Visit Our Meramec Adventure Learning Ranch Website
573.775.5513
1203 Meramec Wilderness Lane
Steelville, Missouri 65565
CAMPER AGES: 6-18
TYPE OF CAMP: Overnight/Sleepaway.
CAMPER GENDER(S): Coed Campers. All Boy Campers.
SPECIAL NEEDS CAMPERS: Camp for youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders: This camp was created to give your child the opportunity to break away from day-to-day living and spend a week in a supportive, exciting, safe adventure program growing in awareness and confidence. Skilled staff provide your child with incredible opportunities for enjoyment, challenge, and growth through adventure and outdoor activities.
At the same time, skilled, caring, and compassionate support personnel are also on-site and available to assist whenever needed with sensory, communication, and/or behavioral support as needed. This is an extraordinary opportunity for your child to relax, enjoy the great outdoors, and more importantly, develop awareness, self-efficacy, outdoor knowledge, and social skills.
This camp was also created with you as a parent in mind. This is an opportunity for you to relax, re-energize, and rejuvenate while knowing your child is being taken care of, having fun, and experiencing new and exciting adventures with incredible camp staff who genuinely care.
Adventure Camp for Challenging Youth: The Meramec Adventure Learning Ranch will be holding a 5-Day Summer Adventure Camp for Challenging Youth. The Ranch is one of the most extensive adventure bases in the Midwest and conducts all of the therapeutic and adventure programs for the largest residential agency in Missouri.
The purpose of Adventure Camp is to inspire the growth of character, personal efficacy, purpose, and connectedness in young men who are facing challenges in their lives and may be on the wrong path. This camp was created to give teens and their families an opportunity to refresh, reset, and grow in their personal lives and their relationships.
For many youth, a week of a high-adventure summer camp led by skilled, caring, and compassionate staff who have extensive experience serving youth in similar situations can be just what is needed.
CAMP INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES OFFERED:
Horses/Equestrian, Waterfront/Aquatics, Adventure, Wilderness/Nature, and more.
CAMP LOCATION: Located in Steelville, MO and situated on 1,200 pristine acres in the heart of the Mark Twain National Forest, the Meramec Adventure Learning Ranch is one of the most extensive high-adventure locations in the Midwest. The ranch also has an abundance of natural beauty, offering three miles of riverfront, wooded hills, fields, streams, bluffs and caves. It is both a base for challenging excitement and, at the same time, a secluded haven perfect to meet any program’s needs.
CAMP FACILITIES: For Camp for Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders, campers stay in the learning center which is complete with modern amenities
Adventure camp for Challenging Youth is a semi-primitive camping experience. Youth will be camping in individual tents or group tee-pees and cooking their meals over a campfire (with help from an expert guide). There is no electricity or running water at the campsites. Hand-pumped water and vault-style toilet facilities are in close proximity to each campsite. Bathing is done in the river and lake.
Our camp facilities also include:
10-acre recreational lake with Adventure Platform (The Blob, 150’ water zip line, rope swings, trapeze, rolling log, watermat, waterslide, & more)
28-element high challenge course
Dual 800-foot zip lines
Power pole, giant swing and vertical playground
8-element covered vertical challenge course
40-foot climbing wall
Buddy Team low ropes course
Team development course
Alpine rescue course
“The Crazy Mudder”—team mud obstacle course
3 miles of single track, flow tracks, and a pump track for Mountain Bikes
Full-court covered basketball/volleyball pavilion
Equestrian instruction and trail rides
Arts and crafts
Balance area
Play area with swings
Kayaking or canoeing in lake
Primitive skills (fire building, shelters, cordage, traps, tracking, crafts)
The Adventure Barn with Barn Swings, Rope Swings, Foam Pits, Slacklines
CAMP PROGRAM INFO: It is our belief that everyone has a unique purpose and calling in life that can be found and fulfilled through a life of Integrity, Service, Efficacy and Vision. We believe that adventure and wilderness environments provide the most inspiring and effective venue for the development of these attributes and to begin the journey to fulfilling that purpose.
Adventure and wilderness experiences are not an escape from the daily grind. They are reality where the true self always eventually surfaces, free of the walls and masks built up through time and experience. Adventure experiences, if paid attention to, can provide the lessons most needed for each person at that exact moment of their life.
This may be a time of purification, of testing, of building, of confirmation, of waking, of changing, of envisioning, or something totally different. However, whatever is needed is there for the taking, if they choose to seek it. At the Ranch, individuals, families, and teams are given the resources and opportunity to determine where they are in life, and what they truly need to continue their journey to become the men and women they were created to be.
The Ranch prides itself on its safety, competency, and professionalism. Great Circle has earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval™. The Meramec Adventure Learning Ranch is also an accredited member of and follows all standards of operation of the American Camp Association. The director is a certified Single Pitch Instructor through the American Mountain Guides Association and a Single Pitch Guide with the Professional Climbing Guides Institute.
Challenge courses are built, inspected and certified by Association of Challenge Course Technology professional vendors. All activity staff members are trained extensively and regularly to the highest standards using state of the art equipment, training, and techniques in all activities. Programming staff also have advanced backcountry/wilderness first aid training and certifications.
CAMP SESSION DATES & FEES:
Adventure Camp for Challenging Youth:
June 23th through June 27th, 2014
Young men ages 13-17
$660.00/Participant
Please Visit: Our Camp Website Link: meramecranch.great-circle.org
Camp for Youth on the Autism Spectrum:
July 21st through July 25th, 2014
July 28th through August 1st, 2014
Co-ed ages 7-18
Free to St. Louis County, MO residents
Please Visit: Our Camp Website Link: meramecranch.great-circle.org
Be sure to check each camp listing under INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES OFFERED for the range of Special Interest Activities and Programs provided by each Missouri Summer Camp or Summer Recreation Program.
Many Missouri Day and Sleepaway Camps offer professional level instruction in a wide-range of activities, from Horseback Riding, to Computers & Technology, to Performing Arts, to Leadership.
For a complete List of Missouri Special Interest Summer Camps & Summer Recreation Programs scroll down to the big black bar at the very bottom of this page.
You can go directly to any of our 2024 Special Interest Camp Directories from the list in the black bar at the bottom of this page.
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