Honoring Memorial Day - Activity Ideas for the Summer Holidays!

In this short episode, we would like to acknowledge the loss of the men and women whose lives were lost to protect and defend our nation. 

We are also sharing some of our favorite ideas for wiling away those relaxed, summer-holiday, days at camp!  

We'd love to have you join us in our Facebook group or follow us on Instagram and if you tag us on your camping related posts, we may be able to feature you on our page!
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1271381924618449/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/campmindawinia/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Camp Mindowinia, where we're reviving the vintage camping vibe in the Midwest. There is so much to see and do in the Midwest, and we want to share it with everyone. So on this show, we'll be talking about all things camping as we explore the states of our name. Glad to have you back at camp, everyone. I'm Liv and I'm here today with my longtime camping buddy and sister, App. Hi everybody! At the time this episode comes out, we will be off on a camping trip with our family, commemorating Memorial Day. So we'd like to wish you a happy Memorial Day. As we are all remembering the heroic men and women who have given their lives to defend and protect our country. We know that you probably have plans to get back to, so in today's short episode, we just want to share some of our favorite ways to spend the camping weekend. Yeah. The first that comes to mind is yard games. Such a staple for camping. Definitely. Mitchell and I bring with our beanbag toss set on every camping trip. And the best thing about it is if you have a large group, you can totally do it in like a competitive tiers system. And you don't have winners versus winners and whatever. So if you only have one set of boards and bags, you could easily make this something where like 12 people could all end up competing and joining in on the fun. Yes. Something that we've done on our family camping trips when you've brought your beanbag toss is we'll have like four people playing at a time because that's all the more people who can play at a time. Usually other people are doing something. Yeah like we divvy up meal prep, you know, and so like if it's somebody's night to be cooking dinner, they can't be playing games. They have to make dinner. Yes, it's very serious. And obviously, as we take turns doing those things, new people come available to play that could compete in the next tier. And it's very entertaining to watch people, especially the people in your family who might not be very good at throwing the pingbang. Like me. Yeah, Liv is very entertaining. An old favorite of our families, especially, is Bocce, a very well-known Italian lawn game. You can play with or without a bocce court, and you just basically throw these balls into the grass, and there's obviously more rules than that. A typical set that you can buy, like at any large department store, will have rules inside. Yes, it will. There's videos on YouTube, of course, as well. Another one I like is the giant yard Jenga. We don't currently have one. We have like a mid-size one, but we don't have like a giant one yet. Okay. But oh my gosh, that is so much fun. Especially like the foamy block ones. Yeah. Then no one's gonna get hurt when the huge thing topples over. Right. One of my favorites is I call it 12 pins. It has a very difficult to say Finnish name as well. It's M O with the dots K-K-L-Y. Um, it's also called Skittle Scatter Skittle Scatter. Uh-huh. And you you play, it's a tiny bit like bowling. You have these pins and they all have a number on them. And you can play with multiple people or two. You have to have two or more. And then, you know, I guess typical for a game. Right. And you um you throw the bowler at these little pins, and then you score points, and the first person to 50 points wins. It's a fun game. It's very entertaining to play with a dog. Every single time I play it with my dog being there, and if she's not tied to a tree or she's tied up too close to us, she thinks we're throwing the bowling type pin um for her to catch. And so she will. I mean, mine is just covered in teeth marks. It's it's it's a hoot, but it adds to the fun. It's funny. Another one is you can get these badminton little like kits that you can set up anywhere. I think they have them at Menards for like 40 or 50 bucks. Okay. And you can just string them between two trees or from the awning to something else and set it up very easily and play it while camping or in the yard at home or whatever. But they're inexpensive, versatile, and badminton is such a nice, basic, easy game to play. It is fun. Yeah, I haven't played that in forever. So much easier than tennis. You know what I also haven't played in forever, and might be a tiny bit hard to take camping just because it's big is croquet. I've seen some collapsible small kits though. Have you? So maybe you could do something like that. We used to love that when we were kids, and I completely forgot about it. We haven't we don't think we have a croquet set or mom dads or anything anymore. No, I think it got partially eaten by pets like dogs. And partially run over by the lawnmower. Probably. The things that happened to your games. But that was a fun game too. Definitely a vintage game to revive if you want to get that vintage camping vibe going. Absolutely. Something else you can do while you are camping is check out local events. I love going to flea markets on all of the summer holidays. That's just kind of like my summer holiday tradition. But it's our parents' storm. Yeah, our grandparents. Yeah. Grandparents, parents, you know, you go antiquing on the summer holidays. Yes. So I love looking for a local flea, local flea market and just spending the day perusing stuff, finding old things. It does definitely kind of keep you in the memorial mindset too, as you're seeing things that belong to previous generations. Yeah, that's cool. Of course, historical sites can also be great for Memorial Day, as oftentimes they do like historical reenactments, and they really focus a lot more, I feel like, on military history on like Memorial Day than they would at other times. Um, Fort Snelling in St. Paul, Minnesota is fantastic for Memorial Day. They do all these drills and they have cannons. They have guys with these like flag signals and they show you how they used to signal across. Because like now you can just call someone on your cell phone, right? Back then, or a radio or something. Back then they didn't have that. So if you had troops that were far out, they would have a guy on a tower with these giant flags telling you what to do with the movements of them. Yes, so cool. Yeah. Now I haven't been to Fort Snelling for their Memorial Day event in many years. But the last time I was there, it was super involved, very interactive. Yeah. It was it was a a good production. They had just had a ton of really cool stuff going on to commemorate Memorial Day. Yeah. A lot of places will do community memorial services. These are typically like, you know, in a town park or something like that. And they may have speakers and um, you know, they might even have um retired military personnel who will come on and speak. And they're typically, you know, just a very patriotic event and a good way to honor the day. Another thing that comes to mind is group games. Yes. We loved these so much when we were kids. We would go camping with our cousins and all of like the bigger kids and our dad, who was probably just another one of the big kids, right? Play like Kick the Can and Capture the Flag. So fun. Yes. As I was just recently reading the rules for Kick the Can. I'm like, we did not play it like that. But you probably can like take the rules that you could find online, unless unless you know how to play these games already. Right. And just, you know, tweak them for however works and whatever is fun for your group. But a lot of times I feel like on like especially the summer holidays, people do camp with like family or friends, kind of more in a group style. It's just a great way to use up the evening hours, especially if you still have a ton of energy. I know some people are like, let's sit by the campfire. But if you're a night owl and you're a family of night owls, you might just be Jones and to do something a little bit more active and crazy. And it's a great way to meet other people around the campground and to invite them to join you. We definitely met all sorts of random people growing up camping and would play things like kick the can or capture the flag with them. Yes. Which made it so much more of like a community thing. And then also if you're being a little bit more rowdy, your neighbors don't care because they've joined in participating. Exactly. And you know, obviously we'd be done by 10, but you know, you've got from nine to ten to get all those nighttime games in. Another thing that was super epic and we have loved four years, but this started when we were kids and then has grown as we've gotten older, has been scavenger hunts. Oh yeah. And you can either A, find some online because there's lots of options for that, or B, have someone in your group who maybe doesn't want to participate write up a scavenger hunt list. That's a good idea. Themed around your location. Yes. Yep, yeah. Definitely take your inspiration for the scavenger hunt from wherever you're camping. Yeah, and some things could be like more involved, like depending on your ages. Obviously, if it's children, you want them in your campsite finding things, not wandering off in the woods. But if you're dealing with more like adults or older teenagers, you could have stuff where it's like, yeah, you are gonna have to hike to find a something or other bird and get a picture of it to get that on your list. Yeah. Yeah, you can make it super in-depth and complicated. You can get really abstract. We there's this very fun 1930s movie called My Man Godfrey, and it's about um a New Year's Eve party scavenger hunt, and they look for things like a forgotten man. Yeah. And then, and so then the character Godfrey is um, he's a hobo. Yes, during the Great Depression, and he he's the forgotten man that this girl kind of brings in. And of course, she has, you know, comes from this background of all this privilege and learns to have empathy for him by the end of the week. It's a really cute movie. Yes. But it was just, I was like, what a unique thing to put on your scavenger hunt. And so you could definitely do kind of things that could be interpreted different ways and get really creative, especially to make this more engaging for older audiences for adults and older kids. And you could even do a scavenger hunt that's like weekend long. Like whoever has the most items from a long list wins a prize at the end. That's a really fun way. We've done that before with camping groups, and that's super fun too. Yeah, at an event we went to last fall, we participated in a scavenger hunt, and I think there was like 50 items on there. Yeah. And you had the whole weekend to go out and gather the stuff, and then there were prizes at the end, which can also be super fun. You could have like, you know, each family brings a prize to contribute or something like that, so that it's not burdensome to any one, you know, person or family. Right. And then also it it kind of ups the stakes a little bit and gets the competition going. Yes, because it might be something really awesome people want. That is the list for today because we are running out the door. So we hope you will have some inspiration for the last day of your Memorial Day trip, or maybe it's the first. Yeah. Hopefully for you, it is the first. And that is our show for this week. Happy Memorial Day. Happy Memorial Day. Thanks for listening to the Camp Mindowinia Podcast. If you want to connect with us, head over to our Facebook group, Camp Mindowinia, or follow us on Instagram at Camp Mindowinia. Take us on Instagram in your camping posts for the chance to be featured on our page. And if you're enjoying the show, please follow us on your favorite podcasting platform, and we'd love it if you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or a comment on Spotify. Join us next Monday for another episode. Bye, guys!