Why do you come back to Camp Foley?”
We ask the questions and we get the same answer every year…
“The people!”
We pride ourselves here at Camp Foley with having over 30 different activities for campers to choose from, on land and water. We have beautiful facilities and an amazing lake and 1,000 feet of shoreline! But the one thing above all others that the campers keep coming back for are the people. The friends they make along the way of their camp adventure. Camp is the place wither strangers become friends and friends can last a lifetime.
There are too many stories to count about campers meeting each other as 8 year olds and developing a friendship that lasts the rest of their lives. The Foley community has couples who met as campers or staff and have gotten married (many here at Foley!) Friend who met as campers and then been in each others weddings and flown across the country to visit each other long after camp has ended. We thought it would be cool to ask some of our older campers about why the friends they make at camp are so meaningful and why it drives them to return to Foley every summer…
“I feel that my friends at camp see me for the real me” -Girl camper, 16
“I just felt that the people I met at camp really cared about me and wanted to know all about me, not just the stuff I do at school or my hobbies like at church groups.”- previous Boy Camper, 17
“I keep coming back for my friends because we just see each other at the realest moments, in the morning when we look so crazy, then doing activities together and watching each other fail and laughing together, and then getting dress up crazy too! No one cares what I look like, just that we are all at camp together”- previous Girl camper, 18
“I think there is something about living in that close a space for weeks at a time together, you get so much closer so much faster because you have to, but you find out very quickly who could be your best friend!”- previous Boy camper and counselor, 24
I’m sure you can see the pattern that popped up. Camp is so many things for so many different people, but at the end of the day we all want to feel loved and like we belong in our social groups. Camp friends more than any others embody that and help create a most amazing sense of community.