Iron County kids enjoy 4-H summer camp

MANITOWISH WATERS - A group of Iron County kids spent the week exploring nature at the North Lakeland Discovery Center during the 15th annual Iron County 4-H summer camp.

The camp ran from Tuesday to Friday, July 7-10, and was open to third through fifth graders, according to Neil Klemme, the youth development agent with the University of Wisconsin's Iron County Extension Office, who runs the camp.

Klemme was pleased with this year's camp.

"Things are going great. It's been a good week," said Klemme. "We've got I don't know how many kids, something like 82 kids here this week."

The camp provides an excellent setting for the young kids to develop a sense of independence.

"Some of these kids, it's their first time away from home. So it's important for them to get that sense of independence. You know, parents don't like to hear it but kids need to learn how to be away from their parents for a little while, that's important for development," Klemme told the Daily Globe in March while planning for this year's camp.

Campers enjoy a variety of activities including canoeing and kayaking, swimming, archery, arts and crafts and other outdoor games, Klemme said, along with evening activities such as geocaching - a hobby of using navigational techniques to find a hidden item - and watching an outdoor movie.

For the most part campers have had the benefit of nice weather, although Klemme said that the nights could have been warmer.

"It's been cold at night. Tuesday night was a chilly one," said Klemme, "kids were complaining in the morning. I was complaining. It was cold. Yesterday was cold but not as the night before."

The theme of this year's camp was "magical medieval times," making "Shrek" the movie selection.

One of the highlights of the camp, for the fifth graders, is the a 2-and-a-half hour canoe trip on the Manitowish River, Klemme said.

"That's like their last big hurrah as fifth graders at camp," Klemme said.

There is also an education aspect to the camp, with Zach Wilson of the Iron County Land and Water Conservation Department, teaching kids about the area's ecosystem.

Among the activities that Wilson had the campers use nets to catch aquatic insects - including dragonfly larva - near the shoreline as a way to test the water pollution of the lake at the center.

"They get a little freaked out when this is right before swimming," Wilson joked, referring to the discovery of the number of unseen insects that are in the water. "No it's good, they've been really into it."

Campers also got to catch adult dragonflies with Wilson.

Along with the traditional camp, this was the first year that Klemme was also running a three-day "outpost camp" for sixth and seventh graders.

This camp is designed to be a bit more spartan than the facility at the discovery center, Klemme said in March, with campers sleeping in tents rather than cabins and cooking their own meals.

"...It's not going to be 'roughing it' I don't think, it's going to be more 'roughing it' than North Lakeland, they're not going to have cabins and carpets ... it's going to be a little more challenging but I still wouldn't call it 'roughing it,'" Klemme said at the time.

The camps are funded through a combination of camp registration fees and community donations, Klemme said, with roughly two-thirds of the costs covered by community support.