Family Camp and Women’s Weekends are some of our favorite weekends of the year, and we’re excited to announce the dates for our weekend retreats in 2022! We’ve made some changes to our schedule this season, so let us tell you a little bit more about it.
You read that correctly - it will not be held over Labor Day weekend this year. Instead, we are going to kick off the summer season with a weekend for Families at the end of May!
By inviting women to Camp the weekend after Second Term ends, we’ll be able to give you a real taste of summer at DeSoto!
The people who come to retreats at Camp are the ones who make them what they are! We are certainly mindful of you when we make a big change at Camp. You may have a few questions, and we want to let you know more about the thought behind these changes.
You can follow the links above or check out the “Retreats” section of our website to find out more details about each weekend (including the cost) and to access the online registration form. If you have any questions, please call our camp office. We’d be happy to help!
We want as many families to be able to come as possible, and we want to give them the best of Camp! It seems like we may be able to offer an even better experience over Memorial Day weekend.
College staff will be out of school and more of them will be available to lead activities and create Camp fun, and families will be kicking off their summer plans rather than transitioning into fall sports and obligations. Plus, we think everyone should have the opportunity to experience Little River and Lookout Mountain at their peak springtime beauty in late May!
It also helps that our Camp infrastructure will already be in place for the summer season. When we have Family Camp at the beginning of September, we are re-opening and revving up parts of Camp that were closed down at the end of Second Term. It feels better all around to invite families into Camp as we are freshly opened up and ready to go for the summer ahead.
For those of you who have been saving a weekend in September for many years, this will be an adjustment. By having a weekend camp for women right after second term ends, you will get to enjoy camp in all it’s summer glory. (Some of you probably even stayed at Camp through mid-August when you were a camper!) It also will be easier on our end to simply keep camp running for a few days beyond Second Term, rather than closing things up only to re-open a month later. We can give you a weekend that feels more like the best of DeSoto this way. When we decided to move Family Camp to Memorial Day weekend, it made sense to also bookend camp at the end of the summer season with a final hurrah - Women’s Weekend!
Not this year. Mother-daughter pairs are more than welcome to come to Family Camp over Memorial Day weekend - you can get a crew together and share a cabin with others moms and their daughters if you’d like. And camper in kindergarten or above is welcome, whether your daughter currently camps or is considering camping soon!
We recognize that this is not a perfect replacement option for everyone, especially First Term campers who will be coming to DeSoto for a month so soon after that weekend, but for some it may provide an alternative way to get to Camp with your mom/daughter. For now, we recognized we can best serve our Camp community through summer sessions, Family Camp, and the Women’s Weekend, and that is where we are focusing our energies for the 2022 camping season.
