Camp Hope

Columbia Jaycees at Camp Hope (Brett, Elizabeth, Trever, Me, Lara and John)

The SC Jaycees sponsor/support a camp up in Clemson's Outdoor Lab known as Camp Hope. It is a residential camp for mentally challenged children and adults. Each summer a "Camp Hope Sunday" is held during the adult campers weeks for SC Jaycees. This was my first year going and it was awesome ---- it made me VERY proud to be a part of the Jaycees organization. There is also a softball tournament (fundraiser) on Saturday in Greer and so we ended up going for the weekend.

On Friday night my friend, Lara, spent the night here as she, Ben and I were meeting other friends to follow up on Saturday morning. We met up with Elizabeth, Amanda and Brett and by 9:30 we were heading out of town. It was a great drive as Lara and I were in my car and had a good bit of time (due to getting lost looking for the ball field) to talk. We stopped on Pelham Rd. for Kristie to meet up with us and then, thanks to the help of her friend Brent, we FINALLY made it to the softball tournament a little after noon. Other than leaving for lunch (and to meet my parents to send Ben to their house for the week), we stayed out there the rest of the day before checking into our hotel.

The rest of the afternoon/early evening was spent with me, Elizabeth and Lara hanging out in our room for some girl talk! After showers, Brett joined us for dinner and then we met up with some of the other chapter members from around the state.


On Sunday we all got up and got ready to head to Clemson. Elizabeth, Brett and Amanda are all state officers and had to be there by 10 for a meeting, so Lara and I had time to kill before we needed to pick up the food for our picnic lunch with the campers and meet up with the others. She'd never been to Clemson and I took her on the short tour --- downtown, main part of campus and the stadium. We did stop and walk through the botanical gardens where we managed to scare ourselves! Lara asked if I had seen many snakes in SC (she's pretty new to our wonderful state!) when I noticed a HUGE snakeskin floating in the pond. We shuddered and headed towards the car on a different trail. About half way a tree had fallen across the path and we realized we were going to have to climb through it. We heard a rustling, screamed and then realized it was just one of us stepping on a fallen branch. Too funny! We are NOT country girls!


From there she and I headed on to Bi-Lo to pick up the food and then met everyone at Camp Hope to set up lunch. We had four campers and one counselor and I can't describe how much fun it was to share lunch with them. They were so sweet to talk to and just thrilled with having us there. After lunch there was a meeting for all of the Jaycees and then the campers held a "performance" for us. Several cabins had skits, they sang songs, one played the piano and a couple, including Russ --- who had eaten lunch at our table --- sang solos. From here we said good-bye to the campers and then prepared for the "pies". Chapters and individuals donating to Camp Hope were given, based on their donation, the opportunity to pie state board members. Good fun for a definitely good cause! Elizabeth and Brett did get pie'd and Lara and I were in charge of making the pies and taking the pictures!


We headed home exhausted, but happy. It was a great weekend with friends and a great weekend with Camp Hope campers! I'm already looking forward to next year.