Category: Alumni

October has to be one of the best months of the year! The leaves begin to change color, the weather gets colder, and most importantly the MLB playoffs start. While watching this year’s stressful yet exciting MLB playoffs, I can’t help but think of some of the memories I’ve made at Towering Pines. During my the summers as a camper, I always remember walking to free swim, and seeing Hal Morningstar sitting on the waterfront benches wearing his Detroit Tigers […]

I am the oldest sibling out of 4, and one of the many things we have in common is that we all went to Camp Towering Pines or Woodland. This post is not just about my siblings, but it is about my whole family. We have always remained close after we had to move to a different country, abandoning our lives to start a new one with no family but Mom, Dad and my brothers and sister around.  Our extended family […]

JoAnne and Kim Co-Ed Show 1991 Because I moved on from Woodland/Towering Pines after a 12-year stint as counselor, program director, waterfront director, and eventually assistant director, and then returned after a 14 year hiatus, I am often asked by fellow alumni why I chose to come back.  In the time I was away, I as the associate director at a much larger all-girls camp in the mountains of Western North Carolina full-time for 8 years. There are 60+ camps in three neighboring counties […]

John Jordan, founder of Towering Pines Camp, recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Camping and was honored at a banquet sponsored by SCOPE Midwest (Summer Camp Opportunities Promote Education).  JoAnne Jordan Trimpe represented the Jordan family and read the following tribute to her father’s life at the ceremony. First, those people who receive lifetime achievement awards are the long distance runners of our species. They pass you in the streets, we see them at work, in our churches, and we […]

November is a notoriously happy time for a lot of reasons, namely the first snowfall, imminent holidays and promise of winter break in less than a month. But as a winter chill enters the air, it also brings about a certain nostalgia, because it feels like camp has never been further away. At least while it was still warm out, we could pretend like Eagle River was still within our reach, as if we had only just left the Northwoods […]