Monday, July 25, 2011 by Eugene.

Our ground-breaking Camp Castaway concept from 2010 has been modified this year with a “Pirate” theme! I’d like to thank Lori Goetsch for coming out to camp last weekend and providing an enormous amount of decorations, costumes and creativity. Ryan Williams came with her and used his skill as a mechanic to help us get a few things in order as well.

Our program manager, Anna, has outdone herself this year with fresh activities for returning campers and a list of events that will keep the campers engaged, informed and thrilled! There will be a lot happening this week, so stay tuned to this blog. I will try to update at least once a day. In the meantime, please visit our Flickr page. It will have daily uploads of photos of all that is going on at Camp Castaway this week!

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Thursday, June 9, 2011 by Eugene.

Pacific Palisades High School returned to camp after being away for over 2 years. Ms. Benke, who arranged and chaperoned the group a couple years ago, organized their 2011 event. She requested a special extended kayak excursion to Long Point Beach. Her students were very capable, and had a great excursion to the rarely visited spot just west of Long Point.

Welcome back, PPHS!

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Thursday, May 19, 2011 by Eugene.

Our landing float, shown here breaking up in the rare surf, was torn loose of its moorings last night after suffering damage from the attempted ferry landing on Wednesday. The overnight high surf and extremely low tide combined to rip it loose and pound it into the pier. We lost 2 pier pilings and the 52′ float.

Needless to say, we had to cancel the water taxi service we had arranged to transport our stranded campers from New L.A. Charter School, and switch to ground transportation. Unfortunately, the Whites Landing road is underdeveloped, and buses cannot traverse it safely. The school kids bravely hiked up 1600′ up a twisting road over 3 miles long. They had great attitudes and their positive outlook got them through the ordeal. Conservancy buses took them from the top of our road to Avalon (about a 30 minute ride through the island interior) where they boarded the Catalina Duchess for Long Beach.

Students from Poly High School will repeat the feat at 7:30 tomorrow morning. We have cancelled our weekend event, and we are trying to arrange bus transportation for more than 100 campers on Monday. We hope to have the back-up float anchored by the end of next week.

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