Introducing Knuckle Rock Camp

This summer, we bought a 3-season cabin next to Lake Champlain. We named it Knuckle Rock in honor of the landscape around it. It is located at 26 Zip Place in Milton at the Everest Beach area where we have rented camps for the previous 4 summers, and where I have been coming since I was a child. This camp was built in 1920 by the Shepard family (FYI, in Vermont, lake cabins are called "camps").

The kids and I arrived in Vermont on July 9. A couple days later and prior to closing on the camp, I did a walk-through with an entourage. Nate was still in Kenya, so he missed this fun.

Neighbor Josh chatting with Pete and Mike at left,
then Janet, Mandy, Kristen and Hannah from left

The stairs up to our rock and camp

I signed the closing documents on July 12 and the kids and I moved in with Mandy as our first guest. We set up a tent to sleep on the screened-in porch because we were sure there were mice and mosquitoes aplenty. Here are our first guests:

Cousin Amy

Neighbor cousins arriving by Gator

Soon we had lots of folks on the porch for happy hour, but later when we really looked at the camp foundation we wondered if we had been in danger of breaking the porch off the camp with all that weight...

Pete, Gregg, Mandy & Janet

Documenting the first days and the cabin's condition:

Our parking spot and stair access

Stairs, slippery with mildew

Main entry and storage shed in rear; lots of leaves

Knuckle Rock behind camp

The porch after a first sweep

Kitchen from the porch

Some of the roof timbers are old pieces of dresser drawers, etc

1st bedroom before clear out (later became kids' room)

2nd bedroom before clearing out the previous owner's junk

Kitchen cabinets, mouse proof

Bathroom from main door, pre-clear-out

Kitchen from main door, pre-clear-out

Janet and Pete moved to Everest Beach in the camper for Cousins Weekend, and Nate arrived Saturday after lots of confusion with rescheduled flights, caught connections, and Ubers dropping him on Bear Trap Road where Mandy and Pete discovered him by accident...

Participants in the 2019 Cousins Weekend!

On July 14, Cora and Silas organized a Camp Everest 14th of July parade. It was an amazing introduction to our camp neighbors.

Then the camp clean out began in earnest.

Getting the water pump going from our spring to our tanks 

Checking out the situation

Removing old beds and dressers in pieces
when they don't fit out doors

 Our first campfire!

Breakfast at camp on Nate's first morning:

After at 2-week hiatus (a trip to Minnesota), we return to camp for lots more cleaning and fixing. An pretty soon the place is starting to feel like ours...

Cobweb patrol with the vacuum

Eating breakfast indoors now

Poison ivy discovered behind the portalet

First dinner cooked at camp: Mac N Cheese and hot dogs!

The family bed for the first nights 

The kitchen again

Our own stuff is replacing the previous owners' stuff now

The incinerator electric toilet is now in use

The 1st bedroom in transition as a storage room

Fixing an old table so both leaves can be lifted and extended

Everyone helps at camp

Dinner with Mandy, Skylar and Sky's friend Leo

Soon we had our first out-of-town visitors -- the Eldermires from Ithaca, Thompson cousins from Shoreham, and more!

Lucy and Wyatt on the Big Rock

Eldermires

Cousin Aliva and leopard frog

Mud monster cousins - Myla, Alivia, Cora & Silas

Nana and Papa Jensen brought the Thompson girls

Aunt Gwen and cousin Mackenzie 

The next week was filled with construction projects, beginning with one that Nate and I attempted on our own: replacing the stilts that hold up the bathroom

BEFORE

Photo credit: one of our kids

We built a safety support

This was the interior of one of the stilts! Rotten to the core

AFTER

Playing Googly Eye game

A new round of visitors started arriving, this time the entire Thompson family and the Montes, and soon followed by my parents.

Our yard became a campsite

We took most of the weekend off for beach fun, but soon many of the newcomers were drawn into our construction projects. Time to fix the porch supports!

Nate, Pete, Jimbo and I at the start

Realizing we have to rebuild the front of the structure

Brooke is not afraid of falling off the ladder on the rock

Howie joins the fun and speeds us along

 

Now we are entering a new zone of work,
also not intended when we started!

A good view of camp-on-the-rock

Before we replaced the three screen doors/walls at center left

Nate and I adding screen to our new partial porch knee wall

Meanwhile, we are cleaning and waterproofing the stairs. Thanks to Karisa and Jimbo and the kids for your help on this job! 

Removing rotting floorboards and peeking at Mandy through the wall

The new knee wall in the porch

Burning the old wood from the porch

On Nate's last night in Vermont and all of our last night at camp, we hosted a potluck/empty our fridge dinner for the remaining helpers in town

And the camp on the day we closed it up:

View from the porch

New porch knee wall and replace area of floorboards

Brooke painted a picture of the beach and left it as a gift in camp

The remains of the kids' fort

Camp from the laundry line

Camp from next to Knuckle Rock

The new front of camp

Did I mention we inherited an outhouse?

No one is using this thing

Goodbye, steps

On our last weekend in Vermont, Silas, Janet & Peter and I visited camp one last time to (properly) drain the water pump and lines, and have a beer in the yard to toast a great summer:

These people really helped us make Knuckle Rock a reality!

Cheers!

Last frog of the summer

When we were in the long (10+ month!) process of buying this camp, there were many moments when I wondered if it was a good idea. Would we use it enough? Were we doing this just for me, or for the whole family? Did we really want to spend our time working on a nearly 100-year-old camp in a swamp next to the lake?

Now that the summer is wrapped up, I can honestly say that the time we spent working on this place and making it our home-away-from-home was worth all the time and money and favors from family and friends. I hope everyone who visited us this year enjoyed it as much as we did. And I hope they know how much we appreciated their hands-on help! It was wonderful to build and brainstorm with our family and friends, and to see how everyone took on our camp projects as their own.

Our casa is your casa, folks! See you next summer at Knuckle Rock <3