COOS BAY - There's a buzz in Mingus Park and it isn't the mosquitoes.

Youngsters are bounding down trails, paddling canoes, roasting s'mores in pizza-box solar ovens and discovering nature under the watchful eyes of Joe and Maria Neill.

It's a welcome sight for the North Bend couple. Not only does it mark the return of Camp Fire summer day camp, but it also represents the future of Camp Fire USA in Coos Bay.

The Neills have been volunteering with the national nonprofit organization for more than 25 years. The arrival of summer almost always meant they were organizing another week-long camp. They'd attract as many as 150 boys and girls, teaching them how to handle a bow and arrow, sing songs, perform skits and get all kinds of exercise.

"If we did it right, they'd get into the car and on the way home, they'd fall asleep," said Maria Neill.

The Neills were motivated in part by their three children, who all earned WoHeLos, the top award in Camp Fire. Their youngest son got his medallion in 2005, the year the Coos Bay Camp Fire club dissolved. That left only one group in Myrtle Point for all of Coos County.

The camp kept going for another year or two, but even it went on hiatus.

They may not have any more children at home, but the Neills just couldn't give up on Camp Fire.

"I don't know how we would do without it," Maria Neill said.

Last fall, they organized a new South Coast club, with six charter members. They called the Coos Bay Armory to see about renting space for a week, only to learn that renovations going on there made that impossible. At the last minute, they got permission from the city of Coos Bay to use the Boy Scouts Cabin in Mingus Park. Because the building's so small, the Neills limited the camp to 32 members, forcing them to turn away people at registration on Monday.

It's clear the boys and girls who got in are glad they did. Tuesday brought a visit from Joy Tally, an educational specialist at the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. She took everyone on a hike around the park, pointing out invasive plants and explaining animal relationships.

Neill and Tally tried their best to keep their young charges quiet, but the appearance of an agitated arthropod did in their best efforts.

"I found a centipede," screamed a boy clutching a glass jar with a rather jittery specimen inside.

"Can we keep it?" "They caught a centipede!" "Let me see."

It's learning something new that gets kids excited, said Joe Neill. He explained how one of the girls had been shooting arrows right-handed without much success. She insisted she was using the right hand, but Neill thought her dominant eye was the left one. So he told her to switch around, and as soon as she did she hit the target.

"Boy was she pleased," he recalled.

When counselor Tuesday Reed asked her charges what their favorite activity was, canoeing got the loudest response.

"It takes a lot of teamwork and it's exercise, too," said Makaia Souza, 8.

The campers also liked lining pizza boxes with tin foil and whipping up a tasty treat of chocolate, marshmallows and Graham crackers.

"That was really fun," said 9-year-old Kourtny Garnett.

It's getting these children excited about the outdoors that has Maria Neill excited about the future of Camp Fire in the community. She expects to see the South Coast club at least triple in size this fall with campers signing up for the year-round program. Her dream would be to see new members into the program this year, and celebrate the awarding of their WoHeLos in a little more than a decade. It's getting new children interested in the program that's the key to long-term success, noting that Reed got her WoHeLo and is now working as a counselor.

"Members take things from the club and go out into the world and use them," she said.