To Maine and Back in 7 days

The family just got off the plane and ate some Subway. We had a fabulous trip out to Maine for Family Camp. We started our journey with a successful short flight from CMI to ORD and then had a 3-hour layover in which we ate lunch at the Macaroni Grill, played for an hour at the play place and then spent 30 minutes in the H/K Admirals Club. Here X-man built himself a stool to match the girl's next to him and watched the Disney Channel in the Kids Room. When we got there they were playing Phineas and Ferb, but then something pre-teen girl related came on and X-man worked to try and relate... :-)

On the way out we stayed the night at the Liberty Hotel because our plane got in late in the afternoon on Saturday and camp didn't start until Sunday at 3 p.m.

At first I was like, "Whatever. Isn't everything in New England named after liberty?" Then we got there and suddenly MacTroll and I said, "Oooohhh yeaaaahhhh."We had read somewhere about this hotel. It's a remodeled prison! The prison held famous people like Malcolm X and Bill Baird (who if you ever were unmarried and had sex using contraceptives you should write a thank you letter to -- he helped give you that privilege. I'm writing mine now.).

It's a beautiful hotel that X-man was totally enchanted with. He loved that Clink, the restaurant, (the bar is called Alibi) had the original iron doors. MacTroll and I thought it was cute that the "privacy" signs had original jailhouse keys tied to a piece of thin material that said, "Solitary."

Plus, it had a lovely view of the city and the Tube.

We ended up going to bed early and getting up to walk down the street to Finagle a Bagel, which had another unexpected element to it... the bagel cutter. It's kind of hard to see here. But if you see the worker in the middle, in front of him is actually a spinning circular saw. They put the bagels down spaced a bit apart on that conveyer belt (where the staff is in the distance) and it takes it down the line. When the bagel reaches the saw it saws it in half and THROWS the bagel pieces down to that shiny metal block at the end that drops them into a medal bucket for the lady in the green shirt to prepare. Safe for allergies -- no. Super cool for a six year old who ran back and forth between the basket and the saw blade -- YES!

Then we got in the car and we drove up to Portland, Maine. It's a very boring drive that takes you up Highway 1 to 295, which isn't the loveliest of highways. There are lots of tolls. On the way though, MacTroll stopped in New Hampshire (which is a very short part of 95) in order to pick up alcohol sales tax free for the adult "Happy Hours" at family camp.

When we arrived in Portland, we ate at Silly's, which had tripled its space since were were there two years ago. This time, we ate out on the porch. The boys enjoyed milkshakes and sandwiches while I had a Buffalo Tofu salad.

After our bellies were full, we had some time, so we drove toward the water. There on the point just a bit north of the Old Port were some memorials and some historical markers.

It had warmed up and so MacTroll asked X-man if it was okay to put the top down on the Chrysler Convertible we got from Hertz. (We use MacTroll's travel points a lot for family travel so our flights, car and hotels were "free".) He looked adorable as the sun hit his head, even if we had to take some of our bags out of the back and put them in the seat next to him for the drive up to Kingsley Pines family camp.

I didn't take very many "scenic" photos of camp, so you don't really get an idea of what it looks like. For that I apologize. But basically, you drive in from the little town of Raymond on a long entry way that passes by a soccer field and a climbing wall and a high ropes course and a baseball diamond. Then you come into the center of camp next to the office and the lodge and the tennis court and basketball court. I am standing on the porch of the lodge (which is the game playing room and where adult happy hours usually take place) looking down on my favorite tree. It's a giant oak that shades all of the picnic tables where you eat each meal. If it's really storming, you eat inside the cafeteria, but that's boring. I'd much rather eat and overlook the lake.

I know a lot of people grew up with crappy camp food experiences (oh boy, was my Girl Scout experience one of those). But food at Kingsley Pines is pretty awesome. And if there's anything you're not thrilled with there is a killer salad bar at lunch and dinner, a lovely yogurt parfait bar and a cereal bar at breakfast and peanut butter and jelly is offered all day long. MacTroll really likes the eggs to order in the breakfast. George, the chef/cook, makes a damn good omelet. 

X-man developed a love for "oversized" games this time at camp. They had oversized everything. Chess was his favorite, not because he wanted to play "real chess" but because he liked to have pretend war with the characters. The bigger kids didn't understand his distress about playing chess -- the game. But I sat down played his version of war with him, and this is what I love about my kid. One team, knocked over the other team in a long drawn out war. And then two pawns, from different families fell in love and wanted their families to act better and get along and not hurt each other. At first the families feuded (like a 6-year-old version of Romeo and Juliet) but then the queens were swapping gardening stories and the bishops were marrying knights from different families and then all the pieces were mixed up all over the board and life -- was better than it was when it began with one kingdom on one side and one on the other side staring each other down. He took a mess and brought about peace.

Other "giant" game versions included JENGA (Holy cow, you could hear that mother fall from everywhere in camp), Connect Four and the program director was working on creating Scrabble (no lie). I told her about the giant Monopoly game in San José, just in case she wanted to check it out and rob them of their "world's largest" standing.

This is a photo of the waterfront from the sand volleyball court/ping pong area, where I spent most of my time at camp. :-) You see the big white thing in the distance. That's called the iceberg. It has climbing grips on one side. You climb up it and then you either jump or slide down the other side. To the left of it is the water trampoline with three different apparatuses attached to it. One is the big yellow log that you're supposed to run out to the end on. The other is a "walk the plank" log that you climb up and then try to get to the end of (it's about 6 feet up out of the water on the end) and in the back is the "blob." A small say 50 lb child crawls out carefully to the end and sits on a dot looking forward. Then a 180 lb mother or father jumps on a dot near the water trampoline and propels the small child out 10 feet or so into the water before the mother/father falls into the lake two. It is my most favorite item out there, and we did it a lot (all wearing life jackets, of course). I do want to note that on day 4, X-man made it all the way to the top of the iceberg BY HIMSELF. He STOOD UP (which most Dads admit they're too chicken to do, because it's really pretty high) and shouted, "I'm king of the world!" before he slid down the other side. No, he's never seen the movie, but it was pretty awesome. He was the only one in the 6-7 year old group to make it up there on their own during family camp this year.

They had some new things for us to try this year, because we actually had some wind! So MacTroll went out and learned how to windsurf. He's the one in the front learning how to stand up with Mark, one of the counselors, giving him the run down. Later, just so you know, the wind kicked up and pulled the sail over... with MacTroll on top of it, and he broke the mast in two. He didn't go out and try that again. But he did do an afternoon of sailing a sunfish. X-man and I learned how to paddleboard in less windy conditions, which was a lot of fun, particularly if you use a very stable windsurf board as your base. :-) It doesn't turn quite as well as an actual paddle board, but you are less likely to fall off. 

 

Each night from 5-6 p.m. the kids would have their "happy hour" with smoothies and a special snack down at the "Field of Dreams" while the adults did this... Not so bad, right? You could also sign up to take a "booze" cruise around the lake in the speedboat. 

Our accomodations included a rustic cabin that had electricity, a small, but warm shower, his and her sinks and two toilets. It's a cabin that usually has the 8-year-old girls in it for summer camp. So there were 10 bunkbeds and two counselor beds. MacTroll and I slept in the two counselor beds. This was mine. 

There was open water front with about 10 lifeguards for the kids to go out on the blob (without parents), if they wanted to. As the week went on, they scheduled other things during this time. For example, each age group had an assigned time (if the kids were 8 and up) to go tubing or out on the water banana. On Wednesday, it was the grown ups turn. So MacTroll and I both wanted to go. It was nice to know we could go out on the tubes and leave X-man behind and know he was watched over not just by the guards, but also by the parents that were there. It was also cool because rather than blobbing it, he decided to take part in the GIANT FOAM slip and slide the entire time. Seriously, he spent from 3:15-4:30 going up and down the hill. 

Each night at family camp they have a family activity after dinner. The first night was a "Never ever have I" night with a list of activities kids and adults might never have done. Here X-man "Never ever have I been a jedi master" uses the force to noodle joust. He also did a live version of Angry Birds, had a "snow ball" fight in August and made a duct tape wallet. 

The next night we had a trivia contest. X-man could have cared less, even though he totally could have answered a lot of the questions related to cartoons and Disney. As it turns out our table was made up of three families and one young counselor from Scotland. We won the trivia contest and each family got $20 worth of ice cream at the local ice cream place, the Mosquito. Since we were in Maine, MacTroll and I both got Moose Tracks ice cream. X-man told the guy he was last there two years ago and got strawberry, but couldn't remember how it tasted, so he tried it again.

The following night was a casino night. Here X-man bets on his elephant in the "horse races." He won and had a good time. MacTroll ruled the blackjack table. I wasn't excited about gambling, so I went and sat with a bunch of moms in front of a campfire. It was nice, because, honestly, besides one other mother, I never saw any of the other moms. The daily activities are broken down so that the kids go to sessions with kids their own ages. Sessions are one hour long and there are three of them through out the day. There are also four parent sessions EACH hour. So at 9:10 a.m. you could choose between volleyball, ceramics, yoga, mountain biking. And then at 10:10 a.m. you could choose between tennis, jewelry making, water skiing and sailing, etc. And I guess besides one other Mom, I never chose the same things as the other women because it was basically me and the Dads all week long. But it was nice to chat with them at the campfire.

It was also nice to see this happen. We don't get a lot of quality time with MacTroll given his travel schedule. So it was heartwarming to see in Maine.

During the last night at camp, we had a steak and lobster dinner cookout. X-man and MacTroll had their steak fix. X-man played with a leftover lobster claw, as he had when he was 4, but wouldn't go near the actual cooked lobster. The veggie options, which had been outstanding all week, had eggplant in it (I'm not a fan) so I had a giant salad and some corn on the cob. After we ate, we had Carnival Night. Here MacTroll shows Counselor Colin how to cover a big red dot in recycled Cds. Such a smarty pants. 

X-man totally sunk a shot worth 50 points at the "skeeball" table.

Then he took on Mikel from Spain in the arm wrestling competition while Mark totally kicked MacTroll's butt (all while Mark casually ate some cotton candy). 

If you're wondering what I did, I played volleyball every morning. I was 3-1 when I left. Then I sometimes played tennis or MacTroll and I took a canoe out into the lake or I went paddleboarding by myself. One day we had to go to Wal-mart and get a single thing of Tide to do laundry (machines were available for free) because X-man kept jumping into the lake whenever they were down at the docks in his full clothes. By Wednesday, I'd just figured out to put us all into our swim suits and forget underwear. MacTroll also did some rock climbing. And during the afternoon adults sessions, I will admit -- I sometimes freaking napped. It was awesome!

X-man already is asking if he can go there for a 2-week sleepaway camp when he's 8. Because then he gets to pick his activities for the sessions versus getting assigned to them. He said pottery was fine, but he doesn't like crafts. He also did tennis, tie dye, sailing, canoeing, boating, Nuke 'em, Gaga ball and made shaker bag ice cream. He really wants to do fencing, archery and ride the banana tube, but you have to be 8 to do all that. (By the way, the funniest thing all week was me getting on the "check your pants" round tube with MacTroll leaving four dads in their mid thirties to mid forties to get on that banana together. Four grown men on a giant banana tube being pulled behind a ski boat is really, really funny, especially when they look -- unsure about it.)

I told X-man we'd be going back for family camp again when he's in third grade. And then we'd talk about sleep away camp. What's nice is that by then... he'll have already been there three times, and he'll know where everything is and what to do. It was already really cool that some of the counselors were the same as when we were there two years ago (particularly my volleyball buddies David and Danimal). 

After our last breakfast at camp, we got in the car and drove back to Portland. There were no "free" flights available on Friday, so we decided we'd spend some time in Maine and take a "free" flight out on Saturday morning. We took X-man to the children's museum which was good for 2-3 hours worth of play. Here he makes a robotic arm try to pick up things in one basket and put them in another. 

Every children's museum has a grocery aisle, but do all of them have LOBSTER?

Outside was a pirate ship, that I'm pretty sure used to just be another lobster ship (there's one inside the museum, too). But they raised a Jolly Roger on it (which the kids could take up and down themselves) and put a "brig" in underneath. X-man found a couple of boys to go plundering with. But here, he's catching some lobster dinner for them in the red bucket. 

And, as always, a photo of my child looking smashingly ADORABLE in a firefighter uniform. Seriously.

And that was our vacation in a nutshell. The flight back this morning from Boston was uneventful, thankfully. We didn't get caught up in any weather at O'Hare (which is a first this summer). Now X-man is happy to be playing with his toys and the cats are snuggling up to us like they remember us. We had a wonderful new petsitter this week. Her name is Martha McFarland. And I'm happy to pass out her info to anyone. She lives in Savoy, but takes care of pets in the C-U area and is $12 for a 30-minute visit. Plus, she comes highly recommended by several staff members at Caring Hands Animal Hospital in Urbana. She had to come twice a day to help medicate Maya and give her an evening force feeding, and I think our girl is back to being her totally fuzzy, curvy girl self.

Now to get on with the holiday weekend by doing a LOT of laundry.

We Have a Winner

Okay, thanks to Kingsley Pines, I am now a HUGE family camp fan. I loved it. I spent 4 hours away from my child a day... where he was off with children his own age for 3 hours (not consecutively) and one hour with all the big kids. And every other minute of the day we had choices to do together as a family OR we could just choose to do things together on our own.

Each day had 3 - 1 hour long sessions. The grown ups got to pick activities (there were usually 3 or 4 listed) while the kids had designated ones. Day 1 for X-man was space science camp. He spent the day using science to blow things up (think vinegar and baking soda, mentos and diet coke, etc.), including a paper rocket he made himself. As he's become quite the little Ms. Frizzle fan lately, he thought this was pretty much the best way to spend the day ever.

Until Day 2 came along... and he spent it playing water games, making sandcastles and jumping on the Blob (a water trampoline) in the middle of the lake. 4 kids... 2 counselors. I could hear him screaming, "Announcement! Cannonball!" As he leapt into the water.

Day 3 was pretty cool too. The kids made their own popsicles, maracas, went frog hunting and got to get suited up in their life preservers again -- this time to go on the super fast ski boat, where they each got to take turns pretending to be captain and telling the driver where to go.

Day 4 was, sadly, our last day. X-man was ready to go play some more water games, make ice cream (which is so a CARE meet up I'm going to have to do) and go down the slip and slide.

Each day for parents included activity choices like volleyball, rock climbing (on a wall), chipping and putting, basketball, tennis, water skiing/wake boarding, jewelry making, yoga, swing dancing, high ropes course, low ropes course, ceramics, archery, circus skill practice, art, mountain biking, tubing, rope swinging into the lake, hiking, sailing, kayaking, canoeing, water polo, etc.

I tried a couple things I'd never done before including water skiing and rock climbing. I loved the rock climbing, but didn't really appreciate getting dragged behind a boat. I finally stood up while on a "boom" (a metal bar that sticks out the side of the boat) that they use to help the kids get started, but after spending 3-5 minutes doing that, I decided, it really wasn't all that much fun. Tubing, however, was another story. The last time I went I was 14. I was on an old time tube that was doughnut shaped. I fell through and my lifejacket got caught. It was scary... but this time, it was like the lazy boy of tubes. All I had to do was hold onto the handles. I laughed and screamed and giggled through the whole thing. It was awesome. I also scheduled one session on Days 2, 3 and 4 for Loosey-only quiet time. Some days I napped for an hour. Other days, I just sat in my room reading or on Facebook.

I also played volleyball three mornings while I was there. I hadn't played really since high school. But it was fun. My team won 2/3 games each day. Day 2, we played 4 on 4, but on Day 3 and 4, Counselor David from Florida and I whooped ass as a 2 on 2 team. If you see me, I'm covered in bruises all up and down my legs and arms. I have two skinned knees and I'm pretty sure I pulled my right tricep, so I'm a little slow when putting my hair in a ponytail... But it felt great. Now I want to find a volleyball league. Too bad it's too late to find a sand one around here. :-) What was most amazing was that I had NO BACK PAIN through any of these activities. None. Not a bit. Other stuff hurt... but not my back. And it was the good kind of hurt.

The food was really pretty good, too. At breakfast you could pretty much guarantee that you'd have eggs of some kind with potatoes and some kind of breakfast meat each day. But you could also get custom eggs made for you in the kitchen (MacTroll is a sucker for omelet bars!), a yogurt parfait bar with four different kinds of yogurt, lots of fruit and some pretty good granola; a steel cuts oatmeal bar with lots of fixings; a row of different cereals to choose from and a bunch of variety of breads and bagels to toast with different jellies, butters, etc. to top them with. Sometimes there were cinnamon rolls or pastries, too. There were also at least five different kinds of non-soda beverages at each meal. X-man was particularly fond of following in the big kid footsteps and mixing the grape with the lemonade at every meal.

Lunch was usual lunch fair... hamburger and french fries day, make your own sandwich, hard or soft shell tacos and pizza days.

Dinner went all over the place. Usually there was a chicken and a fish option with some kind of roasted or grilled vegetables. There was always a salad bar that kicked ass. Seriously, there was all kinds of fresh veggies and fruits at every meal. Lots of vegetarian options, too. Tofu and soy milk were available for those with special needs. And he'd cook special side dishes for families with allergy issues.

The last night was a giant cookout with Maine Lobsters, steak, ratatouille, hot dogs and hamburgers. Lots of corn on the cob, rolls, etc.

Every day there was a snack at 3. It was usually frozen grapes or popsicles of some kind. Then every night there was a special dessert like strawberry cobbler or this cookie and chocolate bread thing that came off a bit like a brownie got loose in a Nilla wafer factory.

We didn't starve -- and I'm kind of sure that even though my pants fit, I'll have some work to do getting back to my goal weight area. :-)

Our cabin was in the "little girls'" camp. The youngest children who attend the camp during the kids-only part of the summer start at 8 years. So, they stay in groups of 10 with one or two counselors living with them. They have two toilets in their cabin, two sinks, a small shower and electricity. That means, X-man got to sleep in the top bunk of one of the five bunk beds in the room. It was handmade, so they had put 12" sides on it to prevent kids from falling out of the bed. MacTroll and I ended up pushing the two counselor beds together. :-)

But he had somewhere to charge his iPad. And we didn't have to make any mad dashes through the woods to get X-man to a bathroom in the middle of the night (which I really didn't want to do). And, unlike all the times we tried to camp in the backyard, X-man knew there was no other sleeping option, so the kid just dragged himself up into his bunk, put his head on his pillow and was out every night by 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time. That's 7:30 at home. He was up every day at 8 a.m. excited and ready to go. But there were nights after dinner when I wondered if he was going to make it to the evening activity. He always managed to find a second wind.

The other nice part about the cabins were that they were strangely bug free. I didn't see a spider or a mosquito the whole time I was in there. They also came with two big box fans, so we could cool down, since the weather was unseasonably warm (91 and sunny each day and 75 at night).

Outside the cabin was a community fire pit, so on Wednesday night, we brought out our s'mores supplies and shared with the other families in our neighborhood. The other common area bathrooms were complete with automatic flush toilets (no lie), brand new sinks and faucets, plenty of soap and antibacterial gel dispensers and automatic paper towel dispensers. They also gave us a list of wireless passwords so you could get online, no matter where your cabin was. Sans blague.

And this brings us to the people -- the people, were mostly east coasters outside of the two families from Utah. Lots of folks from New York and New Jersey, a few from the D.C. area, a couple from Maine. Most of the Coughlan family that owns the camp comes in and uses the second week of family camp as a kind of informal family reunion at the camps the family patriarchs bought in 1984. Now various cousins share ownership of it. They were all very nice people.

On the last night of camp, the kids were running around from carnival attraction to carnival attraction. I couldn't STOP X-man from putting whipped cream pies in counselor Conor's face. I figured as long as counselor "Danimal" kept handing them to him, I'd let him go a while. Anyway, I stood in the field and looked up at the big trees and wondered how many groups of people they'd seen participate in the last night Carnival and how it might have changed since the 1960s.

The best thing about family camp is that you pay for everything up front. Once you step on the property, you don't pull out your wallet for anything. Unlike a Disney vacation, where you would pay for airfare and hotel and a meal package... and then pull it out for stuffed animals and toys and special excursions. Everything was covered in your payment. The price for the Sunday night through Friday a.m. was $695 per adult and $340 per child (over the age 4 and up). It included food and lodging.

On our way out, they gave us a list of the families with e-mail addresses, so we could stay in touch and send pictures. Plus, they gave us a pre-registration for next year. The only problem -- X-man's kindergarten start and my school start are the same week as the first week of their family camp. Another family there had pulled their child out of first grade for the week. Maybe for first grade, but definitely not for kindergarten, with us. And, well, if I'm at Eastern working on a second master's degree, I'm less likely to want to take off, too. I was disappointed, but I know if it ever works out in the future, we'll be back there in a flash. I wonder if some day X-man will want to return there just to go to summer camp for a couple weeks.

It also has me looking at other family camps in places closer to home like Wisconsin. I'm having some difficulty finding some that aren't basically family bible camps. That doesn't really jive with our family, but I did find a Y one outside of Milwaukee, which does have some possibilities. :-) If anyone's interested there's a 4-day weekend one Memorial Day and a 4-day weekend one Labor Day 2011.