Camp: No Longer Just For Summers

Working parents have long struggled with what to do with kids during school vacations. Now, one local camp is looking to become the solution.

For more than fifty years, local kids have spent summers at Valley Mill Camp in Darnestown. For the first time in the camp's history, this year Valley Mill is opening the camp in the winter, too.

"We saw the growing need for our parents to have a fun and safe place to send their kids during the days off from school," said Dan Cumberland, Senior Manager/Assistant Director of Valley Mill.

This year, Valley Mill, which has been in the Washington area since 1956 and in its current location on Seneca Road since 1973, has rolled out a schedule of holiday sessions on days when students in Montgomery county and surrounding communities might be looking for something fun to do.

"For over 50 years Valley Mill has been seen as one of the premiere summer camps in the area, its the place to send your children in the warm months. But for most of those years Valley Mill Camp would shut down and not reopen again until the next summer," Cumberland wrote in an email.  "As a company, we are growing with what the community around us needs."

Covering 60 wooded acres, Valley Mill features a pond, swimming pool, and rock climbing walls. Horse stables, arts and crafts hutches, basketball courts and archery and air gun ranges dot the rolling property. Campers can perform gymnastics, play capture the flag or just hang out.

Plenty of canoes and kayaks stored around various spots on the property reveal one of the camps’ most popular attractions. Valley Mill’s junior Olympic kayaking team has traveled to Canada and North Carolina in years past to compete. Kayak school and daily trips to the Potomac River during the warmer months has led to success with the program.

By traveling on one of the camp’s many well-worn trails, campers could find themselves greeted by one of the friendly dogs that scamper around the grounds.

“We are a 50’s camp, and we don’t want to change,” said Evelyn McEwan, Camp Director, who has been with Valley Mill from the start. As a young teenager, she helped her father during summers at a camp in the Colesville area. Years later, the original property was sold and Valley Mill at its present location was established.

Keeping with the camp’s classic summer camp aesthetic, the camp is divided into separate camps for boys and girls. Campers’ ages range from first graders to fourteen year olds. The Bees, the youngest campers (four and five year olds) have a site of their own.

While most of the camp is closed for the winter, the new holiday sessions will make use of some of the stations, weather permitting.

“We’re offering archery, air rifle, rock climbing, whatever the weather allows,” said Cumberland, known around the camp as Gumbi. “We also do special projects, like making 2-liter bottle rockets.”

For the daylong holiday sessions, Cumberland said camp directors prefer to stay on the property. Prior to signing up for sessions, campers have a few different choices of activities each time. But in February, campers have the option to take a trip to Ski Liberty for a day on the slopes. Another popular destination is the National Air and Space Museum Dulles Annex, where campers tour the hangars and see the Concord and fighter jets up close and personal. Camp directors hope that special trips like these will keep current campers interested through the winter as well as attract new campers.

“It’s been nice to have a lot of our usual summer kids as well as brand new kids,” said Edie Crane, Director of holiday sessions and the girl’s camp. “It gives them a little taste of our community and hopefully we will see them in the spring and summer too. In the winter, people aren’t thinking about us as much."

The camp keeps a sizeable fleet of short yellow school buses to ferry kids to and from camp and transport them offsite. Campers come from all over Montgomery County and Washington, D.C. Days run 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., pickup to drop-off.

Session dates and tuition rate details can be found on Valley Mills website. Future holiday sessions will be held January 24, February 18, 21, 28. Special events like skiing may include additional fees.

Spring holiday sessions will be held March 18, April 15, 25.