At America’s Finest Summer Camps, a very important day is on the horizon: Visiting Day. On camp visiting days, summer camp campuses are inundated by eager parents bearing gifts and snacks for their campers. They then spend the day with their children, catching up on the summer and exploring the camp. The guest blog this week is dedicated to Visiting Day and was posted to the Camp Starlight blog on July 13, 2014.

For non-camp families, shopping day countdowns are usually confined to the winter holidays. For camp parents, however, there is another countdown that happens every year around mid-summer called the Visiting Day countdown. The first or second week in July, just as in winter, special greetings start arriving in the mailboxes of parents with children who are away at camp. Unlike holiday greetings adorned with images of dreidels and menorahs, these mid-summer greetings are written on camp stationary. They include requests—often very long lists—of items without which campers can’t possibly get through the rest of the summer—like more rubber bands for rainbow looms, stickers, magazines, cupcakes, candy, cookies, pizza…even sushi. If campers can dream it, they often include it on their “official” Visiting Day lists, which are sometimes signed something like this: XOXOXOXOXO (and maybe a heart or two drawn off to the side).

For any Camp Starlight parents who have lost track of time (or just haven’t checked their mail in a few days), there are merely five more days left to traverse your city, criss-crossing back and forth in order to hit all of your camper’s favorite places as you check off the list and then strategically plan how you will fit it all in the car and still have room for yourselves. Of course, campers are very grateful for their parents’ efforts and eager to see them as well. As one camper recently put it, ‘Visiting Day is the best day of camp because you get to eat all of your favorite foods AND see your parents AND there are still four more weeks of camp.’