If you sent your child to a camp that prohibits phones and junk food, chances are they wouldn’t want to return the next year.

But at Carbon County Conservation Camp, kids look forward to going back year after year, even though they discourage electronics and serve healthy meals and snacks.

“They stay up here Monday morning through Friday afternoon and explore the park, go whitewater rafting, and go home hopefully educated, and tired, and a little more comfortable being in the outdoors,” said Susan Gallagher, chief naturalist at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center.

This week, 28 area kids between ages 8-13 traveled to Camp Shehaqua in Hickory Run State Park to take part in the annual camp. They hiked, rafted and learned about the diverse ecosystems that can be found in Pennsylvania.

With forests, meadows and waterfalls, Hickory Run is a great example of that diversity. The boulder field is almost unlike any other place on earth. Formed during an ice age, boulder field was once part of a ridge that fractured into rocks due to freezing and thawing.

Counselors told campers how it’s illegal to graffiti the rocks or stack them, and how to recognize areas where humans have dug up rocks as opposed to ones that have shifted naturally.

“We want the kids to know and understand the history of it. We want them to explore it safely. And we want to introduce them to this and all the other areas in the park so they can get a feel for what’s out there,” said Caleb Knepper, a camper-turned counselor and a junior at Panther Valley High School.

Not only do campers come back year after year. Almost every counselor once attended Conservation Camp as a child, and decided to come back to continue the tradition. Knepper said he enjoyed the hands-on experience of camp as a kid. Now he’s focused on making sure the kids are safe and having a good time.

“I think it’s a really good learning experience for kids. It helps them contextualize everything,” he said.

Knepper said the camp does a great job of showing kids that there are things more fun than just hanging out indoors. Kids usually forget about their phones shortly after arriving at camp.

“They’re definitely more active. Once they’re gone for about a day, kids just forget about them,” Knepper said.

Camper Sean Moore, who is entering seventh grade at Tamaqua Area Middle School, spends a lot of time on the computer, just like any other kid. But he returns to camp year after year because of the friends he’s made, and it gets him excited to learn.

“They have really fun things like rafting to do,” he said.

Fellow camper Elle Maley travels each year from Central Pennsylvania to participate. She said it’s nice to see friends from camp and have fun outdoors.

“We do a lot of fun activities, we go rafting, we swim,” she said.

Deep in the woods of Hickory Run, campers can see a healthy environment at work, so when they return home they can recognize environmental problems, Gallagher said.

“We think the outdoors is a fantastic classroom. We think this is a great place not only to learn about nature but about human impacts on nature — and the things kids can do themselves or with their families to improve their environment locally or globally,” she said.