Mountain Meadow Ranch Summer Camp

Alese Russell

I used to work for this camp. Now that I have a child of my own I felt compelled to make this post because the thought of sending her here makes my stomach turn. The meat they served the kids didn’t go through legal California inspections, it was served straight from their farm. I was hired as the arts and crafts counselor, but ended up also driving the kids in a commercial van. I went through no training to drive this vehicle, but I had an Ohio drivers license, not California - so instead of having a legally trained driver of large passenger vehicles, they cut corners and had me do it. They literally handed me the keys and said “be careful”. It was the owner, Chip Elana himself who allowed this to happen. We would drive hours away to Lassen National Park - I was 20 years old with 12 kids in the van driving through dangerous mountain roads; the thought of what could have happened still haunts me to this day. Another day trip was going boating on a lake. The kids who got to go were chosen by the water skiing counselor each time, so some kids would get to go multiple times while others didn’t get to go at all. It was a bad system of favoritism. The cherry on top of my experience at MMR was how the owner was nowhere to be found the whole time, but the day before the parents came for pickup, he would make a speech to the whole camp about how wonderful and special MMR was, and their time there. He would hound into this until the poor kids would get so emotional. It was gross to see a grown man stand up and feed all these kids so much propaganda for mom and dad to hear the next day. The people who run this place are phony scam artists who don’t care about your kids. All this info was from years ago, I’m not sure how the camp is currently run. But my advice as a parent is to stay far away from this creepy place.

Colleen Barker

My son went for the first time this year and loved it. He said on a scale of 1-10 he would give it a 20. He loved the activities, kids, counselors, and food. He grew as a person and had a wonderful time!

Jon Westfall

My wife and I have been around Mountain Meadow Ranch Camp for over 20 years. It is a wonderful camp for kids. They treat all the campers with great care and love. I would highly recommend.