The boys already knew The Skipper and Sam from previous years at the Aloha camps, so it was no surprise that as soon as they arrived they were put to work mowing and painting and building. Evenings there were dances in the assembly hall with music (and girls) from the local community. They put on great plays, and recited poetry, Shakespeare, or passages from Dickens from the living room stage. There were feasts thanks to Old George, who had been a cook in the civil war and a vaudevillian sometime after. The boys laid a tennis court, and Sam judged matches from a concrete bench from which she could just see the lake.
But the heart of the Adventurers Camp (as it had been advertised) was lakeside. Under the enthusiastic (and undoubtedly authoritarian) eye of The Skipper, in just a few weeks the boys built The Aladdin, a lateen-rigged, 5 masted schooner-of-sorts which, like the Bakers themselves, defied categorization. Then those adventurers, those beautiful pirate boys, hoisted the rainbow sails and explored Lake Champlain - sometimes for weeks at a stretch - from Canadian waters down to Fort Ticonderoga. The ship was the talk of the papers both local and as far away as New York City. At one point a fellow named Walt Disney even stopped by for a cruise. And so, for eleven glorious summers, the Bakers made their dream come true. But war loomed once again...
The exploits of the camp are told far better (and with pictures) in the book "The Pirates of Dingley Dell" by Brett Corbin, so I will let his work speak for us both (if interested I can pass you his contact information).
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