Farewell, Bread!

Tomorrow (Friday, December 10) is Bret Olson's last day working for Camp Sealth. After his holiday travels, Bret will be leaving western Washington for Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center in a remote area of the Cascade Mountains near Lake Chelan. For the next year, Bret will be working as the "Garbologist" for Holden Village.

Bret has been on staff at Camp Sealth for three years - he originally started working here through the Washington Conservation Corps with Americorps as the assistant for Environmental Education. During his first year, he made great contributions to the EE program, including construction of an organic garden and revitalization of our composting worm bin.

Bret has also held several other positions at camp, including Program Assistant, EE Instructor, and summer ACD. For the past year, Bret has coordinated and hosted all outside group rentals, and community service groups as the Group Host and Community Service Program Manager. User group rentals increased in 2009, and camp made $7,000 more in rentals this year than we did last year.

Many thanks to Bret for all of his hard work and dedication to Camp Sealth over the past three years. We wish him lots of luck in this new venture!

New Construction on Milky Way Freddy & YVC Trail

Renovation on the Milky Way Freddy is certainly long overdue, but within the next month or so, it will look like new! These toilets are patiently waiting outside in the cold for the interior to be completed, then they will be reinstalled. Our own maintenance staff, Steve and Chad, have done most of the work themselves, with a little assistance from a subcontractor to re-do the shower floors, and some demo work from our NCCC crew, Bluno. Here's a look at the inside:

Here's what's been done so far: Total demolition of the interior (except the sinks and counter), structural work on one of the walls, the walls have been repainted, new plumbing for the toilets, and new floors in the showers. Still to do: new walls and paint in the showers, new partitions for the toilet stalls, and reinstall the toilets. NCCC will be helping complete this project in the next two weeks. We hope to have renovation completed by December 30.

NCCC has also done a lot of work on the trail system, including Blueberry Trail and YVC. The pictures above are on two sections of YVC. The first pic is from the uppermost switchback, where much of the trail had become eroded was a bit sketchy. New steps were added and the bank reinforced. The other picture is just above the Hilltop cabins, where a giant madrona tree had come down over the trail - this section has been reinforced, and a simple rope handrail built.

Next week, we'll have pictures and info about more cool projects going on around camp: new canoe racks, all the sections of dock removed and cleaned, and new screens on the BBH cabins!

Camp Sealth Welcomes AmeriCorps NCCC Team Bluno

We're very excited this week to welcome the Blue One team from the Sacramento campus of AmeriCorps NCCC. Blue One, or "Bluno", arrived Tuesday evening with 10 Corps Members and their team leader Jim.

AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) is a team-based community service program. Corps Members serve for 10 months, traveling to different sites around the U.S. to provide direct service to non-profit organizations, schools and government and tribal agencies. The AmeriCorps website http://www.americorps.gov/about/programs/nccc.asp has more information about NCCC.

Bluno will be living at Camp Sealth until the end of January (except for a holiday break at the end of December), working on improving camp through a number of different projects:

-Several trails, including YVC/Hilltop, Sylvan, Kiwanis and Bluberry Trails, will get reinforcement on switchbacks, new/replaced stairs and boardwalk, waterbars, drainage ditches, and widening at some points.
-Construction of two new campsites, including a log shelter at one of the sites, and building permanent fire pits at some existing campsites.
-Take out all sections of floating docks, scrape and clean the undersides.
-Tear out old canoe storage racks and build new ones.

The Team:
The 11 members of Bluno are from around the United States. They've been training in Sacramento for the past several weeks, and Camp Sealth is their first major project. They are:

Team Leader: Jim, Germantown, WI
Corps Member: Charlotte, Philadelphia, PA
Corps Member: Kim D., Phoenix, AZ
Corps Member: Erinne, S. Bend, IN
Corps Member: Kim H., Fairfield, CT
Corps Member: Lacey, Rochester, NY
Corps Member: Ethan, Boston & Chicago
Corps Member: Maggie, Tallahassee, FL
Corps Member: Noemi, Port St. Lucie, FL
Corps Member: Steve, Duluth, MN
Corps Member: Samuel, Florence, SC

We're very excited to be working with this team - they have a lot of energy and are ready to get to work! Welcome, Bluno!

Meet the Staff

Meet the Camp Sealth Staff:

These are the nine of us (plus one) who are privileged to work at Camp Sealth all year long. Most of us live on site and are pretty fortunate to call it "home" as well as work. This picture is from Halloween 2009, in downtown Vashon. Here's a little more about each of us:

Rick Taylor - Director of Camping

Rick is a recent convert to Camp Sealth and Camp Fire USA. He has a long career in camping across the country, and started as the director at Sealth in February 2008. Camp Name: "Treebeard".

Steve Lomax - Facilities Manager
Steve joined the year-round crew in December 2007 after a career with an ambulance company in Seattle. Camp Name: "Egon"

Chad Lawson - Onsite Facilities Manager

Chad has worked at Camp Sealth since 2005. Hobbies include boating, scuba diving, snowboarding, golf, woodworking, and watching sports - especially Nebraska Huskers football. Camp Name: "Pipeline"

Carrie Kishline - Senior Program Manager

Carrie is a Camp Sealth lifer - she's been a camper and staff here since 1990, and joined the year-round staff in 2004. Carrie enjoys knitting, crafts, cooking and logic puzzles, and has degrees in math and religion from PLU. Camp Name: "Carebear"

Laura Force - Assistant Camp Director

Laura recently joined the Camp Sealth staff in January 2009 after several years of working at Girl Scout camps in Washington, Alaska and Virginia. Her hobbies include making popcorn, watching movies, reading and crochet. Camp Name: "PopCorn"

Mary Roden - Food Service Manager

Mary has been a part of the Camp Sealth family for 14 years, although she has been on the year-round staff for just three years. Hobbies include fly fishing, camping, gardening and studying ancient culture & architecture. She brings many years of experience in the food service industry. Camp Name: "Ratatouille"

Martin Bremer - Environmental Education Program Manager
Martin joined the year-round staff in the fall of 2008. He has studied education and physics, and enjoys sailing, kayaking and scuba diving. Camp Name: "Papa Steve"

Nick Cirignano - Office Manager/Group Host and Rental Manager
Nick has worked for Camp Sealth full time since February 2008, wearing a variety of hats around camp - if you need to know how to do something at camp, ask Nick. In January, Nick will take over as the Group Host and Rental Manager. One of Nick's main hobbies: "Finding out random things about Alan Thicke." Camp Name: "Caesar Augustus Fresh III"

Bret Olson - Group Host and Rental Manager

Bret has been on the year-round staff since the fall of 2006, also in a variety of positions. His hobbies include listening to music, playing music, reading and throwing things at Martin. Bret will leaving Sealth in December for a new job at Holden Village. His favorite thing about working at Sealth is "seeing the gleam in a child's eye when they encounter something in nature for the first time." Camp Name: "Bread"

Camp Sealth Launches News Blog

Welcome to the Camp Sealth news blog! If you're a parent, camper, staff member, alumnus, or just a fan of Camp Sealth, we'll keep you updated on what's happening year-round.

News: At least once a week, we'll post a blog about the latest news from camp. We'll tell you about new programs that we're introducing, construction or improvement projects, changes in the year-round staff, or anything else that you might be interested to know.

Photos: This might take some time, but we'll start getting pictures loaded on this site so you can feel connected with camp, and show friends and family who have never been here what camp looks like.

Meet the Staff: There are always 8 to 10 staff that work at Sealth year-round, so check out the "Meet the Staff" blog to learn more about us. The 100+ staff that work here in the summer are another story - there's too many of them to post! But we will start featuring a monthly bio on some of our favorite seasonal staff, including what they're up to the rest of the year.

Polls: We're always interested in what you think! You can help by letting us know what you want: your favorite menu items, camp songs, t-shirt designs, activities or anything else we can come up with.

Let us know what you think! We will constantly be adding to this blog and improving it. Send us an e-mail and give us your opinion, or if you have any ideas for news stories.