Wolverine

Second is camp wolverine (Zaxie). Opened in 1980 as well. Like Blackhawk, this camp wasn’t actually the first camp called wolverine. There were two others before it, called Wolverine North and Wolverine South, with their calls being Zap and Dixie. In 1980, after they merged the camps, they decided to make the new call “Zaxie ''. Interestingly enough, their first call in 1980 was “what?”, as they couldn’t think of a better one at the time. Wolverine is a bit different then Blackhawk. It doesn’t have a dining hall, with it instead being a “hotpack” camp, meaning meals are delivered directly to the campers’ sites in a cooler. This practice dates back to the early days of camping here, and while decades ago meals were required to be cooked by the scouts themselves, nowadays the food is delivered hot and fresh to make more time for scouts to go to merit badges and participate in activities. It also has a pool for campers as opposed to them swimming in a lake. The choice of having a pool as opposed to a lake isn’t unique to Wolverine, and many other camps did the same thing before. The reason why is a bit more interesting. So Lake Wolverine is actually a dammed lake of Cleveland creek, meaning that it’s artificial. So unlike Big Blue, the bottom is rather muddy and soft, which means its hard to swim in and there are a ton of leeches. In addition, there are many weeds. Meaning that managing a swimming area would be very tough, and so the higher-ups decided building a pool would be alot easier. But despite the lackluster swimming the lake provided, the tradeoff was it made for great boating and fishing. Invasive Northern Pike are abundant and can frequently grow to be over 20 inches long, and largemouth bass are also common. And the twisting, thin valleys of the landscape mean that boating is also fun. But aside from all of that, it has most of the same amenities as Blackhawk. Both camps do things a little differently, of course, but aside from the Dining Hall at Blackhawk, a scout’s experience is quite similar, although Wolverine is also host to a Weblo’s camp in the southern section of the camp. Like Blackhawk, Wolverine is built on the land of pervious camps, including Wolverine North and Wolverine South, and as such you can see many of the previous remains of both throughout the camp. Wolverine South’s pool has been filled in and is near the Weblo’s dining tent, and its former lodge has been made into Wolverine’s Handicraft program area.