Getting things back to normal...

This windstorm really messed up the campground pretty fierce. We spent the last two days just cutting trees up and burning brush from the fallen ones. Today it seemed like we were beginning to get some things back under control as we finally had the chapel area cleaned up, the barn road restored to normal, and everything on top of the hill cleared away. We also had some visitors today to pull us away from the chainsaw work.

These two fine men are "Bizkit" (left) and David from the Boiling Springs Fire Department. They came up to inspect all of our fire extinguishers, smoke alarms, and check our general building safety throughout the campground. They were nice guys so we thought we would throw them onto the blog here. All of our buildings are officially inspected and safe to bring campers up for another season thanks to these guys.

When Nature ATTACKS!!!!

Monday we had this crazy windstorm here at Camp... gusts up around 70 mph and Tom Phillips was scared half to death. Nonetheless the grounds got beat up pretty bad and we lost probably at least 50 big trees, the tent was ripped to shreds, the volleyball perimeter net posts were bent clean over, ping pong tables and electrical boxes were being thrown all over the campground, and powerlines were all but yanked apart. We wish that pictures could do justice to what happened but unfortunately they just don't. Here's some that show a bit of what happened but really it was a natural disaster to say the least.

At least 5 big trees fell right around Cabin 5, the one actually being held up by it on the backside, and the chapel road there has 3 trees lying across it with a massive oak falling right behind Cabin 6B... the rootstem being entirely pulled up leaving a 15 foot diameter crater behind.

The tent actually got ripped apart at the seams... like where the seams are sewn together, not where we assemble it. So now it lies in tattered pieces in the middle of the camp ground. We aren't exactly sure how to fix this thing, it looks like we might have to get a new one or try to get somebody to sew it all back together but it's really a mess.

This one blew us away. The tree that had the anchor to the posts at the Leap of Faith was actually ripped right out of the ground and was hanging by the cable it was hooked up to. When driving into camp you are now welcomed by a huge pine tree suspended in mid air by a cable.

This is down by the barn road... which was blocked by a slew of trees that had been uprooted and blocked the road. One of our bible school students parked his car on the barn road and it was trapped between trees that fell near each barn entrance.

Another amazing sight is now to drive past the volleyball court, where the poles holding the perimeter net were literally bent over by the wind catching the net.

As aforementioned, these pictures don't do justice to the carnage that took place on Monday. This is a picture some trees on the lake road, which was blocked from the first turn down. After clearing all of the trees off of it yesterday we realized that the canoes had actually been lifted off of the canoe rack and flew all through the woods and were scattered about all the way to the other side of the water slide. These trees here were snapped in half about 15 feet up the trunk and the top halves were just slung everywhere.

Thanks for Helping... our first work weekend of '07

Thanks to the kids who came up this last weekend to help us out here at Lurecrest, it was a blessing to have you come.

These are some girls who came down from the University of South Carolina to help us do some work. They have a retreat here every fall with the Campus Crusade for Christ group and we have kept in touch with them over the last few years with some of their staff. These three girls came down to help us out so we put them together doing some touch up painting in Cabin 5 where some kids got a bit out of control writing on the beds. This is Amanda (pink), Kelly (red), and Felicia is in the background. They were all very kind to come up this week, they have really been blessed here during their retreats and were excited to come up to the mountain again.

This is Andy and Aaron, two guys from USC who came with the ladies to help us this last weekend. We have been trying to stay on top of the leaf clean-up situation but figured we could enlist these fine young men for the morning so we strapped the blowers on them and sent them all over the campground... they seemed to enjoy getting geared up with the sweet safety shades and ear-muffs.

This here is Dan White and Jordan Conklin, long time campers and staff here at Lurecrest who called last minute to tell us they were coming to hang out this weekend. We had just the perfect project for them, so we got them started quick on reroofing the pool deck roof. They spent the better part of the day working on it but it saved us a bunch of work and was great just getting to see them.

This is Caroline Belk and her friend Bryan from Charlotte. Caroline has been on staff for the last couple of years and grew up here as a camper... we were excited to see her and for her to have a chance to bring Bryan and introduce him to camp. They helped clean up the pool house and did a bunch of other stuff.

Here's Aaron and Andy again, but here pressure washing the pool. Yep, today was the day we drained the pool and the first step to getting it cleaned up is to pressure wash the whole thing, and we were blessed to have these two guys to help us get it done. Dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

This is Felicia, one of the girls from USC. It had been a long time since the Craft Shop had a makeover so we thought we would try to spruce her up a little bit. The tables all got painted with this beautiful blue color and then a grayish brown all over the rest. The walls we painted the same color as the inside of the Barn since we had about 20 gallons of it left over and the colors really blended well. We feel that the new look has revived the area a bit.