campout for city-folk<\/a> a few times a year.\u00a0 Nick, who was seven, and I signed up.<\/p>\nThe cost was about $100 for the two of us.\u00a0 This included a cabin, food, recreation and entertainment.\u00a0 A little more than an hour’s drive, we looked forward to a fun weekend change of pace.<\/p>\n
The weekend started off as planned.\u00a0 We arrived at Camp Seely and were assigned a cabin.\u00a0 Everyone met in the lodge for orientation, which included instructions on helping to serve meals and clean-up afterwards.\u00a0 It also covered the need for caution and care while hiking as there are wild animals in the area, and it is also possible to get lost if you aren’t paying attention.<\/p>\n
Group activities got underway: hiking, sports, crafts.\u00a0 All was going well.<\/p>\n
Then it started to snow.\u00a0 Heavily.\u00a0\u00a0 It was early in the season, and while you would expect snow later in the year, this was unusual.\u00a0 There was soon an inch or two of snow on the baseball diamond.\u00a0 The outdoor activities stopped.\u00a0 Most were not dressed for this weather.\u00a0\u00a0 We were all called into the lodge where there was hot chocolate, and there was a big crackling fire in the massive stone fireplace.\u00a0\u00a0 The camp leaders were pros and quickly started organizing indoor activities to keep everyone engaged.<\/p>\n
Virginia Reel<\/strong><\/p>\nThat’s where the Virginia Reel enters the story.\u00a0 Someone in charge declared, “We’re having a barn dance!”\u00a0\u00a0 And asked, “Who knows the Virginia Reel?”\u00a0 I raised my hand and indicated Nick when asked who was my dance partner.\u00a0 About 40 of us lined up in two facing rows.\u00a0 Nick and I were at the head of the row opposite each other.\u00a0 The Camp Leader provided instructions as Nick and I slowly demonstrated the Virginia Reel.\u00a0 We went through a couple of iterations without music, then we were already for the real thing.\u00a0 The music started and the Reel was under way.\u00a0 It took some time to get through a full rotation with that many people and we had a few misalignments that further slowed things down.\u00a0 (Google “Virginia Reel” videos to understand the challenge.)\u00a0 Nick was a star and seemed to enjoy being front and center.\u00a0 I doubt many in the room had ever heard of or seen a Virginia Reel, much less danced in one.\u00a0 But all had fun.<\/p>\n
Snowmen<\/strong><\/p>\nSunday morning after breakfast it was announced there would be a snowman building contest.\u00a0 Nick and I signed up as a two-man build team.\u00a0 The snow was perfect; heavy and adhesive.\u00a0 We began by rolling the first of three big balls of snow.\u00a0 Once it was about three feet in diameter, and too heavy to roll any further, we made ball number two for the snowman’s torso.\u00a0 We should have stopped sooner as it was too big to lift into place.\u00a0 Fortunately our craft had attracted an audience and we had volunteers who stepped in to help lift the torso, and a few minutes later, the head of the snowman into position.\u00a0 Pine cones and sticks made up eyes, nose, mouth, buttons and arms.\u00a0 We ended up with an decent-looking snowman that was close to six feet tall.<\/p>\n
Looking around, no one else had built their snowman this way.\u00a0 The rest were small sculptures 2-3 feet high, made by scooping and shaping a pile of snow into a vaguely humanoid form.\u00a0 The one exception was an impressively rendered snow dog. Remember, this is Southern California and many of these kids were playing in snow for the first time in their lives.<\/p>\n
Nick and I won a Camp Seely painted rock as our first-place prize in the snowman contest.\u00a0 We thanked our volunteers for the assist.\u00a0 Nick again enjoyed the attention.\u00a0 The weekend was a definite success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dancing the Virginia Reel and building Snowmen in Southern California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[156,157,160,159,158],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-old-stories","tag-camp-seely","tag-crestline","tag-san-bernardino-mountains","tag-snowman","tag-virginia-reel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}