Back from Vacation

by Chuck Jones

I'm sure you didn't even know I was gone but I'm back off vacation now. Our newest member of the staff, Lauren, has been doing a terrific job of updating and monitoring the blog for me while I was out cavorting the past month across the western U.S., through Canada, and into Alaska on my motorcycle. North America is an awesome continent and some of the most absolute, fantastic, jaw dropping scenery can be experienced traveling north west.

Last week we loaded up the van for a camp in Denver, Colorado July 27-29. This same weekend we had a camp for Rockford, Illinois.  The Denver camp which is actually in Allenspark, Co. at Highlands Retreat Center, is sponsored by Centura Health which has multiple hospitals.  Most of the campers and volunteers came from the Denver area. The Rockford camp is sponsored by the four hospitals in the Rockford area.  This camp is held at Lutheran Outdoor Ministries Center in Oregon, IL. We supply three, four, sometimes five Peoria area staff and volunteers as camp and program directors, and various other administrative duties but the rest come from the sponsor's area. As you can see we rely very heavily on sponsor volunteers to make these camps successful. I have been helping along with these volunteers for eight years and I can tell you you won't find better, more enthusiastic, helpful people anywhere. We could not succeed without them.   

Coming up next we have a MEGA Brain exhibit at the Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, Iowa August 3 and a four day family focus stroke camp at the Living springs camp ground near Lewistown, Illinois.  

Next week and in the near future I'll be posting some more short stories written by Chuck Hofvander.  Chuck is a stroke survivor and fellow camper. This time he is writing some short stories about those who come to camp. Not just survivors and care givers but staff, music therapists, etc. They are being published on this blog with permission from those people he is writing about.

If there is any topic you'd like to see covered on this blog please let me know. I'm always looking for new material no matter what the subject. You can contact me at cjrley at gmail dot com (I hope you know how to put this together correctly). I have to spell that all out, you see, to make it difficult for the auto-troll hacking programs to get a hold of it and spam me to oblivion.