What an incredible day! The Monkey Relays are one of the best days of the summer. The excitement surrounding the relays is electric, contagious, and incredibly overwhelming. This morning was our typical sleep in until 8:15, cinnamon toast for breakfast, and free time this morning. Kids played street hockey and ultimate frisbee, but there were also lots of kids practicing for the relays…carrying ping pong balls, practicing free throws…busy, busy all morning. Luke Funk gave an awesome Words of Wisdom at 12, about the Deerhorn Family, and how you never have to leave, that we are all always here for you. Lunch was ham and cheesy potatoes, and rest hour was more practicing for the Monkeys.

And then the main event! The Monkey Relays have been happening at camp since 1930, and are made up of every activity in camp, with kids carrying ping pong balls on spoons between activities.

Face paint, feathers…everyone goes all out for this one. You should have heard the incredibly loud cheering in the lodge when it began. The weather forecast wasn’t good, but we do our best to make sure the Monkeys don’t get cancelled. It has been decades since that happened.

 

Around 4:00, there was thunder but no rain. So we set the 30 minute timer and hoped that would be it. The next waterfront part of the event was sailing, and it had thundered again, so the Monkeys were paused for about 45 minutes, everyone just hanging out until the thunder had passed. We had no rain, just the thunder. Once it was safe, everyone returned to the exact positions where they had paused and with the ringing of the bell, the relay continued. It was a close race, with 3 out of the 4 leaders on the beach doing their sandcastles at once.  So. Much. Excitement! After each team finished, they did a machine gun run into the water and then did their team cheer.

The Navajo emerged victorious, followed by the Iroquois, Chippewa, then Apache. All four of our leaders made us incredibly proud today.  Such fantastic guys! We did our best to live stream the event on our ustream channel. Cell phone service is not super up here, though, so the feed got dropped a lot. For those of you who missed it, you can watch parts of it for the next 30 days on our ustream channel.

We had a great (late) dinner on the beach of turkey burgers, followed by koogee time and a campfire. The campfire started at the campfire ring, but another storm blew through and forced us into the lodge. No one let that dampen their enthusiasm…things might not have gone exactly perfectly today, but everyone went with the flow and loved another spectacular day at camp. Tons of pictures from today’s event can be found on Shutterfly.