And We’re Off! - Saturday, May 24, 2025

Opening Day of Junior Camp is better than Christmas! We have been preparing for this day since last August, and we are thrilled to finally welcome our first campers of 2025 to Greystone! Thank you for making today a reality and for sharing your girls with us. We are honored to have each one of them here. We also appreciate the poignant feelings that accompany this day, particularly for parents. Your teary eyes at the scone table said it all… happy that your girls will have this experience, sad to be separated for such a long time, and apprehensive about how they will adjust. You also sense the first step of growing up… a step that will be repeated until she has her own home one day. How could you not feel that this moment is an important one? Know that camp is a good experience. One that will build confidence, resilience, social skills, and spiritual insight. It is an experience of growth; we hope you will agree that the tears were worth it when you see the impact that even one short week makes on your precious girl! On Closing Day, we expect you’ll say, “My, how you’ve grown!”

We take many pictures every day, so make sure to check those out! We will post pictures in your camp account twice a day: at lunch (about 1:00 pm) and after Evening Program (about 9:00 pm). Scrolling through the pictures will give you a great look at our day, but you can also view tagged photos of your daughter through the Campanion app or Waldo.

Today is all about settling int our new home. We move into our cabins (unpacking our trunks, making our beds, and checking out the bathroom). We get comfortable with this BIG place (finding out where everything is around camp) and start that process of making life long friends by getting to know our cabin mates really well. The campers are currently running around camp completing their swim checks, getting checked out by the nurses, and taking cabin photos. They enjoy some fun activities all over camp, and walk together in little packs as their counselors lead them in a “chatty” tour of the grounds. The weather was perfect for check-in, the brisk morning temperatures rising to a pleasant 70 under partly cloudy skies.

We were very happy when Gervais opened the lunch buffet for a picnic lunch with our cabin. This meal is a Greystone tradition: a sandwich buffet with smoked turkey (smoked here at Greystone), ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato, pasta salad, fruit salad, and brownies. Our first official meal in the Dining Hall will be tonight with a favorite camp meal: “Opening Night Spaghetti”, Salad Bar, Fresh Baked Bread. We welcome the campers (especially first-time campers) as “old Greystone girls” after their first meal at camp (a tradition that started with my great-grandfather 106 summers ago).

Later tonight, we will enjoy our first EP (Counselor Talent Show), our first cabin devotions and tuck-ins, first Taps, and first night of sleep in a cabin. It’s going to be a perfect weather week at camp! We know the girls are going to wake up tomorrow excited for their first full day of classes and fun! At camp, Sundays are set apart and special. After breakfast, we will have a wonderful church service during our devotion time at the Pavilion. The girls will then be dismissed into classes.
We are so grateful to have you as a part of our Greystone family. We love your girls and cannot wait for this week with them!