promised panoramic of Pensacola Pass

Here's the panoramic photo I promised of Pensacola Pass, prior to any booms being placed in the pass. There were some way on the right of the photo by the navy cove (where people on base can put their boats in) but nothing in the major part of the pass.
see you at camp!

Booms in the Bay

So, not much going on in the oil spill world here at Camp Dixie, and I am in the midst of getting ready for summer camp, so I haven't written in the blog too much lately. However, there is a new feature of Perdido Bay that is right in front of Camp. Oil retention booms. They were put up sometime last week (not sure of the exact day) but run probably 1000' or so from the shore beyond camp out into the bay in front of camp. I'm not sure what the booms are supposed to do where they are located. Okay I understand that it's supposed to stop oil, but where they have been put can get quite wavy, and they are only about 8 to 10 inches above the surface of the water. If we have waves any higher than that, they will be over topped, and the oil will get past.
Apparently Baldwin County got 1.5 million dollars to spend on pre-oil stuff, and this is part of that influx of cash. I paddled out to the booms in my kayak, and they are pretty standard booms. I took a couple of photos for your enjoyment.
The summer program staff starts arriving tomorrow, so it's full speed ahead on summer camp!
See you at camp!
Mac

Enough Blame To Go Around

I still haven't had a chance to work on the Pensacola Pass photos, so that will have to wait. Sorry about that.

The wind is blowing the oil away from Alabama and Florida right now. The 72 hour projection pretty much puts the oil as far from us as has been seen in the last few weeks. That's good for us, but I really do feel bad for the folks in Louisiana that are getting hit by this. Hasn't enough been done to that poor state?

So the congressional hearings have started, and it seems that every one of the companies involved is trying to blame the other. Seriously, isn't there enough blame to go around? Also, what do you bet that the reason the blowout preventer that failed is failing because of the same reason the 4 story box failed. Slushy methane is probably filling that thing up too.

Oh, well. Things are normal as could be here so far. Camp is getting closer!
See you at Camp!
Mac

No News is Good News

Well there is nothing much to report here at Camp Dixie related to the oil spill. Which is of course a good thing. The winds have been pretty light the past two days, and according to NOAA maps (which are amazing by the way) it is not likely to be close to Alabama until Sunday. They actually aren't even really predicting that it will be here, just that it could be here. Who knew that the "cone of uncertainty" that we are all so used to with hurricanes woud have a similar idea with oil spills. Anyway here's a link to the NOAA 72 hour prediction map. It's in pdf format.

http://deepwaterhorizon.noaa.gov/bookshelf/1925_TMF72-2010-05-06-1300.pdf

 The biggest thing that is going on around here right now is that lots of places are doing "costal cleanup" volunteer efforts around the different bays and waterways. Supposedly it is easier to clean up a clean oily area than a dirty one?!? Anyway people are able to help out that way. Otherwise, the way that everyone has been talking, once/if the oil actually does make it here (in the form of "tar balls" most likely) the only people that are going to be able to clean it up are people that are hazmat trained. Oil is considered a hazardous substance (of course) and apparently so is the dispersant that they put on it.

That's it for now, tomorrow or Saturday I will try to post some pictures that I took of Pensacola Pass, I went to see the Blue Angels practice yesterday, and shot some photos of the pass from Fort Barrancas. There were some booms out there, mostly to the side of the pass near the intercostal and Sherman Cove.

Have a great night.
See you at camp!
Mac

Coast gets a reprieve!

Not much news on the waiting for oil front yesterday, it rained almost the whole day, which helped me get some stuff done in the camp office without feeling guilty. No such luck today, the sun has come out, and I still have some office work to finish, but oh well.

The newest prediction is that the slick won't be here until Thursday at the earliest, which is good news. Additionally, it turns out that fishing in federal waters off of Alabama is still open (There were reports over the weekend that it had completely closed from Louisiana to Pensacola.) Also the state waters are still open as well. So, people around here are still able to fish as necessary.

Apparently there have been a lot of people that are buying up fresh seafood, and long lines at fish markets as a result. It's kind of funny, because right now nothing's closed, so the markets can just keep restocking and saying "thank you" to the whole situation. Of course that will change if/when the fishing is closed in the immediate area.

Funniest thing I have heard on the radio in regards to the spill is that Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Red Lobster) has said that there won't be any problems getting seafood in their restaurants because their "seafood comes from a different part of the Gulf." Everyone around here laughed, because we didn't think that the seafood from Red Lobster came from the Gulf of Mexico at all... Maybe they meant to say "Our seafood comes from a different Gulf... in Asia." But it got lost in the translation. Oh well.

Hope everyone has a great day.

See you at camp!

Marty

Waiting...

Hey everyone, I know it's been a long time since I have written on this blog, but that's because we've been very busy at Camp Dixie and things have been going really well. We've been completely booked this whole retreat season, and are looking forward to Summer Camp (and all that entails.) However, the biggest news that is going on around here right now is the oil spill created by the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

We don't really know what to expect, I drove from Slidell, LA back to camp yesterday and Mississippi was really smelly. It smelled of Oil and paint thinner...

Right now it feels a little bit like we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Oil is still leaking from the ocean floor, the weather has been really windy and wavy so it's moving the oil this direction (mostly), and the spill is getting nothing but larger. The Federal Government has also put a stop to all fishing from Louisiana to the panhandle of Florida, so it's coming. Additionally

I just read an article on www.al.com about BP offering $5000 to fisherman in Bayou La Batre, AL in return for not suing them for any losses because of the oil. It seems as though BP knows it is coming too.

I am going to be updating this blog so you can get an idea of what is going on at camp, and will post pictures when I can showing what is going on. The first picture is actually not taken from camp, I drove over to Perdido Pass and took some pictures. Perdido Pass is the closest entrance to the Gulf of Mexico if you were to drive a boat from Camp Dixie. They have put a boom on the inside of the Pass to stop incoming oil in an environment that is less wavy than outside the pass. It currently doesn't go all the way across the opening, so that boats can pass through as necessary, but I would imagine once the oil arrives, it will be kept closed (and boats won't need to go out the pass once it's filled with oil either.)

So, more update tomorrow. Currently the prediction is that we will be oil free until Wednesday or Thursday. We just pray that the winds will blow offshore, and the oil will be stopped at its source.

See you at camp,
Mac

Many Blessings at Camp Dixie

So just to set the stage for this post, I am sitting in the shade outside the house on the back cement slab. The weather is just about perfect (low 90's and the only clouds are those puffy ones that are lazily crossing the sky). This is what living in Southern Alabama is all about, as far as I can tell anyway.

It's a little bit different than what we get to put up with during June and July, our highest temp this summer was 102, with the humidity at about 99%, which put our heat index somewhere between 110 and the temperature on the surface of the planet Mercury. It's kind of fun making sure that the campers stay cool and hydrated. Sometime during the summer we decided to get some sprinklers, and set them up around camp during our games, so anyone who got too hot could run through the sprinkler and cool off. It worked, and we had a lot of fun with the sprinklers as well as with our games. I had no idea the sprinklers would be so fun, but as a Director, you learn more about what works and what doesn't every year. You also remember things that you had forgotten, like how much fun it is to run through a sprinkler as a child.

One thing that was a huge blessing for Camp Dixie this summer was our Traveling VBS Program. We ran this program for the third time this year, and were able to visit 7 congregations, as well as make a surprise appearance at an additional congregation to help them with a Day Camp program they were running in New Orleans. We received nothing but compliments about the program and the counselors, which speaks a lot to the people running the program (the counselors) and also to the need of congregations in the area to have a VBS team available. I wish there was a better way to measure the programs we run during the summer outside of sheer numbers, but other than surveys by the participants (which were very positive) I just don't know how to do that. The good thing is that the numbers are positive too, Summer Camp was within 6 campers of last summer (great considering the economy around these parts) and the Traveling VBS program had even more campers than we did last summer, and more than we had on-site this summer!

So I am almost done with the original planning process for next summer, the new website with all the dates for next summer is almost ready to be uploaded and become active. I can only pray that we have the opportunity to reach as many children next year as we did this year, and I hope we can find even more congregations to reach with Traveling VBS.

While I am thinking about blessings, and other thing that has been great for Camp Dixie has been our chicken dinners. If you've never been, we have 7 dinners during the year, and it is our major fundraiser for the Camp. This year has been amazing, we've averaged right around 600 people, in fact the last time we even ran out of chicken before the dinner was over. Thanks again to everyone who has been to a dinner this year, and if you haven't you should check them out, it's a tasty treat for a Sunday.

Well, I think that's about it for now, you can check for the website to be updated really soon, and I hope you are having a great after summer time.

See you at camp!

Mac

Remember how days used to take forever?

I finally believe something my mother told me when I was a child. She would tell me, in the middle of a particularly "long" day for me that as you get older, time will go by more quickly. I never believed her, the days always seemed to crawl by...

Not so anymore. I can't believe how fast this winter/spring/summer has gone by. Since my last blog entry a lot of things have been going on at Camp Dixie. Here's a quick rap-up, I will be blogging about them in the near future (I sure hope to anyway!)

1. In February we had a NLOMA conference in quite possibly the coldest and most remote place in the United States (Northern North Dakota, 8 miles from the Canadian border.) At that conference we got many of the applications for the summer counselors.
2. We hired 14 staff members for this summer. We were hiring right up until staff training started on May 22.
3. Kim and I took a quick trip to Las Vegas to see a concert and the Grand Canyon (first time for me.) What fun!
   
4. Lifeguard Training with the Camp Dixie staff!
5. Summer Camp and Traveling VBS! This summer we had 248 campers (just slightly down from 254 last summer) in our on-site program. Praise God!
6. Costa Rica Servant Event. 14 people traveled to Costa Rica to help Camp Penuel serve inner city Costa Rican children at their site. It was a great trip!
7. We moved and re-designed the "Raging River" challenge course element. For the first time in a long time, campers were experiencing a new Raging River.
   
8. Celebration Lutheran Church from Tallahassee Florida came to Camp Dixie for a Servant Event and helped us build a horizontal climbing wall.
9. Summer camp ended. One of the greatest staff groups ever departed Camp Dixie and went back to their homes all across the country. You guys are missed!
10. Retreat season has begun!

Well, those are just a few of the things that have happened in the time since I last wrote a blog entry. Hopefully many ideas for future blogs can come out of this.