Camp

It's a new year!

Happy New Year to all of our campers and friends! We have been busy these past few weeks assembling our new staff and helping parents sign kids up for camp. Paperwork is not always fun so I try to get to the lake and tinker around a few times a month during the winter. I was up there the other day and things are looking icy!

So far there is not much snow yet and, weirdly, the lake is still mostly unfrozen but there is a glaze over pretty much everything else!

Someone definitely appreciated the open water:

Hit us up any time!

-Evan

F is for...

This has been a weird fall. It started off with relentless rain. Then the leaves decided to fall about a day before the first big snowstorm. Then we got buried in snow. Now it is all melting away.

I made it to camp just before the first snow came to spend 14 hours raking, blowing tarping and dumping leaves from our three perfect acres of camp.

I finished up as the first flakes of snow were falling. Two weeks later and we have gone from perfect fluffy snow to a muddy, icy mix up there.

With warmer temps for the next few days I expect most of the snow up there to melt away before it eventually gets buried by late December/early January.

I did get a chance to take advantage of all of the late-November snow, though. I sent it up to Sunday River in Maine during a 20”+ storm and it did not disappoint! Endless knee-deep pow and zero lift lines make for some epic times!

Did not stop much to take pics but here’s one from the slopes!

The drive up there was a bit hectic though! The typically 2.5 hour trip took 4+ with various stretches of ice, slush, deep snow and snow plows doing their job.

Here’s a stretch of…road?

Here’s to winter in New England! If winter isn’t your thing just count down the days until camp starts up again…(203 days from today).

-Evan

Fall at the lake

Camp is always gorgeous but we are currently in that not-so-sweet time in NH after the leaves have turned brown and mostly fallen and before the snow has covered the ground.

Tomorrow I will be getting started on fall cleanup around the property and then hopefully we will have a fresh blanket of fluffy snow by the weekend!

fall projects

This is always a fun time of year for us at camp. There is a brief window between our busy summer season and winter recruitment where we can focus on our long property maintenance to-do list!

Last week we tackled a project that has been on the list for years: a brand new fire pit. Campfires are always a good time at camp and our previous spot was not 100% ideal.

Step one was removing the big rocks that lined the old pit and filling it in with dirt.

We rented a tractor to do the heavy lifting for us on this project. It took a ton of work to move the big rocks and then five full scoops of dirt to fill in the old fire pit. The above pictures show where we dumped the rocks, the old pit filled in with dirt and a POV shot of us scooping dirt!

Next was prepping the future fire pit area. Previously there were two giant piles of stone and dirt which we smoothed out to create a flat spot to build the fire pit. We then used the rocks from the old pit to create our new one (with the tractor’s help of course).

The finished product! The new fire pit is way in the corner of our field overlooking the property. We are ready for fires, s’mores and ghost stories next summer!

These were my helpers for this project. Finn and Kai may not be driving boats yet but they are awesome tractor operators!

Boat design contest!

It it tough to come up with color ideas for all of our new boats! Help us out by heading to the MasterCraft website to design your ideal 2019 NXT 22.

The winning design(s) will not only get to see their boat come to life but we will also send you a camp SWAG package in the mail.

  • Follow this link --> MasterCraft <--- to get to the NXT22 boat builder site.

  • Choose your colors for the hull and interior. (Don't worry about other options, we'll take care of that.)

  • Submit your design to Evan@watermonkeycamp.com by October 20

If you don’t contribute your ideas we may just have to build the rasta boat!