With kayaking, horseback riding, hiking, rappelling, rock climbing, arts and crafts, and, of course, bounding from the Blob, Gabby Mitton’s gush about her favorite activity at Camp St. Bernard comes like a curve ball.

“We learn a lot about manners,” said Gabby, one the most mannerly 8-year-old summer campers you’re ever likely to meet.

“And we pray,” she added, her infectious smile getting bigger with each bite of cheeseburger and as she talked about her weeklong stay on the campus of St. Bernard Abbey.

“I learned a lot of manners — and ceramics,” added 10-year-old William Remmert, a camper from Tuscaloosa who, like Gabby, signed up for the overnight camping experience.

For four weeks in June, the Camp St. Bernard offers both day and overnight options — including the chance to make new friends and become part of the St. Bernard camp family. Overnight campers stay in the residence halls used by the students at St. Bernard Prep during the academic year.

“I know a lot of people say how this or that is a family, but I can attest that every single word they say about this place is true,” said Ian Sidley, a camp counselor from Florence.

He should know. Sidley first attended Camp St. Bernard in 2006, when he was 6, and he never truly left. He’s been a counselor at the camp since 2017 — three years before he graduated from St. Bernard Prep with a high school diploma in 2020.

Today the pull of the St. Bernard family is strong, but Sidley was at first unsure whether he wanted to attend a Catholic high school. It came down to “lunch with a monk,” he said.

Now in college, Sidley counts as one of his best friends a past classmate who is one of the Benedictine monks at St. Bernard Abbey.

And the family grows.

That’s the way it’s been for camp director John Arndt. An assistant principal at Saint Rose Academy in Birmingham during the year, Arndt rejoins the St. Bernard family during the summers, something he’s been doing for years.

By the time Arndt began his role, first as assistant director with the camp in 2006, he was already familiar with the school and abbey. He met his wife while they were both students in high school at St. Bernard, and for years they worked together at the summer camp. His reason for coming back year after year is uncomplicated.

“It’s totally St. Bernard,” he said. “It’s family.”

Well, that and the food, Arndt said while flipping burgers during a camp cookout on June 16.

“The campers say these burgers are the best they’ve ever had,” he said. “I tell them they’re just starving — we run wide open all day.”

Gabby and William, two wide-open campers whose metabolisms keeps them in constant motion, agreed as they snagged cheeseburgers.

“The food is really, really good,” William said.

“The pancakes,” said Gabby, “are so good.”

But good food aside, Sidley, the counselor from Florence, offered a another reason for continuing to come back to the camp annually. His father had graduated from the school in 1991 before joining the Navy, and the roots of St. Bernard run deep in his family.

“Camp here for me were some of the happiest times of my life,” he said. “Being able to have a little vacation with loving, caring people. … And, what Mr. Arndt does here is amazing.”

Amazing appeared to be the uniform consensus among campers during the June 16 cookout. From jumping off the Blob — a huge floating ramp positioned on the campus lake — to celebrating weekly Mass as a camp family, both Catholic and non-Catholic campers said they wait anxiously for summer to come so that they can return to Camp St. Bernard.

Sidley, veteran camper and now-camp leader, said that it was easy feel that way.

“St. Bernard taught me responsibility and how to capitalize on opportunities,” he said. “It’s led me to many, many places.”

But at the end of the day, those places for many people seem to lead right back to St. Bernard.

“This place will always be home for me,” Sidley said.