Adult summer camps are extremely popular in Colorado right now

Remember when summer camp meant lanyard bracelets, bug juice and pretending to like canoeing? It’s back — except now there’s wine, tarot readings and no one’s making you write a letter home.

Adult summer camps are booming across Colorado, part of a nationwide trend that’s seen Yelp searches for grownup camp experiences jump roughly 350% in the past year, according to CBS News. The Economist recently reported the phenomenon is taking off across the U.S. and Europe, driven by a simple reality: Americans are spending less time socializing than they did two decades ago, and a lot of people are lonely. Adult camps promise something increasingly hard to find — real-world, phones-down, face-to-face connection with strangers who might actually become friends.

One of the standouts in Colorado is Camp Bettie, a weekend camp for women and nonbinary adults near the Pike-San Isabel National Forest. Alongside summer-camp classics like archery, kayaking and zip-lining, campers can take workshops on power tools, self-defense, astrology and cookie decorating. There are also massages, tattoos, speed-friending sessions and women’s circles designed to spark lasting friendships. “Especially since the pandemic, we find that women are looking for deeper connections, and we provide that,” Camp Bettie co-chair and director Maggie Harding told Axios Denver. “We definitely think the concept of adult summer camp is growing in popularity.”

The appeal goes beyond nostalgia. These aren’t ironic novelty weekends — they’re structured retreats that re-create the carefree parts of childhood while giving adults a break from the schedules, screens and general existential dread of being a grown-up in 2026. And in a state where you can kayak, zip-line and sit around a campfire with the Rockies in the background, Colorado is a natural fit for the trend.