Camp Stevens

I just spent a beautiful weekend with 23 other woman in the Bishop Lodge for a Woman’s Retreat. I was SOOO impressed with the friendliness of the staff, AMAZING food, beautiful and comfortable lodge. The price was right, the grounds are beautiful and I truly felt a million miles away from the hustle & bustle in San Diego. I’ve gone to Big Bear, Arrowhead and Montecito for retreats in the past and am so grateful to find this perfect GEM!

Such an amazing place! Great food and staff. Very excited to do CT next year, can’t stop raving on how much fun it was. International Odyssey is one of the best sessions to go to, even if you don’t you’ll have fun no matter what.

I have been going to Camp Stevens for various programs since 2015 and I love it! They have great outdoor education programs, wonderful facilities, and a great staff who make everyone feel welcome. The summer camp is also fantastic! I wish I could have gone there when I was a kid.

My son loves the camp; he has been on a wilderness trip with them, backpacking in the Sierras, and two summer sessions as a camper. He tends to be shy and terse, but is gregarious, outspoken, visibly laughing or working hard most of the time, loves the food (even as a picky eater at home), and comes home with a positive attitude and new friends to keep up with. Camp Stevens excels at building wonder and transformation and ever operates by consensus, recognizing and upholding the dignity of each and every human being alongside the rest of Creation. Camp is ethnically, religiously, and economically diverse and an amazing lab in how the larger world might better treat itself and one another. As a picky Episcopal priest who has chaplained two times (hence my ability to observe my son’s reaction to camp), there is no better place for me to send my son than Camp Stevens. This year, we are making the financial stretch to send him to EPIC– a two week long session and expecting him to continue to be epically transformed by camp and the staff.

My kids love the camp. This will be our 6^th year sending them. My son says it is his favorite place on earth. Food is amazing. Activities are perfect for the kids to get away, unwind and unplug.
Great conference and retreat facilities too.

The camp is overall very good. But there are some issues. They don’t supply good quality drinking water to fill you water bottles with, which is very important when hiking and doing other camp activities. Instead, they make you use a hose. The other issue is that the cabins aren’t very clean. There are mouse traps in the middle of the walkways.

I spent every summer from age 9 to age 21. I spent it as a camper and a counselor! This place has truly changed my life! It has taught me about never ending friendships, trust, healthy clean living, teamwork, and so many other things! I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my summers doing anything else.
They have a wonderful approach to what it means to be appart of God’s creation by introducing you to new people and how to work together as well as what it means to take care of the earth.
Parents! If you are looking for a place to send your kids for a week this summer, you couldnt make a better choice than Camp Stevens!

Our Brownie troop just had our retreat at Camp Stevens. It was fantastic. Our troop is a little on the high maintenance side– so a traditional camping experience wasn’t really an option for us. Camp Stevens was fantastic! Our cabin was spotless — we had a large common area equipped with a large screen TV, granite top kitchen area and plenty of games/​puzzles to occupy our girls and 4 attached rooms with 6 beds each. Camp Stevens personnel was amazing — they were so helpful with everything and available at all times. Their food was all organic and most of it was farmed at their facility. They had fantastic gluten free bread and ample vegetarian/​vegan options. The bread was the best– homemade daily at Camp Stevens. Their facilities were ample — we used the pool, went on a hike, had a campfire, helped collect eggs from their chicken coop, etc. Amazing!
We will definitely come back again! Thanks Camp Stevens!

I love Camp Stevens. It’s such a nice place to have a retreat and to get away from the Noisy hustle of San Diego. They have a ton of activities to do and are really close to downtown Julian in case you need any essentials.
I stayed here for a spiritual retreat and they let us go all out. Workshops, dances, performances. Every year the staff partakes in giving a performance. Last year it was «Call Me Maybe». This year they did «Thrift Shop» by Macklemore. It was great!
They also grow a ton of their own organic food and raise their own chickens. They emphasize how much they focus on the eco-​friendly way the farm and how they really keep a good intention of nature in their practice.
P. S. Thanks for the salsa soup ;-) LOL!
Thanks Camp Stevens! Keep doing your thing! :-)

I spent a week at Camp Stevens every summer from ages 10 to 15 and then worked as a counselor a few summers during high school… man, what a place! Some of my most cherished memories came from there. Programs focus on outdoor fun, non-​competitive recreation, encouraging kids to challenge themselves in a nurturing and supportive environment. Hiking, overnights camp-​outs, singing, and community, grounded in an Episcopal affiliation that is present, but certainly not overbearingly religious. The setting is idyllic. Food is great, and kids get a hands on look at local food production in the organic garden just behind the kitchen. A week there is a week well spent, at any age. Camp Stevens is a gem.

My 8 year old son just got back from Camp Stevens yesterday — he loved it!
We live 2.5 hours away, and I was looking for something my kids could do this summer. My 6 year old is too young, but my oldest absolutely loves the out of doors and I knew it was time for him to experience camping (he will not get that experience in this family — where «roughing it» is the Holiday Inn).
He goes to an Episcopal school here and we learned about Camp Stevens through the school newsletter. I did my diligent investigation and found Camp Stevens to be a good ‘olé fashioned summer camp with hiking, camp fires, and all of that other stuff…
With excitement and anticipation, we all awaited the arrival July 11^th — Day One! We drove (and drove. and drove…) through the rolling hills and into the quaint, historical town of Julian. We blinked twice and were out the other side of town — another mile wound us to the entrance. It could have been from a movie… a little narrow, paved driveway with a wooden bridge, covered in arched trees — and up into the hill. We arrived, put the car in park, and Zach came up to the window to greet us. In his adorable Irish accent, he welcomed us to Camp Stevens, showed us where we can go to register and he took my son’s bags to his cabin. Zach is 22 years old and here for the Summer!
Everyone was just as nice and warm as they could be. My son was as excited as he was nervous… scared that he didn’t know anyone and hoped he would make friends. I, of course, was excited but nervous about… well, everything! That spiders or rattlesnakes would find their way into his sleeping bag, that he would fall from a tree or something… or he would not acclimate to the culture shock.
I was surprised to learn (I guess this isn’t so out of the ordinary) that the cabins have only 2 walls! They are open-​air! And when we got there, I discovered the little cots don’t come complete with sheets, pillows and blankets. They use their sleeping bags for their covers! Not at all a big deal, but I just was ignorant about all of this, and therefore a little surprised.
Soon, my son went with his group to play Frisbee and tag. I stayed and watched him nicely assimilate into the fun. I took about 180 pictures and was the last parent to leave. When I did say goodbye, he barely came over to hug and kiss us. Back to his game!
The next 5 days were left with a happiness and contentment inside — knowing he was having a ball (but secretly worrying about those rattlesnakes, spiders and bears)! I wrote him 3 letters and got 3 from him… I checked the mailbox religiously, nearly mowing down the mailman every day!
Anyway…Friday finally rolled around and we went to go pick him up. When he saw us, he lit up and ran over to us. He was, well, filthy — says he showered twice all week… Lol…but was as happy as he could be! He hugged all of his new little friends goodbye. He told us about every-​little-​detail the whole way home.
He is actually a little depressed about not getting to see his friends anymore. He had such a ball and made me promise he could go back next year… and the year after that… and the year after that…

Like most parents we were always looking for healthy fun activities for our kids, especially during the lonnnnnnggggggg summer break from school. One of our daughter’s friends invited her to join her at Camp Stevens for a week (probably about 4^th grade.)Little did we know that this would be the start of a life long relationship for our whole family with Camp Stevens. Both of our daughters attended many weeks as summer campers, then went on to be trained as junior counselors and eventually full counselors. Then they each worked on summer staff. One even met her future husband there (though it was a few years before they actually wed.) We have attended family retreats, adult retreats, planning retreats. And now we are planning to send the first of our grandkids next summer! Our kids ended up with more and better quality friendships from their fellow campers than they ever did from junior high or high school. And we know that the values that we taught our kids — honesty, integrity, self reliance, caring for the environment, respecting one’s body and our fellow man — were only cemented by their attendance at Camp Stevens. We highly recommend it!