Descriptive Essay About Summer Camp

Summer camp. Do those two words excite you? Do you think of cannonballing off a dock into a refreshing lake alongside new friends? For most people, summer camps are a time to relax without being tied to your parents’ leash; a time to meet new people and make memories that will last a lifetime. For me, that wasn’t the case. Camp Alohi Lani was the camp my sister, my cousins, and I attended in the summer of 2017. Alohi Lani which means ‘bright sky’ in Hawaiian, is a retreat for youth who have a parent or grandparent suffering with ALS. Being the oldest among my cousins and my sister, I agreed to go to the camp to support them and show respect to our Oma, who at the time was battling the devastating motor neuron disease. My experience at camp differed greatly from my cousins and sister. Why? Because my fear is summer camps.
It was not the first summer camp I had ever been to, however, it was the first summer camp that was not in the familiar town of Parksville. In order to reach the camp, my sister and I had to take the ferry. It was the first time we had taken the ferry by ourselves. Anxiety was at a high, and I had not even made it to camp. After a long drive, we made it to Port Moody, yet we still weren’t at camp. We ordered a pizza and I had to choke down every bite-- I swear it was my nerves telling me I would throw up what I tried to force down.
After lunch, we saw the boat arrive at the dock and at least forty purple-shirted kids, from ages eight to seventeen,