Last week YMCA Camp Minikani celebrated 125 years of YMCA Camps by participating in the worlds largest campfire.  In addition we unveiled our new totem poles which replaced our existing poles that had been at camp for almost 60 years.  Watch highlights of our campfire below…..

125th anniversary campfire (full version)

125th anniversary campfire (short version)

#1 – All That Jazz

As a first year counselor, the BU staff had an idea to change the nature of final campfire skits. Mike Herman, a first year counselor this year, came up with the idea that the male staff should perform a musical number for the rest of camp. Up to this point, I had never heard of male staff doing something like this, so it was going to be a huge shock to all of camp. However, the actual skit was not the crowning moment of this event. The lead-up to the actual skit is where most of the memories exist. Every day at rest period, Mike would forcefully make all male staff go into Coffman Lodge to practice for about an hour the dance moves and timing on the entire routine. I distinctly remember Brett Youdavitz and Andrew Crisco needing extra practice sessions with Mike to nail down the routine. There were so many times that Mike had to yell at all of us for goofing around because he needed to be confident that we weren’t going to screw the whole thing up on the night of the performance. Although, he will vehemently deny this part of the process, to which everyone else in that room would back me up on this. In the end, we were thankful to Mike for being the authoritative figure. The actual skit went off perfectly and the surprise in the crowd at Council Bluff was unlike anything I have ever seen or heard at a campfire. The experience of shocking everyone at Council Bluff was extraordinary.

I hope everyone has been enjoying their week!  I wanted to give everyone an update half way through this amazing session of camp!!  Tonight we had an awesome campfire to celebrate 125 years since the YMCA started the first ever summer camp! Council Bluff was full of campers, alumni, and friends of Minikani for the most awesome campfire ever! Plus we unveiled our two brand new totem poles to replace our existing ones which have been at camp for almost 60 years!  We’re putting together some video and photo’s of this evenings event and it will be posted on our blog tomorrow.

In addition our Master Explorers came back from their trip to Devils Lake where they went rock climbing and met up with campers from our sister camp YMCA Camp Matawa.  First reports are they had an amazing time and we’re working on posting some photo’s of their trip to our website.

You may have also seen on the news that tonight we had a tornado watch in our county.  We did have some rain and our day campers who were at camp for their weekly sleepover ended up camping in Kossow Lodge. While not quite the same as a tent they all stayed dry and enjoyed the comfort of an air conditioned lodge!   The rest of camp were in their cabins, and any cabins that were scheduled to camp out for the night are being rescheduled for another night!

If you haven’t had a chance, check out pictures from this week by visiting www.minikani.org and clicking on “Summer Camp Photos” in the bottom right corner and don’t forget to check out our blog at www.Minikani.org/blog 

Thanks so much and have a great rest of the week!!  I know we will!

#3 – The Commish

For this particular memory, I was not actually participating in any skit. A few years ago during the “Friends and Family Campfire” one of the counselors was able to pull some strings and get a special guest to attend the event. Brett Komisar was able to get MLB’s commissioner, Bud Selig, out to camp. Not only was he there for the campfire, the BU staff was actually able to incorporate him into their skit. It was a momentary role in the skit, but I think that’s the most famous person I have ever seen participate in a campfire. After the campfire, Mr. Selig was nice enough to sign some autographs and talk to many of the parents that were there. Some of the parents even wanted to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” after his appearance just for him.