Silver Lake

Another big memory from childhood, was the week we would spend each summer at Silver Lake, staying in the Stockton family camp there. My mother captured this memory in one of her memoir drafts. 

Mom's Vacation

Dennis worked at Stockton Recreational Camp when he was a teenager, so we knew about the camp even though we lived in Davis.  It is situated near Kit Carson Pass next to Silver Lake.  It’s the perfect place for a mom to take a vacation!  Activities are organized for the children during the day, and at dusk, everyone gathers at the campfire to sing.  After that, the lodge is open for bingo or folk dancing or a movie.  Then it's off to the “ cabins- with- just- beds” for the night, with a large bath house down the path. 
        But the greatest mom delight of the camp is breakfast lunch and dinner served in the lodge every day!
       Starting when Jennifer was three, we managed the expense of a week at the lake every year.  Sometimes my sisters came with their families, sometimes cousins came.  We made friends with other campers who would return at the same times we did.  Even when we started traveling through the West in our Volkswagen camper, we would end the summer at Silver Lake for mom’s sake!
       The first years, I had to keep an eye on Jennifer, but the boys had free run of the camp and also  went on hikes and fishing with an adult or two. Jennifer loved playing in the dirt at my feet while I lounged in a chair to catch up on my reading.  She was attached to a piece of blanket ribbon and kept leaving it here and there.  People would bring me a piece they found, dirty and bedraggled. They didn’t know I had packets of the ribbon in my suitcase, and was supplying her with clean snips of it!
       All too soon, Jennifer was old enough to tag along with her brothers or her dad, and I would have two or three hours of uninterrupted time to myself.  Then the large bell would ring and we would all get together at the lodge to eat.  And there were no dishes to do either! 

Judging from this video, it seems like the camp has remained pretty much how my Mom remembers it.