but it seems like we got away lightly compared to some other places. For anyone reading this from warmer parts of the world, here is what you are missing.

Open House

Some hardy future campers braved the weather with their families today for our Open House. We had hot drinks and snacks to cheer people up after their frosty walk around camp. Thanks to everyone for coming and brightening up the dining hall. Our next Open House is scheduled for March 15th, rain, sleet, snow or shine.

Hayward Cabins Get Some Love

The Hayward cabins have been getting some care and love over the winter. Many of them have a nice new paint job and Maples, Pines and Oaks have some nice new windows. Have a look for yourself.

Web Albums

The link below will take you to the Camp Burgess & Hayward albums on Picasa. We just got the Ski & Snowboard pics up there. Soon we will have permanent links to our web albums in the side bar of the blog.
http://picasaweb.google.com/CampBurgessHayward/TeenSkiTrip2009?feat=directlink

More Ski Trip

Here are more photos from the February vacation Teen Ski and Snowboard Adventure. We run the trip every year, but it fills up fast so contact us in the fall to get a spot. This year 16 teens went to the White Mountains in New Hampshire from Monday to Friday. They packed in three days of powder, two nights of skating and a night of snow tubing. Here are some more photos, but check back tomorrow and we will get the rest onto a Flickr account for your perusal.

Actual Ski Trip Photos

Here we go, batch number one of the ski trip photos. The week went well except for some delays driving after they got 10 inches of powder dumped on them. Fortunately they got to reap the benefit of all that fresh stuff on the beautiful White Mountains in New Hampshire. We'll have some better ones up tomorrow, we were having some technical problems with memory cards today, so stay tuned.

A wee break from posting

Hey, just a quick note to let you know that we have not forgotten you. A bunch of us are out of town, and other people are resting up from the teen ski and snowboard trip. We'll get some pictures up on Monday so you can see how the week went. Until then!

Walkabout

Most Friday afternoons in the winter at Camp, we try and get all the staff together to do a project. Sometimes it ends up being things that need doing, like stuffing envelopes or cleaning out basements, but it is more fun doing it as a group. For a change last Friday we went on a walk around Burgess. The idea was mainly just to have a walk, but we also wanted to dream a little and talk about things that we could do to make this amazing place even more beautiful and fun.

Rally!

Gage & Akira lead the charge

I know this looks a little strange, but serious thinking was taking place.

The scary shed in the old orchard.

This saw one too many games of "Sink the Swiss"

Walks around Camp are no joke

Enjoying the winter view from the lodge.

Weekend Work

You might think that in the middle of winter here at Camp we spend our nights and weekends hanging out around a fire, all alone, waiting for people to start coming to Camp. Well you'd be right, except the all alone part. All through the winter we get groups coming down to spend the weekend enjoying Camp and hanging out around the fire. Last week we had a big group from one of the Boston area colleges here. We know that the pictures don't have any people in them (for privacy reasons) so you'll have to take our word on it.

New Do

You may have noticed that "The Electric Spectacle" has a bit of a new "hair do." From now on this page, just like Camp, is going to change with the seasons. The new picture is of the sun setting over Pinkham Island and a frozen Spectacle Pond. Sorry for the messy page while we played around with it.

Fresh Powdah with your Chowdah

Just like our friends in the UK, Camp just got a nice bit of fresh snow in the last day or two. It's a shame that there is no mountain on Cape Cod, because this stuff would be perfect for a bit of downhill fun.
Here is a picture out of the office yesterday mid-storm and one of Rafiki and Nala enjoying the fresh powdah this morning.

Iceball??

We realize that lots of the posts are a little "Burgess-Centric", so we thought we would get a photo of Hayward up here. Walking through Hayward on Sunday seeing the Basketball Court look like this, had us thinking of some of the awesome creative caps we could do. That's if it were not for things like broken legs, bruised hips and the fact that there is no nurse on camp right now. Some ideas are just best kept as ideas.

Jonas Brothers @ Camp Burgess & Hayward

According to the latest gossip, the Jonas Brothers are scheduled to make an appearance at Camp Burgess & Hayward this summer. So goes the rumor at a local elementary school anyway. Now most of you, especially those who have been involved in staff training, know that rumors and gossip can be dangerous things. As much as we would like to roll with this one for a while, we thought it would be best (before we start getting too many groupies showing up) to let everyone know that it is true.
Sorry we couldn't resist. There will be no Jonas Brothers but who needs celebrities when you have cabaret and campfires.

A breakfast date with Rafiki and Nala

First you've got to break the ice..............

Then pose for a photo outside the restaurant........

Maybe a quick drink first...............

Excuse me nature calls................

Once everyone is relaxed you can tuck into some nice food.........

A wee stroll around camp...

With the temperature being a balmy 16F with the wind chill, we couldn't resist a wee stroll around the place this lunchtime. Here are some a few shots of a sunny winters day on Spectacle Pond.

We promise we'll tidy up before the summer.........

Leftovers from the December storm...............

Polar bear swim?.................................

How about the Spectacle Challenge. Bring your own dry suit, ice axe and throw rope......

New year, new post.

We were trying to nail down our new years resolutions here on Spectacle Pond when we realized how bad we've been with getting posts on The Electric Spectacle.
It's not because we don't care or because there is nothing going on here, but sometimes you just get caught up doing stuff. Now don't get me wrong, some of this stuff is really important, like taking registrations, hiring staff and feeding Rafiki and Nala (the camp pigs), but you've always got to make time to keep in touch with friends. So from now on we'll keep our priorities in order and make sure we get out for 10 minutes during lunch to snap a few photos of the place. We've got some awesome ideas for stories and features, but if anyone wants to contribute let us know and you can send us a story and some photos. If one of our campers or staff has done something that deserves a mention get it to us and we'll get it out there.
Also, if you think we are slipping with our resolution, feel free to give us a friendly prod, that's what friends are for.
You can contact (or prod) us at camp@ssymca.org.