Kinnelon's Camp Rickabear

Summer Camp at Kinnelon's Lake Rickabear - a Girls Scouts of Northern New Jersey day camp - begins today and camper Emma has been chomping at the bit. [You see her here on her first day of camp last year.] This is her third year attending camp at Lake Rickabear, a 40 acre spring-fed lake, and enjoying 332 acres of Kinnelon natural beauty. Life truly doesn't get much better for a kid!

[FYI - Lake Rickabear was the site of Lake Rickabear Club, a private recreational facility for professional men and their families per a 1955 and 56 entry in Google Timeline. I'm told it was also a corporate retreat facility, possibly for Curtiss-Wright? Readers, if you can help me fill in the gaps, please let me know in the comments. Thank you!]

In anticipation, Emma writes the following:

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Every summer I go to a fantastic Summer camp. This camp is called Rickabear. During the camp season there are three sleepovers. I go to each and every one. I like the counselors, lifeguards and specialists. My favorite counselor is Dani. We have a lot of fun together.

In the beginning of each week, we have a swim test. Last year, I started out as a bullfrog, then got retested and became an angelfish. After I passed angelfish, I became an iguana. This is the order of categories for swimming: bat, beaver, bullfrog, alligator, angelfish, iguana and sea serpent.

• A bat needs a lot of training.
• A beaver needs some help.
• A bullfrog swims with a noodle and works on strokes.
• An alligator swims sometimes with a noodle, but mostly swims without.
• An angelfish starts going to the farther docks and does laps.
• An iguana swims to the red dock and learns the butterfly stroke.
• A sea serpent has mastered all of the strokes.

Depending on your swimming category, you get a different color swim cap. Bats, beavers and bullfrogs wear green. Alligators and angelfish wear a yellow swim cap.  Iguanas and sea serpents wear white. When you reach a yellow or white swim cap, you can go on a kayak.

There are other things that you might do during the day like Sports, Arts & Crafts and Boating. If you are ten and up you get to do archery. I am 9 and 3/4 to be exact. Miss Amanda helps out at Arts and Crafts. Melissa does Sports. Oh and then I forgot Miss Jess who does Nature Fun. Miss Lisa also does Nature. Then we have our nurse; I forget her name.

There are units you get assigned to. There is unit 1 through unit 12, then you go to the teen unit. The highest unit I've been in is Unit 6. My friend Kathleen also goes to Rickabear.

There are 8 or 9 different buses. I am on bus 6 - Minnie Mouse.

The head lifeguard's name is Meg; her partner is Trish. Sometimes we have drills. The drill is when we can't find any campers.

I have so much fun at camp all Summer long!

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If you'd like a visual taste of Kinnelon's Camp Rickabear, you might enjoy Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey's YouTube video.


I wish I were a kid again...

What were your favorite memories of Summers in Kinnelon? Let us know in the comments.