Rockbridge

Over the holiday weekend, I went with a group of guys from my church to the Rockbridge Men's Weekend.

Rockbridge is a Young Life camp near Goshen, Virginia, about fifty or so miles west of Charlottesville. We left Ashburn shortly before 3 p.m. on Friday. We had a BSC along the way (Brief Stop for Coffee at Starbucks) and arrived at the camp just after 6 p.m. Registered and picked out our bunks then headed to dinner.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend! I'm really glad I went. Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning there were sessions in the meeting hall. Each session started out with The Riverman giving us funny lessons about being a man. Then the band would lead us in singing some songs of worship. Then we'd get to hear the guest speaker. The main guest speaker who led most of the sessions was Bill Paige, and he was an AWESOME, inspiring, truly remarkable speaker. If you're interested, you can check out a video of Bill Paige here on the YoungLife page. The video is more geared toward the youth group audiences, but it certainly gives you a feel for his style of speaking and his enthusiasm.

The band that played the music for us during worship was absolutely incredible. They were extremely talented musicians, and all the music was fantastic. They said they came from a church in Richmond. They should be Christian recording artists if they aren't already. I actually kept wondering if they already are some famous contemporary Christian band and just weren't introducing themselves that way because they didn't want to draw undue attention to themselves or detract from the purpose of the weekend or Bill Paige's speaking.

When we weren't in the meeting hall for the worship and seminars, there was a lot of stuff to do around the camp.

We played frisbee-golf on their 18 "hole" course.

This is the first "tee." Each "tee" consisted of a rectangle on the ground from which you had to throw the frisbee.

Each "hole" was really a wooden post with the number on a blue sign. You just have to hit the post with your frisbee.

Then some of us did the ropes course.

Gearing-up for the ropes.

On the course.

The staff members kept saying "don't look down." Not sure why.

At the end of the course, you come down via a swing. I was perfectly fine thoughout the ropes course until I got to the swing. It took me a minute to work up the nerve to scoot myself off that ledge. I sent my camera down before I did the swing so one of my friends could take this picture of me swinging down.

Blunoz on the swing.

Totally random aside: Does anyone know why my camera keeps making those thump noises on the audio when I take movies like the one above? If I knew what was causing it, then I would try to stop it from happening.

There's also a rock-climbing wall, a gym, basketball courts, hiking trails. In the summertime they have a lake with a zip-line, but the lake was drained while we were there this weekend. Unfortunately, since we were only there for the weekend, we didn't have enough free time to try out all the different activities they had to offer.

I love autumn.

It was a great blessing to share this weekend with the guys from church down at Rockbridge. I hope I can go again next year, too.