Housing and Transportation

Summer Camp Staff Housing Options

Counselor Greets Campers off the Morning Bus

Since Roughing It is a day camp, both campers and staff return to their own homes each night. Staff often live with their family, but may choose to locate apartments/rooms to rent for the summer months. Staff are responsible for having their own transportation to get them to the camp site they work at, with some accommodations available for staff who live in San Francisco.

Transportation

Camp Site Location: During the summer, our camp site and office are located in Lafayette and our swimming site is located in Moraga. Most staff who work in program positions, and some of our group counselors, will need to commute every day during the summer to our camp/office in Lafayette/Moraga.  

Transportation from a Roughing It Bus Stop: Roughing It also provides bus transportation for our campers from San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Lamorinda, Walnut Creek, Danville, and San Ramon. Some staff may be assigned as a “bus captain”, and will take the bus instead of driving to the camp/office in Lafayette/Moraga. Roughing It will try to assign captains to a bus that is closest to where they live, to minimize their commute, but this is not guaranteed. In addition, staff who are bus captains will still need to commute once a week to our Lafayette camp office on their Pro-Hour training day (Wednesday or Thursday).

San Francisco Staff: We understand that a commute from San Francisco to the east bay each day is not feasible, and so we will normally assign San Francisco staff as bus captains so they can take the Roughing It bus from San Francisco each day. Keep in mind, we do not run buses during our Staff Training week, so San Francisco staff will need to either drive themselves, carpool, or take BART. We can arrange a shuttle to bring staff to our training center in Lafayette from BART.

Junior Counselors: Junior counselors have to option of either commuting to the Lafayette Reservoir or taking the bus.  We do not run buses during Staff Training week, so Junior Counselors will need to arrange transportation to our camp office in Lafayette this week.

Housing Options in the Bay Area

Housing in the Bay Area tends to be on the expensive side, but there are several options for short stay housing needs. Communities nearest Roughing It are Concord, Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco.

Berkeley is about 15-25 minutes from camp, and seems to have the largest number of affordable summer housing options available due to proximity to the UC Berkeley campus. Rental costs vary. Beware of less expensive options you may discover on your own, as these “better deals” are sometimes misleading. Take the time to understand all rental agreements and costs.