summer camp

2025 Camp Prep

We are heading at mach 3 towards an amazing 14th season. Never have we had this many campers signed up by February! It has been great to speak with so many new and returning families and help make their summer plans come together. That said…it feels like I have so much to do before we open!

First off…

It’s still winter here! It has been years since our lake froze this thoroughly and (before the recent warm temps this week) we have been absolutely buried in snow. So I’ll have to chill on my property to-do list for now.

But elsewhere in camp prep we are blazing forward. We are half way towards completing our staff with some amazing new talent coming from near and far to coach our campers. I also searched the country and hired a passionate, funny and friendly new chef, Sandra, who I am so excited for you all to meet. Add to that new equipment en route from Supra, Phase 5, Liquid Force, Radar, Mission and Follow so that our campers and staff get the newest and best gear this summer. Our 2025 camp license has been sorted, our fire permit issued and our fishing license applied for and, for the 17th year in a row, I have a clean background check and can continue running summer camps in New Hampshire!

Over the next few weeks my #1 task is to find about three more coaches to join our team. We have had so many applications this year but are selective in who we take on. (If you know anyone 18-24 who fits the bill please send them our way and we will hook you up with our referral bonus if we hire them.) As soon as the snow is gone I will be tackling cabin maintenance, landscaping and a few small projects to make the place look perfect.

Helping me, as always, are my 7 and 8 year old boys, Finn and Kai, and my trusty old doggo Tuckerman.

Hit me up anytime with camp questions and I’ll try to keep this page updated as we get closer to camp.

2024 season recap

Summer 2024 was our lucky 13th season for so many reasons. We were lucky to have amazing campers who engaged with our program to learn, improve and have a blast. We were lucky to have an unreal staff of coaches who managed to have their best summers while always putting our campers first. We were lucky to have a new partnership with Supra for some wildly awesome boats. We were lucky to have perfect weather and crystal clear water. But, most of all, we continue to be lucky for 13 years to have the support of our camp families who send their kids to the middle of nowhere NH to play on the lake with us and keep Water Monkey going strong.

Here are some of our favorite pics from the season:

Now for some fun stats from our 13th season:

  • 7 weeks of camp from mid-June to mid-August.

  • 94.44% full (119 spaces filled out of 126 with 107 unique campers)

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.12 weeks at camp

  • Average number of campers each week was 17

  • Campers were 70.6% boys and 29.4% girls

  • Average camper age was 13.89

  • 39% new campers and 61% returners

  • Campers came from 11 states (CO, CT, IL, MA, ME, MN, NH, NJ, NY, PA and TX) as well as Italy and Spain

  • 5 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

  • Average coach age was 20.4

  • 6 sizes of Liquid Force wakeboards for our campers to have the perfect ride (along with one pair of size 14 boots for two campers with some giant feet!)

  • We used and abused around 40 Phase 5 wakesurf boards this season (12 models)

  • 2,800 water balloons were hurled during Monkey Ball

  • 3,276 homemade meals and 910 desserts served up lakeside

  • 300 hours of private lessons on our boats and client boats

  • 8,001 pictures and videos uploaded and shared with our camp families

  • 16,000 visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com in the past year (14,000 unique) spent an average of 83 seconds on the site and engaged 27,919 page views

  • Winterizing our property took 19 gallons of antifreeze

  • 675 hours logged on our two Supra boats

  • 36.5 hours spent keeping the boats shiny!

  • Our boats had 14 motor oil changes

  • We had 1 wrecked propeller due to low water at the boat launch (2 props in 13 seasons)

  • 4,389.620 gallons of premium marine fuel burned by our boats producing roughly 41 metric tons of CO2 (90,000 pounds). We offset this pollution through a donation to CoolEffect.org of $765.82 which has been our charity of choice for over 11 years.

  • We have now offset roughly 455 metric tons (over 1 million pounds) of CO2 since 2012!

I am so excited for our 2025 season and to welcome back our campers. Always feel free to email, call, text or write with camp questions, to sign up for next summer or to just say hi!

-Evan

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Top 5 things to do in New Hampshire while dropping your child off at camp

I have been operating summer camps in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire since 2008 and one of the fun parts of my job is helping our camp families with the logistics of camp drop-off and pick-up…seriously I love this stuff!

Way back before advanced NAV systems on our phones and in our cars ‘logistics’ meant providing step by step directions to camp from wherever a family was driving from. Finding camp is now the easy part but beyond getting here there is so much more that I often help families out with.

The Lakes Region of NH is centrally located in our state just about 2 hours north of Boston and 4 hours north of New York City. Within the Lakes Region are…tons of lakes!…as well as access to mountains, fun towns and small cities, rivers, shopping and more. From hotels and restaurants to adventures and leisure activities here are the top 5 things that I recommend during a quick trip to NH for camp.

  1. Get out on the lake!

    • What trip to NH in the summer would be complete without time spent at our gorgeous, pristine lakes? Some families like Lake Winnipesaukee (the ‘big’ lake) for its variety of hotels, restaurants, boat rentals and general wild vibe. From big hotels in Meredith or Laconia to AirBnBs in Moultonborough, Wolfeboro and Alton there are choices and price points for any visitor. You can do anything on Winni including rent a boat or a jetski to navigate the thousands of acres of water, hop on a guided scuba dive to explore a wreck, post up at a beach bar for food, drinks and people watching or just relax on the shore and soak up the sun. If the big lake isn’t your thing (it’s definitely not mine) head to a smaller water body like Newfound, Crescent, Squam, Winnisquam, Bow or Merrymeeting where the pace is slower. On smaller lakes there is more of an opportunity to enjoy watersports like waterskiing, wakeboarding and wakesurfing or non-motorized options like Stand Up Paddleboarding, kayaking and canoeing. Basically there is a lake in NH for whatever you and your family are into and wherever you choose will let you unplug and relax just steps from crystal clear water.

  2. Hit the mountains for some hiking!

    • Just up the road from the Lakes Region are the White Mountains, a range that spans the central/north portion of the state and encompasses dozens of peaks. Some are easily summited in a couple of hours while others may involve multi-day treks. A great jumping off point for some hiking exploration is North Conway, NH, our adventure hub. A solid itinerary here for a few days could include hiking one of our 4,000 footers, floating the Saco River, hitching a ride to the top of the notch on the Cannon Aerial Tram, driving the famously windy and scenic Kancamangus Highway and enjoying a beverage at a local brewery. Cheers!

  3. Chill out near the ocean.

  4. Bike!

  5. Stay in our ‘big’ city

    • If getting outdoors isn’t your thing don’t worry, we have a couple ‘cities’ too! Just an hour from camp is Manchester, NH, where you can take in some culture, do a bit of sales tax free shopping, catch a baseball game or a concert and enjoy a little night life on Elm St.

Hopefully this little list helps you out in your NH trip plans so that it’s not just your camper having fun this summer!

-Evan

2023 season recap

We are happy to report that the 2023 summer (our 12th season!) was the best one yet and it is all because of our amazing campers and the greatest staff in camp history. We witnessed wild watersports progression with campers achieving so many of their goals while also thoroughly enjoying swim parties, rope swing breaks, intense games on the field, SUP voyages and countless meals, snacks and desserts. I hope that all of our campers went home tired and happy with new skills and lasting friendships.

After years of running at capacity our goal for 2023 was to slow it all down. Having a full camp is great but the hustle and pressure to give everyone enough time behind the boat meant always watching the clock. This summer we aimed for 16-18 campers each week instead of 20 and it made a massive difference in our program with campers and coaches not only getting more time behind the boats but also more flexibility to do other stuff like pull ten campers at once for over an hour, surf bowls, extended swim breaks, bonus beach time and, maybe, occasionally sleeping in on a rainy morning.

Here are some fun stats from our 12th season:

  • 8 weeks of camp from mid-June to mid-August.

  • 81.875% full (131 spaces filled out of 160 with 118 unique campers)

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.1 weeks at camp

  • Average number of campers each week was 16.375

  • Campers were 73% boys and 27% girls

  • Average camper age was 13.55

  • 48% new campers and 52% returners

  • Campers chose to wakeboard 40%, wakesurf 50%, waterski 10%

  • Campers came from 10 states (CT, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA and TX) as well as Italy and Mexico

  • 6 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

  • Average coach age was 20.33

  • 3,200 delicious meals served by Chef Cher

  • 55 five-gallon buckets of non-meat food scraps diverted from the landfill and fed to our local pigs

  • About 175 hours of private lessons on our boats and client boats

  • 1 retired Sunday River chairlift won at auction for charity (our winning bid was $800)

  • 9,040 pictures and videos uploaded and shared with our camp families

  • 21,000 visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com in the past year (18,000 unique) spent an average of 82 seconds on the site and engaged 36,000 page views

  • Winterizing our property took 20 gallons of antifreeze

  • 577 hours logged on our two boats plus 23 hours on loaner boats after our new boat blew and engine!

  • Our boats had 15 motor oil changes, 2 transmission fluid changes and 1 blown engine

  • 3,636.269 gallons of premium marine fuel burned by our boats producing roughly 32.27 metric tons of CO2 (71,132 pounds). We offset this pollution through a donation to CoolEffect.org which has been our charity of choice for over 10 years for carbon offsets.

  • We have now offset roughly 410 metric tons of CO2 since 2012!

Before we wrap this up here is a little gift…a Fall Recipe from Chef Cher.

We have some big plans for camp in 2024 and we sincerely hope to see you next summer!

Always feel free to email, call, text, message, write or visit to say hello.

-Evan