Making Dreams into Reality at Camp Confidence
Camp Confidence Year 2
The 92nd, Chowen and James residents recently headed to Camp Confidence, an accessible camp in Brainerd, for their second annual “Camp Chaos” trip! With 19 people - 10 residents and 9 staff - it took 4 vans to get everyone and their things to camp.
92nd and Chowen senior RS Nicole Spring shared the details of this adventure:
"All houses met at Chowen on Monday morning to 'play Tetris' with the supplies and equipment in the vans and do some rearranging, then we were off to camp! We had a “quick” stop in St. Cloud for lunch at Chipotle and made it to Camp Confidence around 2pm. For the second year in row, we stayed in their MBJ Cabin, a 9 room cabin with two large accessible bathrooms, full kitchen, living room/dining area, patio and fire pit.
Activities
Camp Confidence offers so many fun and accessible activities during the day, some that we picked that were favorites for our group were - arts and crafts room (where staff Liz Schultz caught a mouse!), indoor nature center, the beach for swimming and tie-dye, hay ride, animal sanctuary, giant slide, pontoon rides, glass bottom boat and visiting the camp store! We spent our nights having bonfires at our cabin, or heading up to the lodge for some bingo.
Accessibility
The camp was far more accessible than we ever thought possible, a few things that stood out to us - a hayride that could accommodate all of our wheelchairs, ramps directly into the water at the beach, hospital beds and beds with rails in the cabin, golf carts with q-straints, and moveable chairs on pontoons to allow our friends in wheelchairs the opportunity to drive! New this year, there was a donated all-terrain wheelchair that Steven got the opportunity to test out!"
“Huge shoutout to Nicole Spring for getting all her residents to Camp Confidence this week! Nicole spent countless hours planning, organizing, and preparing to make it a successful trip for the staff and residents who attended. It was a lifelong goal of one of the 92nd residents to go to camp, and Nicole was able to make that happen within the first year of the resident living at ACR!” -Morgan Erickson, PD
Thanks to the following for attending camp and making it so memorable: Left to right - Christy Nguyen, RS Samantha Nicklaus, Emma O’Neill, Mike’Kayla Thomas, Liz Schultz, RC Michelle Steigauf, Abby Ness, Marissa Loen, and Senior RS Nicole Spring.
