Days at Camp Steiner

I'm out of time this weekend, so this will be mainly pictorial:

Every day the staff meets at the flags for a flag ceremony, cheers, songs, and grace before meals.

Bruce teaches the parts of a rifle (.22) up on his range.

Last weekend I forgot to take my contact lens case up with me.  I stored my lenses in two spoons overnight, then Stephen kindly bought me a new case the next day.

All my kids have been out shooting on the range several times.  The little girls love it!

Every Wednesday evening we have staff night, which means the staff gets to do whatever they want (instead of hanging out with the scouts) that night.  On July 4 we had "Hawaiian Days" —very patriotic!  The girls dyed coffee-filters and made flowers to decorate the dining hall.

Bruce sings about shooting rifles.

Jessica shoots.



This lovely view can be seen from the firebowl—where we have campfire songs and skits with all our guest scouts.  After I'd been sitting in front of it for a couple hours it finally dawned on me that this is the scene Camp Steiner uses for their logo (I have a dog-tag with this exact picture on it).  It's a beautiful place.



Kitchen, Pantry, and Commissary

grafitti done by the previous cook
I think her naming of the kitchen shows a total lack of creativity.

I have a decent little kitchen at Camp Steiner; it's pretty well stocked with pans, utensils and serving dishes.  I took up a lot of my own spices, my two favorite knives and my mortar and pestle.  I have two ovens—one big enough to fit four large cookie sheets (half-sheet-cake size) and a smaller one that will fit two of those same pans.  There's a four-burner stove above the smaller oven, and a flat grill over the big oven.  I have three big, deep sinks and the hot water gets hot enough to burn your hand if you don't remember to turn on the cold along with it.

Rachel is standing next to my range so you have an idea of the size of it.
My work-table is in front of the ovens.

There's no electricity up at camp, so all of my equipment runs on propane.  At first I was having trouble with the big oven, but now it's working fine.  I have one little hanging light in the middle of the kitchen that works with three mantles like the ones in those old Coleman lanterns.  It doesn't give off much light.  I get up around 5:30 to 6:00 every morning to start breakfast; since the kitchen window and door face east-ish I get a little bit of light in through them in the morning, but when it's time to work on dinner the kitchen is getting pretty dark.  I can still see in there, but not well enough to be cooking.  Stephen remedied this by stringing up some work lights and leaving a gasoline generator and a heavy-duty extension cord outside my kitchen door; now I start the generator when it's dark and plug in my lights, and voila! It's lovely in there.

Jamie, Steiny, and Alex help with clean-up by lights from the generator.

I have five tiny propane refrigerators in my work space (four in the kitchen and one in the pantry). I can put a half-sheet-cake size pan into the fridges, but if I do I can't close the doors.  This is kind of a problem when I'm making food for fifty-ish people (I've never gotten an exact head-count of the people I cook for).
Two of the kitchen refrigerators work fine—except for they freeze all vegetables; but they are great for everything else. The pantry fridge keeps vegges just fine.  I use the other two refrigerators as big coolers to thaw stuff out or to keep things like margarine and butter; they don't make things cold, but they keep cold things cool enough (like your chest cooler that you'd take camping, only bigger). The fridges work well enough, I suppose, as long as I never put anything hot in them.  I did that once and instead of cooling the hot stuff, the fridge itself got warm.

Ryan is standing next to one of my refrigerators
so you have an idea of the size of it.

Every day I have to record the temperatures of my refrigerators and freezers.  This is kind of pointless because, for example, I'll look into one freezer and the thermometer says -10 degrees but I can also see that it did not freeze the tray of ice cubes that has been in it all night long.  The refrigerator might say 20 degrees, but nothing in it is frozen.  There's something not quite right with this picture.

My pantry holds a chest freezer, one of my five refrigerators (the one that works the best), and has shelves along the two long walls.  I guess (without measuring) that I have a total of 24-feet long, by 2-feet deep, by 8-feet high worth of shelves.  I have to keep everything from toilet paper to our extra dishes and utensils (disposable) to our non-refrigerated food on these shelves. (I'd estimate that at least 120 cubic feet of my shelf space is filled just with cookies and Little Debbie snacks!)

into the dining hall, taken from the kitchen

When I first signed on as cook I thought I'd get to plan the menus and shopping lists for our camp.  Not so.  The menu is already planned and I get whatever Commissary sends me.  Most of the food is pre-prepared, and I just heat it up.  It's like eating at Denny's every day. :-/   Now that I know what they are sending me each week, I'm trying to figure out how to re-make it into something that's actually yummy.

There is no phone at Steiner so even though Commissary is only 26 miles away from us (at the camps at East Fork of the Bear) there is no communication between me and them.  This is a HUGE problem for me.  See, at East Fork of the Bear they have a storage area that's about as big as our whole lodge (kitchen, bathroom, pantry and dining-hall).  Their storage place has walk-in refrigerators and freezers (they have electricity) and lots of shelves to hold tons of food.  That's because they actually feed everyone who shows up to their camps—staff and scout troops alike, and they order the food for us, too.

So every Monday, Wednesday and Friday they bring a truckload of food to my back door and dump it on me.  I am probably the only person in the world who would get upset at having a big shipment of food brought to me three times a week but, yeah, it does frustrate me.

Occasionally (rarely) Commissary will forget to send me something that I need. Like when we were supposed to have chicken-patty sandwiches for lunch and they sent buns, tomatoes, lettuce, and a gallon of mayonnaise, but no chicken patties.  Of course I didn't realize this until an hour before lunch time, so I had to get creative.  But the biggest problem stems from the lack of communication between the commissary and me.

Here's what happens:  Our menu says that I should serve apples, oranges and bananas with every meal.  So Commissary very kindly sends me an entire case of apples, a case of oranges and a case of bananas every other day.  I do serve the fruit with every meal, but you know that saying about leading a horse to water?  I can't make them eat three pieces of fruit with breakfast, lunch and dinner every day!  And that's just the fruit.

If I have green beans on the menu, they send me two number 10 cans of green beans; well I already have seven #10 cans of green beans on my shelves and the kids don't like them that much.  They send us a 10-pound bag of salad mix for each time we're supposed to have salad (ten pounds of salad four times a week?); I get one or two 5-pound containers of sour cream in almost every shipment, ten pounds of baby carrots and two to four heads of celery every-other-day, three gallons of mayonnaise and two gallons of mustard in two weeks . . . 
We just don't eat that much, and I don't have the space to keep it!  I can't tell them what we need, or how much we actually eat, except for in notes that I send with the delivery drivers. I've tried sending stuff back with them, but the drivers don't like that.  On my last shipment the delivery man flat-out refused to take anything back, even though I still had two unopened cases of apples sitting in plain sight.

This isn't just a problem for me, I think it's a problem for the camp because Stephen never gets to see or handle the money for the food stuff.  It just works like some kind of balance-transfer thing; Steiner gets charged for all the food we "eat" whether we really use it or not, just because it's delivered to us.  And I bet they'll use this year's food budget to figure out next year's budget. This means money that could go to fixing up the camp, or to programs is being wasted on our ridiculous food budget.

Now if I could have things my own way we would eat better (real, tasty food), we'd have more variety in our diet, and I know I could stay within the budget (I do know the grand-total food budget); I'd probably save them money.  And I'd keep an inventory of what's left at the end of the season so someone would have an idea what to bring up at the start of the next year. And I wouldn't leave things like sugar and mustard-packets in cardboard boxes during our closed part of the year for little critters to chew up and nest in.  (Well, I'll take care of that anyway.)

They ring this bell five times to call everyone for meals—
—you can hear it throughout the entire camp. 
If you really want to irritate the cook, ring the bell early.

For now I struggle along with too much food in too little space, and I do my best to take what they give me and make it into something better.  (When I do this everyone is amazed at what a great cook I am.  Just imagine what they'd think if I really got to cook! ;-) )

Welcome to Summer Camp!

Well it's been a while since we left for Camp Steiner, but I'll try to recount what we've been up to.

We had intended to leave on Thursday, June 21, but on the 19th we got a call from Steve, the program director, who said that if we wanted to have our pick of cabins we should get there on Wednesday morning as other senior staff members would be showing up that day.  So after staying up until about 2:30 packing the van, we—well, I—got up at 5:30 to put the last-minute stuff into the van and we finally left around 8:00 or so.

I had hoped to leave a clean house behind us, but instead it looked like someone had ransacked the house and we fled for our lives.  >sigh< Oh well.

on our way

Camp Steiner is in the Uinta Mountains, at an elevation of 10,441 feet.  I did  not like the last part of the drive up the mountain.  I remember going camping when I was little and my mom would be saying, "Orlin! Slow down!"  While she did not like the winding mountain roads, I thought they were great.  Now that I sit up front and see the roads and not just the scenery I find I've turned into my mom.  I don't like it so much myself (not a roller-coaster girl).  I have found that if I can get the kids to sing with me, or if I watch the scenery and not the road I do much better.  And after making the trip four times now, I think there's some hope that I'll get somewhat used to it by the end of summer.

I don't like these signs.

Anyway, by the time we got there I was pretty exhausted, had a headache (probably from lack of sleep—and the altitude), was hungry, and just pretty darn all-around cranky.  Steve met us and showed us the cabins we got to choose from and I was not feeling so happy about it.  Then he proudly showed me the lodge where I'd be cooking for everyone, and it was dirty and I was thoroughly disgusted. I wondered why on earth this sounded like such a great thing to do in the first place. (Actually, the lodge and kitchen are pretty nice—for a scout camp lodge that is closed-up for eight to nine months of the year, it's really nice.  And it has a bathroom with running water, a bathtub & shower, and a flushing toilet! But remember, I was very, very tired.)

After we grabbed a bite to eat I jumped right into cleaning everything in that kitchen and bathroom.  Working settled my mind a little, and at least made me feel like I could safely prepare food, and use the bathroom without contracting a disease. 

Now, we thought that we would have to take care of our own food for at least two days and maybe through Sunday night, when the rest of the staff would be arriving.  So I brought food for my family for two days; home-made chili on the menu for Wednesday night.  Then Steve told me that more of the staff would be arriving that evening and it would be nice to put a pot of chili on the stove for them to have as they arrived.  Well there were some #10 cans of chili in the pantry, so I added one to the stuff I made, and hardly anyone ate at all—most of them had eaten before they came up.  >sigh<  We had chili for three meals that weekend. (And guess what?  Commissary brought chili for Monday's lunch!)

I did not sleep well on Wednesday night, and I woke up thinking that we were in for a very bad summer, and why did I agree to do this?

Thursday and Friday we all worked on setting up tents, and getting the camp cleaned up and ready for the rest of the staff to come and set things up. Well, everyone else did; I mostly worked in the kitchen.  We all got a whirlwind tour of the entire camp on —Friday? —the commissary arrived some time Friday with our food for the weekend (which was a little weird, since no one was supposed to be there until Sunday night,  but I'll tell more about the commissary later).

Thursday —or maybe Friday evening (after a while all the days blended together) we all went canoeing —even me!  

And one night when Bruce went to clean the staff showers he found a nest between the walls.  The big surprise was that the nest had five newly-hatched birds in it!

shower wall

shower surprise!

All the staff left on Saturday morning. That meant my family got  to have the place to ourselves for about 36 hours!  :-) So we went on a hike, and then we went back down the mountain to Kamas to buy milkshakes. 

When we got back one of the staff members had already arrived.  :-/ (He's a nice kid, but I had hoped to have a little more private, family time.) We shared dinner with him, visited a bit, and then went to bed. 

our home away from home

By the way, Michael, Jason, Lindsey and Brandon are sleeping in tents, while Bruce, the rest of the kids and I are sleeping in our little two-room cabin.  Our cabin has a small couch, a futon, and a queen-size bed! Yay!  The floor slopes down where two of the walls meet; you could easily roll a ball right down to that corner.  The bed is in that corner; Bruce sleeps next to the wall (we sleep with our heads up, not down).  By morning Bruce has rolled into the wall and I have rolled into him.  Cozy!

Now I have this stupid problem of having to get up to use the bathroom two to three times a night.  Usually it takes me about fifteen minutes to realize that that's why I woke up.  It takes me another ten minutes to get up and walk through the door from my bedroom to the bathroom. At camp I also have to find my socks, shoes and a flashlight, and walk the equivalent of going about halfway around the block to get to the bathroom in the lodge.  (The first night my flashlight died, and I still didn't know my way around camp; it was a long trip.  But the stars were amazing!)  One morning, around 5:30 or so, I saw a big deer on my way back from the bathroom.  We just stood there and looked at each other for a few minutes before she walked away.  I wished I'd had my camera with me, but who takes their camera to go to the bathroom?  (Actually I've started, but nothing picture-worthy has happened since then.)

Saturday night/Sunday morning I woke up around 1:00 a.m. for one of my usual potty trips, but when I finally hauled myself out of bed I was so dizzy that I couldn't stand up!  Now here was a terrible dilemma:  my bladder was in severe pain—I was going to burst if I didn't go pee, but I was going to fall down if I even stood up. There was no way I could walk all the way to the bathroom and back. I laid back down to consider this problem (as well as I could with my sick head —and now stomach, too), and finally decided that Bruce would have to make the trip with me.  So I woke him up, but I still couldn't stand up.  He rigged up a chamber-pot of sorts for me.  Embarrassing!  But I was really sick.

Sunday I stayed in bed until almost 11:00 a.m. when I finally decided that I could risk the walk to the lodge.  I was still dizzy and a little nauseous, but I had to eat something.  By then Steve and Stephen had arrived and they said I had altitude sickness. "Drink lots of water and it will pass."  I got busy making banana muffins (remember the commissary) which helped me feel a little better; having something to focus on made me feel better.  By evening I almost felt normal again.  The staff all arrived around 6:00 p.m.—all fifty-ish of them.  These are the kids I'll be cooking for all summer long. 

The next week was our prep time to clean up trails, cut down and haul off dead trees (just the ones that looked like they'd fall down and kill someone—in fact, a tree did fall down on one of our tents that week; fortunately no one was in it at the time!), set up the rifle and archery ranges, and generally get the camp ready for the 12-year old scouts who'll be visiting us every week this summer.

I mostly work in the kitchen and lodge. The kids thank me profusely for every meal, which is kind of embarrassing (commissary again; I promise I'll tell you).  I like them.  The kids, I mean.

By the end of the week (June 30) I was more than ready to go home for my 24-hour break.  If you can call doing 12 to 15 loads of laundry in 24 hours a break.  But I was very happy to sleep in my own bed for a night.

And that is the first installment of Our Summer at Camp Steiner.

Out of Time!

This weekend was ridiculous with running errands and doing all the laundry for the entire family.

Maybe next week you can hear about Camp Steiner.

Paid Vacation

My life is about to turn into one of those Disney movies from the 70's.  This summer my entire family is going up to Camp Steiner—the highest elevation Boy Scout camp in the United States—to work for the summer.

About three months (or so) ago we got a phone call from one Steve Honsvick, the program director for Camp Steiner.  A young man in our ward had worked as a youth counsellor at Steiner last year, but was not going to return this year; he recommended Jason to fill the job. Jason was in bed when Steve called so he ended up talking to Bruce.  It turns out that Steve and Bruce both worked at Hartvigsen School together (at least at the same time) a couple years ago; they had lunch together once or twice.  Steve remembered Bruce, and I guess he thought that if Bruce could do so well with handicapped kids then he could work with twelve-year-old scouts at Camp Steiner, too.  So he asked Bruce to be the shooting sports director.

Bruce thought this sounded like fun, but the pay was far from tempting, and being away from his family for six days at a time for the entire summer was even worse.  He said he just couldn't do it.  A couple days later Steve called back and told Bruce that he also needed a cook and I could go work there, too.  With Bruce's camp pay and mine we would earn more than Bruce is making now.  But Bruce told him that we have eight kids—we couldn't very well leave them behind.  Steve said he'd have a job for Michael as the ecology director, he could hire Jason and Lindsey as youth counsellors, and Brandon could be a counsellor-in-training; we could just bring the rest of the kids up to camp—in fact, while we're there Ryan can earn all the merit badges they offer.  Suddenly this looked too good to pass up.  Paid vacation for the entire family!

Well we've been to a couple of training meetings, we've bought some uniforms, and Bruce and Michael went to National Camping School a couple weeks ago to learn how to do their jobs.  (Bruce is now NRA certified as a range-safety officer, and NRA certified instructor for rifle, shotgun and muzzle-loading rifle, and USA Archery certified Level 1 archery instructor, and he's a BSA certified Shooting Sports Director.) This week I've been dyeing light-khaki pants to dark gray (no way am I spending $55 a pair for BSA uniform pants!) I hope I've got them pretty close to the right color.  We've been attempting to keep the house clean—at least I've been fussing over it; I've made pj's and floppy hats for the little girls (I wonder how long I'll keep calling those three "the little girls?"), and we are cleaning the van and gathering gear and clothes and bug spray and sunscreen.

Our big plan is to leave at 6:00 a.m. —before the sun gets too high and hot (no AC in the van :-{  ). And then the adventure begins!

The big questions are: What will the three little girls do while everyone else is working?
and What will we do with the cat while we're gone?

Wish us luck!