Dear Canyon Creek Families,
We hope that 2023 is off to a great start for everyone! With a new year always comes new challenges but also new opportunities. At Canyon Creek, we have been posed with a big challenge but are also excited for the opportunity that it brings.
We will start with the good news – Canyon Creek Summer Camp will still be open for an exciting Summer 2023. The new announcement is that we will have a temporary home for this year that we are confident you will still love. Here is the back story:
As you all know, we sold the Canyon Creek property last year to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). While the sale of the land was bittersweet, we were able to have another amazing summer together, and we were comforted by the fact that we negotiated a leaseback for future summers. However, as we began to work with LAUSD toward the end of 2022, they laid out their new plans to renovate and update parts of camp. While this is of course a good thing, we started to lose confidence that they would have the renovations completed in time for Summer 2023. After many meetings and conversations, to our extreme disappointment, and quite honestly, to our shock, they told us the site would not be ready for us.
With our heads and hearts in a tizzy, we spent our holiday weeks reaching out to our camp community to see if we could find a location that would provide the same exceptional experience you have all come to expect from Canyon Creek. We were thrilled to connect with our friends at The Oaks – a retreat center literally a few miles down the road from us that has always had a great reputation and we have considered top-notch. We quickly toured their site and it became strikingly clear that if we had to find a place to temporarily call home, this is it. We knew that our families would be pleased if we could operate Canyon Creek from The Oaks.
The site has all of the classic programming Canyon Creek has – fields, courts, archery, swimming pool, ropes course, skatepark, game room, acres of land, cabins with air conditioning and indoor bathroom facilities, and a separate CIT “village” with its own dedicated campfire. Plus, it has some new and exciting programs that Canyon Creek doesn’t have such as a huge indoor theater, a laser tag arena, a paintball course, a newly-renovated dining hall, a great camp store, and several multi-use indoor spaces. The bottom line is that some things at The Oaks are better than Canyon Creek and some things at Canyon Creek are better than The Oaks. But, there are enough things at The Oaks that are equal to (or better than) Canyon Creek that we are very pleased with this solution.
We know that nothing will ever replace Canyon Creek, but at The Oaks the majority of programming that Creekers have loved and expected for more than two decades will be the same. We will still have tournament, lake days, lip sync, chill campfire, hilarious songs and skits, outdoor education, hiking trails, games, sports, arts and crafts, and so much more. And, as long as California weather cooperates, we will still offer the lake program that is a true camper favorite.
For the past 23 years we have said that Canyon Creek is more than just where we lay our heads. It’s the people, the individual attention, the positivity, the purposeful programming, and the “Creeker Way” that make it so special. All of those things will be with us no matter where we are. For our returning campers, we know this will be a change/adjustment, but we are confident that the Canyon Creek way of life will permeate our new site at The Oaks, and we are all excited for this new opportunity.
We know many of you will have questions so we are extending our early tuition discount until February 1, 2023 to be able to respond to each of you personally. One thing we know you will want to see are photos of the new site. You can check out a few photos below, and our team will be going up in the coming weeks to share more with you. In addition, we are working on putting together an Open House when the weather warms up.
We are confident that you and your kids will have the same positive experience as always, and we look forward to another amazing summer together!
Internal Facility Pics Here.
Peace, Love & Camp,
Daryl, Nathalie, Nick & Jeff
