I went to an adult summer camp for women. Staying up late chatting in our bunks like kids showed me you're never too old to make new friends.

• Jess Storiale, a career coach, 31, went on a women-only summer camp for adults to meet new people.

• She slept in a cabin with 9 bunk mates and made friends she will see back at home in New York City.

• This is her story as told to writer Kim Schewitz.

Last month I went on a weekend-long, women-only summer camp with 200 strangers in their 20s and 30s in rural Pennsylvania. I was hoping to meet a few cool people and get out of New York City, but I ended up re-experiencing some of the joys of childhood and realizing that you are never too old to make new friends.

I am 31 and run a coaching business called Reflect Your Light. I moved to New York City from Denver in 2020 with my husband and although I managed to make a few good friends, a lot of them have since moved out of the city, and I would like to have more.

I like to organize activities for my group of friends and I'm an outgoing person, but meeting people in the city is hard, and conversations are often surface-level and centered around work.

When I saw Camp Hot and Social advertised on social media I impulsively signed up because I thought it looked fun and might be a good opportunity to make friends. The camp ran from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning and was held at an actual summer camp venue in Pennsylvania called Camp Starlight. It was aimed at women in their 20s and 30s looking to make new friends, have some fun, and spend some time off-grid.

I went to an all-girls camp for five or six summers in Asheville, North Carolina, growing up and I remember those being some of the best moments of my childhood.

My time at Camp Hot and Social was packed with activities, from playing pickleball to cocktail hour and a cooking class, and time away from screens made it easier to connect with people.

People took photos of us as we boarded the bus to adult summer camp

On Friday afternoon, we met outside Dig, a restaurant in midtown Manhattan, to check in before boarding the bus to camp. There were a couple of pairs of girls that came together, but most of us did not know a soul, which was really cool.

A large group of grown women loading their duffle bags onto a bus and on their way to summer camp was a sight to see and people on the street took photos of us.

Camp counselors waved us into the site

Once we were a mile from camp, we started to get excited. We were in nature, surrounded by woods, and everyone had a lot of energy when we got off the bus at around 6:30 p.m.

We were greeted by camp counselors with signs and lined up by a flagpole. Everyone could feel a buzz and it felt like that throughout the weekend.

I shared a bunk with nine other girls

There were 22 cabins, organized by age group. I was in cabin 19 and definitely on the older end of campers.

Ten of us shared a cabin with two showers and two toilets, while the beds were made for children with pads for mattresses. I knew it wasn't going to be luxurious and we were only there for two nights.

But we had really good conversations at night and it took me back to sleepovers I had as a kid.

I spent Friday night playing games and chatting

After we unpacked in our bunks, we went to a cocktail hour and had a barbecue with hamburgers and hot dogs.

We played a bunch of games and then had a party. It felt very childlike but in a good way.

A lot of us said we were tired and that this would be our earlier night, but we ended up staying out until at least 1 a.m., just talking and having a good time.

Playing games together meant that we learned we had things in common with each other quickly, and that we got deep with each other quicker, which was really nice.

The most common icebreaker was "What made you want to come to camp?" which led to more profound conversations about what friendship means to us, what we like to do, and whether we had been to camp before and what it was like.

Saturday was jampacked with activities

Activities started the next morning at 7:30 a.m. I opted for an 8 a.m. cooking class because the sound bath was booked up.

We had breakfast at 9 a.m. in a big canteen and the food was better than you would expect for feeding the masses.

The rest of the morning and the early afternoon was jam-packed with a nature walk, pickleball, and an inspirational talk about navigating life in your 20s and 30s.

There was a surprise Olympic Games

Later on, we were told to meet by the flagpole for a group picture, but out of nowhere loud music started playing and there was confetti everywhere. The whole camp was split into two teams for an Olympic Games, which I loved as a kid at camp

We competed all afternoon, playing games like water balloon fights, rock paper, scissors — but against a hundred people — and had a big relay and a tug of war.  I got really into it and made a lot of friends. My team won and we all jumped into the lake together to celebrate.

This was the highlight of camp for me because I just felt like I was a kid again.  For two hours we were on a team, we had our faces painted and we just played. That gave me more energy for the rest of the day than anything else.

We wore matching friendship bracelets to dinner

After cocktail hour, all 200 of us sat down to a beautiful farm-to-table dinner at one long table.

We were given Taylor Swift-style friendship bracelets with a word on them, mine said unplugged, and we had to find the other campers who had the same bracelet and sit with them at dinner.

Some of the socializing was organized like this but, for the most part, people were good at branching out. Going in, I was conscious that I wanted to try and meet as many of the people as possible, even though I knew I would relate to some more than others, because I was so curious about what type of person would come to this camp.

I met so many different types of people – one girl had recently left an orthodox religious community to become a flight attendant on private planes, another made documentary films while another was a multimedia artist.

We said our goodbyes on Sunday

On Sunday I decided I would wake up early because we were leaving that day. I did a workout class at 7:30 a.m., went to breakfast, and started saying my goodbyes.

Everyone wrote a note to someone they met at camp and having been encouraged to be unplugged, we got out our phones for the first time in days to exchange contact info. The bus ride back was pretty mellow because people were tired.

Making friends as an adult is totally possible

As a kid, the last day of summer camp was sad because it meant you wouldn't see the friends you had made for a whole year.

But one of my bunk mates who I became good friends with lives across the street from me, so we've already made a plan to grab coffee. All of us who learned pickleball together want to go play somewhere together, and there is going to be a camp reunion soon too.

It was a great weekend and a good reminder that despite the fact that it's hard to make new friends as an adult, it is possible.

There are people out there who might feel a bit lonely too and want to make friends, and that's a beautiful thing. There were 200 people in my city who wanted to do that, so there's probably people like that everywhere, you just have to be open.

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