Camp Maqua had its own appeal, but some left to attend other camps for various reasons, and a few were disenchanted and returned to the happy camp. Marybeth Morton could not recall if it was finances or if she began babysitting, but she camped the summers of 1974-75, with all great memories.

Jeananne Jakobi came from a family that was not always financially able to afford Maqua, so she and her sister went to a Girl Scout camp. Sally Allen dreamt about becoming a counselor, but her mother was remarried to a man with children and it was cost prohibitive to send them all, although she did attend from 1968-73.

One camper attended Interlochen during her “piano phase” for one summer, but the distance and the cost for her parents prevented her from returning. She went back to Maqua for two weeks during the summer of 1961, a month in 1962 and finally as a kitchen aide in 1963.

When Sarah Smith was sixteen and seventeen, she had a hiatus from Maqua and attended Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, but came back to work as a waterfront counselor after high school graduation in 1974 and 1975. She was tired of being a camper and her swimming background and experience teaching swimming at the “Y” opened the door to her new role. Her family had beachfront property in Harbor Springs and she had grown up on the water.

Sue Schiller started at Maqua as an eight-year-old in 1946 and attended for two or three years, then attended another camp until she was twelve or thirteen, but her heart came back to Maqua. She ended up staying until she graduated from Michigan State in 1960.

An aunt worked at Camp Cavell and it was closer to home and she joked that the facilities were in better shape, so Kathleen Dworman only camped at Maqua the summer of 1966.

“I don’t remember why I stopped going,” said sixties camper Tami Nagel.  “It must have been a financial issue, or maybe I thought if I stayed, it would interfere with something else in my life, but I was a healthy age to be away from home and I gained confidence in my independence within a safe and supervised atmosphere. I thought of it as a happy and well-organized camp.”

Pamela Hartz was an eight-year-old the first year she attended Maqua and went for just one week in 1966, but her following summers were two week sessions, broken only by a longer session at a co-ed camp (Maplehurst) around her twelfth summer, which was not a great experience. From thirteen to seventeen, she went to Maqua for eight weeks, evolving into a kitchen aide, junior counselor and finally a full counselor before going off to college at Western Michigan in 1975.

“I got my period at Maplehurst camp and it was a little scary, plus I did not feel at home there. I went for a month, it was further away from home and I was not comfy going through puberty there,” said Pamela. “I was not mature enough to interact with boys. I enjoyed Maqua. I didn’t have to think about makeup or what I looked like. It was too much distraction. I didn’t want to have to think about the boy-girl thing.”

Did you ever take a break from Maqua to go to another camp?