Photo courtesy of The Tides Inn
Ready for Mahjongg camp?
The Tides Inn has scheduled its next Mah Jongg Camp for Nov. 8 through Nov. 12, bringing instructor Dana Lange back to the Irvington resort for a second session this year.
Guests arrive Sunday and depart Thursday, with three days of instruction filling the middle. According to the resort, the camp includes more than eight hours of guided instruction and supervised play, structured loosely enough to leave afternoons and evenings open.
Two tracks, not one
The camp runs on parallel tracks, and which one you pick determines when you're in the room.
Beginners meet in the mornings — 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, and 9 a.m. to noon Wednesday. The resort describes it as a start-from-scratch introduction to American Mah Jongg and its basic strategies, and notes pointedly that camp begins at 9:30 a.m. Monday, Nov. 9, and that the first day is essential to learning the game. Sleeping in on day one is not an option.
Beyond Beginners meets in the afternoons — 2 to 5 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, 1 to 3 p.m. Wednesday. Day one covers strategy, including the decision tree specific to the 2026 card. The two days after that are hands-on group play working through which tiles to pass in the Charleston and which hands are worth chasing.
f that last bit sounded like a foreign language, you're in the beginners' track. The Charleston is the ritual tile-swap that opens every American Mah Jongg hand — players pass three unwanted tiles to the right, then across, then to the left, all before a single hand is played. Deciding what to give away, and guessing what your neighbors are collecting from what they hand you, is where a lot of the game actually lives.
Breakfast is at leisure from 7:30 to 9:30 each morning, with lunch open from 12:30 to 2. A welcome reception follows Monday's sessions from 5:15 to 6:30 p.m., and the closing themed dinner lands Wednesday evening, Nov. 11, from 6 to 9 — worth noting if you're planning a departure, since the dinner is on the last night rather than the first.
The instructor
Dana Lange has been playing Mah Jongg for more than 30 years and teaching it for more than 25. She learned from her grandmother, and now works out of Durham, North Carolina, traveling — in her words — "not just the state, or the country, but also internationally" to teach the game. The resort describes her classes as running on storytelling and laughter as much as strategy.
What it costs
The camp carries a $450 activity fee per person, which covers all classes, the welcome reception and the group themed dinner. Taxes and a 20 percent service charge are additional, and the fee is separate from lodging — rooms are booked alongside it, with separate booking paths for the two tracks.
Early November on the Northern Neck
The timing is not incidental. Irvington sits on Carter's Creek near the mouth of the Rappahannock, roughly two and a half hours from Alexandria, and the resort's shoulder season trades summer's marina bustle for quieter grounds and cooler walking weather.
It is also the front end of Chesapeake oyster season, when the region's rivers and creeks are producing and local menus lean hard into it. For anyone building a longer trip around the camp, the surrounding Northern Neck — Kilmarnock, White Stone, Urbanna across the river — is at its most navigable in November, without the summer traffic.
