Adventure In Adventure OutCamp Ramah Adventures – On the Connecticut River and Beyond
This summer, Camp Ramah – a Jewish summer Camp based out of Palmer MA – hired us to take campers on several different wilderness-based adventure day trips around New England. We’ve had a long standing relationship with the camp for upwards of ten years, and continue to do programs with them in the outdoors and at on-site at their camp. Within Camp Ramah there are several different groups of campers, categorized based on their grade in school, each group with a different name. The group that we were working with was called “Machon” and was comprised of 10th graders.
For this program we had 10 staff and took out 6 sub groups of Machon campers, each group with about 12 campers. Some campers went caving in Western MA, while others were taken caving in the Clarksville caves in Upstate New York. One group went rock climbing at Rose Ledge, while another was learning about tracking in Northfield, MA. I was working with the two groups who went canoeing and kayaking.
Initially, we had planned to have these two groups split up and go separately – one group in kayaks and one in canoes. However, we ended up deciding to combine the groups together, and the result was a massive pod of boats traveling down the Connecticut River. At times we took up a bit too much space on the river, but as the campers honed their paddling skills, we managed to get better at staying close together, traveling along the side of the river. We had a lot of first time paddlers, and several who tried out both kayaking and canoeing by the end of the day.
We took some time to pull over and eat lunch on the river bank, and about five minutes into lunch, a large thunderstorm rolled in. We were right near some sort of manmade shelter, so we gathered the large group under the shelter and out of the rain until the storm passed. Once the thunder and lightning were far away – the kids opted to play some games in the still-pouring rain. They ran around in the small field next to our found shelter, yelling “Marco Polo” and singing camp songs together. At this point, they had gotten used to being wet and had a great attitude about it. We headed back out onto the river in a mild drizzle, and eventually the sun came back out and dried us all off.
The rest of the day was smooth paddling, and as we pulled up to the boat ramp in Barton Cove, all of the campers banded together to help get everything organized, carrying up boats to the boat racks for transport and putting paddles and PFD’s together. The day ended up being a great success and we were glad to hear reports from the other groups that the day was a hit for them too, despite the rain.
Sometimes a little rain can really enhance a group’s experience. I, for one, love being out in the rain.