A Rainy Fourth of July, CBS Presents Beauty and the Beast, & Gratitude for Safety

We are so grateful to have remained safe and dry throughout the barrage of storms and flooding that hit Central Texas. We are lucky that our campgrounds are on high enough ground that we have only had to shift our focus to reprogramming activities for the indoors and finding ways to stay dry and inside during thunderstorms. We continue to hold space for all Central Texas camps, camp families, and residents who have been more significantly impacted by last week’s storms.

The Fourth of July at Camp Balcones Springs is always a big deal, and we weren’t going to let the rain stop us from making the celebration a special experience for our camp community! We began the rainy day with cookie decorating and fort building indoors in the morning. During a brief respite from the storms, we decorated our trailer, golf carts, tractor, and other camp vehicles for the annual CBS 4th of July parade. The youngest girls performed line dances, and lots of goodies were thrown to the parade onlookers as we did our annual march throughout camp. The traditional CBS American flag cake and camp fireworks show topped off the night.

Over the weekend, we were hit with even more rain, but the campers participated in fun indoor activity rotations between arts & crafts and mind games in the Rio Grande dining hall and then relay races and rock paper scissors in the Grid Iron pavilion. In the afternoon during a break in the rain, we set up a slip and slide, had a game of paint wars, and even did sand castle building all under and around the Hippodrome basketball arena so shelter was nearby if the storms began again. All of camp engaged in an epic lipsync battle to end the night, with the youngest boys of Rayburn Cabin coming out on top!

On Sunday, longtime camper and counselor Jimmy Miller came back to CBS to lead our Sunday morning Baseline service, during which we all gather in our lakeside amphitheater to sing songs together, share cabin skits, and hear a special speech from a visiting camp friend. This term, Jimmy shared wisdom centered on our summer theme of joy, taken from the bible verse Galatians 5:22-23.

After Baseline, we had more rainy day fun in the covered tennis courts with an ice cream sundae bar, O-ball (a classic Camp Balcones Springs game), a dance-off, and a water gun fight! Then the campers all got cleaned up and brought their pjs and pillows into the dining hall for a special movie night featuring the classic – School of Rock!

On Monday and Tuesday, as the rain persisted, camp was treated to an amazing performance of Beauty and the Beast. Twenty-two camper performers rehearsed every day for the previous nine days of camp before presenting their production to the rest of us – a perfect way to cap off the rainy week.