Ellen Rutan and Jim Ewen visited on Wednesday (8/20/08) and what a gorgeous day it was. Without really thinking about it, I found myself scheduled to give not one, not two, but three Castle tours. Fortunately Jim and Ellen love camp, fit in instantly, and are incredibly knowledgable about the Castle for our Forstmann history. So we did these three together. I'll admit that we got a little goofy by the very end of these sessions and we began telling some ridiculous and apparently believable semi-spooky stories about the Castle. (I generally do not tell such and am always a little sorry when I do. But we had fun and the kids absolutely loved it all.) At the bottom of this entry, you'll see a video clip of Jim telling one such tale.We had some time to see the 2008 campers and staff do their amazingly loud and together thing in the dining hall after lunch, took a tour of the Wellness Center and saw the dialysis unit in action, and walked through Lakeview Lodge (J. and E. were amazed by this gorgeous building).
They stayed overnight at the Roxbury Inn in Roxbury, which is a few miles beyond Margaretville off Route 28. The manager at the Roxbury is our beloved Leslie Black. I drove over there yesterday morning (snapping the pics of early-turning leaves on trees in the previous entry on the steep hill after Slide Mountain) and met Jim, Ellen, and Leslie for breakfast at a cute little cafe on Roxbury's main street. Jim was first here at Frost Valley in 1959; I and Ellen in the early 60s and Leslie in the mid-60s...so we have had many years together, a huge cast of camp characters to talk about, and enough affection for each other to exceed the size of the cute little Catskills town where we spent our sunny morning.
