In 1970, when Karl Alexander was 20, he asked his dad to help him buy the all-boys sleepaway camp in western North Carolina where he had been a camper and a counselor. Dad told him to get a real job. So he worked as a loan officer, owned a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership and did marketing for a Louisiana company that turns rice hulls into energy. Yet camp kept calling. Alexander heard his alma mater was for sale in 1996 but decided it wasn't worth the asking price. He kept looking. And in November 2000, just after he turned 50, he bought a nearby coed camp in Horse Shoe, N.C. Camp Highlander was on 170 acres of wilderness bordering the Pisgah National Forest, with clean, crisp air, a lake and frontage on the Mills River.
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