Ridgecrest Camps

We were nervous about it’s location, but man, the New Infirmary is beautiful and fits perfectly in it’s new home on the middle green. Once used for Arap Chapel, this spot was the home site for the original house in Ridgecrest! Now, the new Arap Chapel is nestled into a piece of woods with a little more character, and privacy.  And we have put a comfortable and inviting building back onto the middle green. With an large front porch and a view of the lake, the nurses new home will also house the new nurses station as well as a place for campers and staff to hang out on the porch and rock during free time. If you have not seen this building in person, then you will no doubt be impressed. We look forward to seeing you soon….camp is just around the corner!

It almost looks like this building was meant to be there! The new Camp Ridgecrest Infirmary went up fast! Although there is still some work to be done, the framing, windows, doors, showers and roof are all close to be completed! The first picture below was taken on a Friday, the first day the framing crew began. The following picture was taken on a Wednesday afternoon. That’s pretty fast…Not too shabby!

For you Frisbee Golf fans, notice the Tee Box can still be in the same place. The hole won’t be changed! We’ve gotten a lot of questions about this…a big issue for some of us Frisbee Golf regulars…

We felt like it was fitting to place the new Camp Ridgecrest Infirmary in the place of the first home ever built in Ridgecrest, right near Rogers Retreat. We’ll update these picture soon with some shots of the inside, some of the green metal roof, and some of the view from the front porch. Enjoy!

The new Shawnee cabin is coming along nicely! The electrician got it wired up, so now it only lacks rails for the deck, paint, beds and campers!

We have broken ground on the New Infirmary at Ridgecrest! This will be a great addition with lots of improvements. First of all, it will be the new home for the camp nurses. Both their living quarters as well as the Nurses Station will be located in this building. The new Infirmary will help the foot traffic in and out of the Lake lodge as well as enable us to take better care of our sick campers and staff. We have received great feedback from the nurses so far, using their suggestions in our design! Not only will the new infirmary help with the flow of camp, but it will be a really cool building too. With a covered porch, and metal roof, the Infirmary will face the lake offering a great place for nurses, campers and staff to rock and relax.

You may wonder what will happen to the old Infirmary. Well, with the addition of 4 more camper cabins this summer, we will be converting 2 staff cabins into new camper cabins. So, we need a place to house these central staff. The Old Infirmary was an obvious choice. It offers a large flexible space that more than accommodates our central staff. (Have a suggestion for what to Name the Old Infirmary? Comment below…)

Another bonus: We are adding heat to the Nurses Rooms in the new Infirmary. This will enable us to offer a few rooms in the off season for alumni and staff to use when they visit. Sometimes a weekend at camp does a lot of good in the off season…we want to serve our staff and alumni, offering the chance to come, relax, and spend some time with the Lord in this place that means so much to so many people.

If you haven’t noticed, it has been a couple weeks since our last construction update.  Well, we are back from vacation and ready to bring you an update of all that’s going on!  Here’s a list of what they have done on the Bear Trap since our last update:  plumbing, electrical work, insulation, the metal roof, most of the drywall inside and the siding outside, and put the plywood up above the porches.

It’s crazy how much they got done within the week that we were gone!  They should be putting in the hardwood floors soon!

The other construction team is still going strong on the cabins.  They are working on the bathroom area and even painting the outside of a cabin.  The plumbing and electrical work is just about finished.  Here are pictures of each new cabin.

Notice there is going to be tile outside of the showers!

As mentioned in a previous blog, Marty is renovating the old Cheyenne bath house into a staff cabin.  He has a little more help now that Stewart, the Ridgecrest intern, is here.

Now last, but certainly not least, the Dining Hall.  They are now patching up the floor from where the walls were taken out.  They are about finished with the new deck and it looks great!  Check out the pictures below.

There you have it!  It’s still so exciting to go over to Crestridge and see what all is happening.  It’s hard to believe that we are this far along.  I like to look back at the first picture taken and compare it the ones taken today.  God is good!

We hope everyone has had a smooth transition back into school and work after the holidays.  Check back soon for more updates!

The Spilman Porch is underway! You can see the log limbers supporting the floor system for the porch stretching the length of the building. The logs are beautiful, and the deck is a whopping 11 feet wide…the widest deck anywhere in camp! The porch floors will be finished soon, and the logs being used upstairs in the dining hall will be ariving tomorrow. More pictures soon… (If you have yet to subscribe to this post, just click on the bottom right to make it easy to see updates!)

Look at the size of these logs! These are the timbers that will support the new addition to Spilman! Using Chainsaws, nails, and hammers, the men muscled these hefty supports into place. They look impressive already…only making us more excited to see the finished product! More pictures soon…

The historic Spilman Lodge is growing! After waiting for the weather to cooperate, the carpenters began their work…or at least the work we could see. You can now see the outline of the new floor system. This part will move somewhat slowly, but once the foundation is secure, they will be done in only a few weeks. I found it interesting that the builders are choosing to not use many power tools. They are swinging hammers, rather than shooting nail guns. Although slower, I find this to be fitting considering they are working on a building built with no plans back in 1942. They are doing everything possible to make the addition blend and seem as if it was a part of the original structure. I’ll post more pictures very soon…

Not only is there a roof up, but the covered porch is there as well. This is the part of the Cabin Restoration Project that I am most excited about…the Covered Porches! More details soon….

Well, there has been so much progress, I don’t even know where to begin.  Let’s start with the bath house.  Marty is amazing!  As I recall, Phil mentioned that Marty is sometimes mistaken for Jack Bauer and I believe it!  He cleared out the second part of the old Cheyenne bath house and has started putting up petitions.  Here’s some pictures to show you the progress:

You can tell Marty has been working hard.  All three pictures were taken of the same place.  The door in this picture is the back of the bath house.  When you walk in, there will be a small closet straight ahead and a public bathroom on the left.  It may not make sense at the moment, but you just wait!

Moving on to the next project, you’ll see there has been a lot of progress on the dining hall.

Ron shared a little history with me about our dining hall as we were looking at the renovations.  Apparently this is what the dining hall looked like for a while and then the offices were added.  It’s going to be nice having the extra space!

I know the campers will enjoy this next project.  The plumbing has started in the cabins.  They have started putting pipes in for the showers and sinks.  But the best thing about it is the new water heaters.  The new cabins will have instant hot water and it will last longer than one shower!  It will last for everyone’s shower!

The second picture is the new hot water heater.  It’s much smaller than our existing hot water heaters.

Well, that’s it for these projects.  The framing of the Bear Trap will be finished tomorrow!  Check back in the next day or two and we’ll show you pictures.