Happy New Year!  All of us at Island Lake hope you had a wonderful holiday season filled with love, happiness, and lots of presents.  Our countdown for summer 2021 has already kicked into gear and our opening day of camp will be here before we know it.  Words cannot even describe our excitement for summer to get here already!  176 days until camp begins (as of January 1^st)!

We’re excited to see a glimmer of hope for this upcoming summer as the CoronaVirus vaccine gets distributed throughout the country and Europe (where many staff come from).  With regards to protocols for this summer, we will be working with the American Camp Association as well as the State of Pennsylvania.  Once they provide us with guidelines, we will share them with all of our Island Lake families.  We hope to have it all sorted out and finalized by springtime at the latest.

We’re busy planning for our annual session 2 TEEN TRIP, which this summer will be to Cleveland, Ohio, only if it is safe for our campers and staff to travel.  This trip will be offered to all campers entering 9^th grade and higher.  Check out more details in your January newsletter and if you have any additional questions, feel free to give us a call.  The enrollment form and details for this trip will be mailed out shortly to all who are eligible to take advantage of this fun-filled experience. 

A reminder to all of our campers and parents; don’t forget to read our monthly newsletters!  You can access them right here on our website.  Our newsletters provide important information for parents as well as campers, including enrollment and availability updates.  Here’s a direct link to the newsletters on our website: ILC Newsletters

Speaking of enrollment, if you have not yet registered your children for summer 2021 but plan to do so, please, please, please do not put it off any longer.  Some of our bunks are now completely full.  We truly do not want to turn away loyal campers, so let’s avoid that from happening.  You can register your children with the enrollment form mailed to you with your newsletter or you can simply click the link at the top of our website labeled, “enroll.”  It only takes a few minutes to fill out the form, we promise! 

To all current and new Island Lake families, we look forward to an amazing summer 2021 with your children.  To all prospective families, feel free to contact us if you have any questions after browsing our website: 914-769-6060 or info@islandlake.com.  And last but not least, all of us here at Island Lake wish you, our campers, parents, and staff, a very Happy & Healthy New Year!!!  ILC U THERE!!!

Hey Island Lake Parents!  We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.  With winter just about here, it is our hope that your children will always have “camp on the brain” and continue to share their wonderful ILC summer 2019 memories with you.  Our countdown for next summer has already kicked into gear and opening day of camp will emerge upon us before we know it.  As of December 1st, only 207 days until summer 2021 at Island Lake will be here!  We know how important it is to make sure that this upcoming summer is absolutely the BEST ONE YET!!!

Here in our winter offices we’ve been staying busy not only preparing for this upcoming summer, but we’ve also been participating in Zoom calls with other camps and the American Camp Association to be sure we run ILC in a very SAFE and fun manner for all in summer 2021.  It’s still too soon to provide you with any definitive details but those will come later, closer to summer.  We will do everything in our power to open up Island Lake this summer for all of our amazing campers to reunite with one another once again and ENJOY BEING CHILDREN!!!

Reminders to all families, returning and new, don’t forget to read our monthly newsletters.  They are located right here on our website.  Our newsletters provide important information for you, including enrollment and availability updates.  If you’d like to read our newsletter on our website, you can simply go to the “Island Lake Families” link above and then “ILC News” on the left-hand side of the page.  You can also click the following link to view it:  ILC News

Speaking of enrollment, if you have not yet registered your children for summer 2021 but plan to do so, please, please, please do not put it off any longer.  Some bunks are now completely full.  We truly do not want to turn away our loyal campers, so let’s avoid that from happening.  You can register your children with the enrollment form mailed to you with your monthly newsletter or you can register right here on our website.  Just click “enroll” at the top of the page and follow the directions.

With all of the winter cheer around us, we wish you and your family a spectacular holiday season!  Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and a happy and healthy New Year to all!  ILC U THERE in 2021!

Hey ILC Parents!  We hope you and your children had a fun, safe Halloween filled with enough candy to last them a lifetime.  We also hope your children SHARE all of their treats with you.  (Otherwise, you may want to pull a “Jimmy Kimmel” and eat all their candy while they’re asleep!)

Normally at this time of year I would express how excited we are to see all of our campers later this month at our annual Camp Reunion at SportimeUSA in Westchester, NY.  Sadly, due to the current state of affairs in our country, we are unable to safely host a reunion for all of our Island Lakers.  If circumstances change later this year then we will re-evaluate at that time. 

Are your children still sharing their wonderful ILC memories with you?  We sure hope so!  Our summer 2021 countdown is in full swing and camp will sneak up on us before we know it.  As of November 1st, only 237 days until Opening Day at Island Lake!  In the meantime, you and your children can continue to view our daily summer photos on Waldo, our weekly videos on youtube, our daily blogs that were written all summer long right here, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter posts.  We will continue to post on all of these social media platforms throughout the year so be sure to check us out often and “like” our posts.

Registration for summer 2021 is going very well thus far.  I’m happy to report that some bunks are already full!  If you have not yet enrolled your children and have been waiting to see how things progress with regards to the pandemic, feel free to reach out to us to discuss this.  We don’t want you to put off enrollment and risk space availability in your children’s bunks.  The last thing we want to do is turn away our loyal campers because there’s no more space in their bunks. You can enroll your campers with the registration form that we mailed home to you with your monthly newsletter or you can enroll them right here on our website.  Just click “enroll” at the top of this page (or on our homepage).  You can sign up right here online and then we will bill you for the deposit afterwards. 

Being that this past summer should have been our 35th summer that my family, the Stoltz’s, have owned Island Lake, we are excited that the number of 2nd generation campers has been increasing each and every summer.  We’re so lucky to even have 2 siblings whose parents met at ILC as children, got married many years later, and now share their special home away from home with their own children.  Talk about true 2nd generation campers, huh?  The above photo is a group of our 2nd generation campers who were all at ILC during the 1st session in summer 2019.  I posted about this a year ago on our blog and I’d like to continue this annual tradition. We’re so incredibly thankful to our alumni for entrusting us with their children.  We love that they want to continue to pass down their camp experiences to their kids, so this is just one way for us to say “thank you” to them.   Since I couldn’t get an updated photo this past summer, this 2019 pic will have to do for now.

Wow, it’s crazy how the holidays have already snuck up on us, huh?  Enjoy your Thanksgiving with loved ones who are closest and dearest to you.  I’ll be back here in a month from now to post my December blog for all of you.  Until then, ILCUTHERE!

As October sneaks up on us, this past summer is now a distant memory.  It didn’t even feel much like summer since we didn’t get to spend it all together at Island Lake.  With that said, we are happy to say goodbye to summer 2020 as we now look forward to summer 2021.  We’ve already begun planning for next summer with camper enrollments and hiring staff. 

We are looking forward to having our campers join the ILC family and experience all that our camp has to offer – fun, new friendships, fun, exciting activities, fun, new adventures,… oh, and have we mentioned FUN?  That’s what we’re all about at Island Lake and we’ll do an extra super duper job of providing that to all of our campers next summer, that’s for sure.  We know that once summer comes around, our staff will be over the moon thrilled to meet our Island Lakers and take wonderful care of them to provide them with the BEST SUMMER EXPERIENCE EVER!  We just have to get through this school year, as unique and challenging as it may be for many of you.

Meanwhile, up at camp the leaves are changing color and autumn is setting in, however many of our thoughts are still centered on our ILC friendships and experiences of summers past.  Yeah, we know that next summer seems too far away, but rest assured that it will be here before we know it.

We were hoping to host our thrilling, fun, exciting annual ILC camp reunion in November at SportimeUSA but unfortunately, it doesn’t yet seem safe or feasible to do so.  If the situation changes for the better in the coming months, we will be open to discussing the possibility of hosting a reunion then.  We are so sorry because the last thing we want to do is disappoint our loyal campers any further.  However, we have to be smart and diligent with regards to safety and health concerns, so for now, we will have to put our camp reunion on hold.

Hey, if you have not yet registered for summer 2021 but are planning to do so, please don’t toss your registration form aside or place it in that pile of paperwork you never quite get to.  You can still secure a spot for next summer by signing up now.  All families who were enrolled for 2020 were automatically re-enrolled for 2021 unless you requested differently.  For those families who had not yet enrolled for 2020 when the pandemic hit, you should have received a registration form with your October newsletter.  We also enclosed forms for those who chose to receive a refund on tuition.

Well, that’s about it for now.  We wish everyone a safe and spook-tacular Halloween at the end of the month.  Until then, ILC U THERE!

Hey Island Lake families!  I hope you’re all having a wonderful summer.  It’s still so sad and unfortunate that we aren’t up at camp with our happy campers watching them create beautiful friendships, learning and enjoying our fantastic activities, and making wonderful memories to last them a lifetime.  I know you all quickly had to scramble to find alternate summer plans for your children.  I hope it worked out well for you and that most importantly, you’re all remaining healthy!

We’ve been doing our best to stay in contact with our campers via Zoom activities that we are running 3 times per week.  Although we are getting a nice turnout, we’d still love to see even more campers join us.  This week we had Magic with Bill, Theater Games with Corie, and Cooking with Dave.  Please share the emailed links to these Zoom activities with your children so they can all participate and have some good ol’ fashioned virtual camp fun.  Next week we will offer Magic with Bill, Art with Poppy, and Pioneering with Gramps.  Again, please share these Zoom links with your children so they can all participate.

I have to say, it doesn’t even really feel like summer since we aren’t all up in Starrucca together.  It’s hard to believe that if we were at camp, we would already be into our 2nd session.  We would have already had some milestone events such as Visiting Day and Changeover Day.  Soon we’d be breaking out into our annual tradition of Color War!  3 days of pure fun as we would break up the camp into 2 teams, themes to be revealed at the moment Color War broke.  We’ll just hold on to those themes for next summer, not to worry.

I miss your children so much this summer.  Seeing what a summer is like without ILC has made me appreciate my home away from home even that much more.  I know this year will fly by and I truly truly hope that we will be able to safely reunite at ILC once again next summer.  Let’s send some good vibes all around to make sure that summer 2021 gets here safely and gets here quickly.  Until then, ILC U THERE!!!