By Phantom Lake staff
contributors
For 129 years, Phantom Lake YMCA Camp has provided a nurturing environment unknown to most children. Where campers help each other, build each other up, and include one another. Where the chaos of overly structured, daily life washes away. Where children find themselves in a place they don’t have to be anything else.
As summer gives way to fall, a special Family Camp offers one last hurrah for families to reconnect before school commences.
“Our family experienced Family Camp for the first time this year,” Marilen Driscoll said. “Without any prior experience, we felt at ease and included immediately. That easiness let our nine-year-old twins have more confidence to step out of their routine and try new things like archery, riflery, and telling jokes in the talent show. These are things they would have not typically expressed interest in back home.”
The oldest YMCA Camp in the country recently hosted 15 families from as far away as Florida and as nearby as Wisconsin and surrounding Midwestern states. Families arrive Friday evening and leave Sunday afternoon.
Following dinner on Friday, families gather around the campfire with s’mores in full supply to bond before settling into their cabins for a good night’s sleep in the woods.
“We had a wonderful time at Family Camp,” Tiffany Crawford said. “It was very meaningful as a former camper, counselor, and now parent of a current camper to share the Phantom Spirit with my husband and daughter at Family Camp. So much has changed, but what is best about Phantom Lake YMCA Camp has not … it’s a space we are all just free to be.”
For the full story, please see the print edition of the East Troy News or Times.
