Stomping Ground

All through college while studying engineering our youngest son, Jack, worked at the summer camp he had gone to as a child. This meant missing some co-ops so his five year program stretched to 6 with summers at camp. After school he and his girlfriend, Laura, traveled across the country for a year visiting camps, studying best practices and working in various camp environments. Then for 5 years they rented a girl scout camp and ran a co-ed summer camp for children. In 2019 their not for profit camp acquired an abandoned boy scout camp and started rehabilitating it as the new home for Camp Stomping Ground. The camp wasn’t able to open in 2020 as planned due to the coronavirus pandemic but that resulted in even more work getting done to ready the existing facilities and building new where needed. Since one of the camp’s major goals is to bring campers from all socio-economic environments together many campers come on scholarship. As a result, money is always scarce and much of the work (particularly the new camp rehab) was done by volunteers. Pam and I got drafted early on and since we couldn’t get to the cottage due to Covid 19 issues we spent a lot of time at camp. You can best learn about Stomping Ground by clicking on the underlined link above. The story here is mostly about the physical site and the work the family has been doing to help out. We all fell in love with the site and have been trying to support Jack, Laura and the Stomping Ground crew as they work to make this place a very special place for generations of kids.

Our first visits to camp were just for a day or two, staying at hotels in nearby Saratoga Springs, NY. in the spring of 2019. On one of these trips we did a GPS survey to help map out the buildings and facilities and eventually the boundaries of the new camp. About 65 acres would be separated from the old scout property for camp with the rest merged into a state forest that surrounds the camp. Some of the early pictures are from this visit. We found the spot beautiful with lots of facilities nearly all of which needed some love. Then from mid November to mid December (2019) we rented an Airbnb and went to work. One of our major goals was to start the conversion of more than twenty lean-tos into mini-cabins more suited to a co-ed sleep away summer camp for kids as young as 5. This was pre-covid and Jack was focused on getting the facilities ready for campers in July of 2020. Stomping Ground was working hard to raise the funds to hire contractors for some of the really big projects and things that had to be done very quickly (the dining hall, the bath house and converting a large mostly open drive through storage barn into the major “safe” activity center for storms). We started with a focus on getting the shop cleaned up and functioning and adding a heat source. That way we could do some of the wood cutting somewhat protected from the elements. The amount of clean up after years of neglect and then three years of abandonment was staggering. Saratoga Springs usually gets 65 inches of snow a year, with a few by mid December. We had a storm with over twenty inches about midway in our stay which made working outdoors at the lean-tos more interesting. We ended up buying a plastic sled to carry the battery operated compound miter saw and other tools in and to lug trash bags full of scout debris out (and maybe for a little sleding). Of course that time of year the snow eventually melted and we had slush and mud and were wishing for a little snow.

We returned for another month-long stint from mid April to mid May 2020. By this time it was clear Stomping Ground was not going to be able to open due to the pandemic. As a result, our focus shifted somewhat to doing more longer term repairs that would have been postponed in the push to get camp open. So while there was still plenty of cleaning to do, we also started shoring up buildings where rot or insect damage had occurred, painting where the contractors had put in new bathrooms (bath house, dining hall and activity center) and getting some buildings dressed up for the long run. We also started getting plumbing restored to all the critical buildings and for fun, helped the Stomping Ground crew frame the first new cabin. At first we worked separately from the Stomping Ground crew to keep each other healthy (covid protacals at the time) and then since we were all isolating from the rest of the world formed a bubble so we could do some work together the last couple weeks. The weather spanned from some snow early on to some blistering 90 degree days at the end.

We left thinking we would be moving to the beach for the summer, but the border closed so we returned for two weeks in July 2020. John did mostly electrical, Pam did mostly painting and some cleaning. The nice part was Jack had a crew of volunteers (who would have been helping run camp) who, though largely unskilled, were able to get a lot of grounds work and painting done. They also got parts of the kitchen going so they could cook and do dishes (new commercial dishwasher installed). Jack got the water system working including flush toilets and hot showers in the completely redone bath house. As part of the crew, our son Stephen, was working from an Airbnb so our granddaughter and a friend could join the volunteer crew (Erin had planned to spend some time working at camp before starting college in the fall). Canada was still closed to us in the fall so we returned to camp for a week in September, 2020 and then again for two weeks at Christmas, two weeks in late April-May, 2021 and a week in late May into June. So while Covid seriously disrupted or lives for a couple years it gave us the opportunity to spend 100 plus days at Stomping Ground over those first few years to help make the dream a reality.

Camp finally opened and ran successfully for the summer of 2021. The extended Schott clan returned in October for a family reunion captured in the reunion link above. Then a bunch of us returned for a week in May of 2022 to help get things ready for a larger group of campers in summer 2022 and again in fall of 2022 to dedicate a cabin in honor of Justin Schott. Pam and I returned in May of 2023 to build and install fireplace mantels in the 1840s farmhouse the camp crew had spent the last year restoring so there is now some year round housing at camp.

The links below capture a tiny fraction of all that was and is going on to bring Stomping Ground to life In upstate New York.