Summer 1981 – My First Camp Experience and Our First Chevy Convention
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
As a kid, entering into Summer was akin to entering into the Christmas season. So I came upon the Summer of 1981 with crashing excitement for the warm days ahead. Mom was still only working three days a week, so I spent most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at Discovery House daycare center on Woodman Drive in Kettering. I’m fairly certain that this was the last time I went here regularly, although Mom seems to think I stayed here until I was 12 years old. This would have been the Summer of 1984 – which I know wasn’t the case, but perhaps I would still attend on occasion during Spring Break or weeks when my other babysitters were unavailable. Read the rest of this entry »
After the rapid-paced pre-Convention activities at Walt Disney World, Mom, Denise, John Poe, Lisa, and I were ready to depart on our cruise out of Miami, which was doubling as the 10th International Convention of the Sons of the Desert. After taking a bus from Orlando to Miami, we boarded the afternoon of Monday, July 15, 1996. The first order of business was a lifeboat/life-vest drill and then we set sail at around 4pm. 
It is interesting for me to look at the dozen slides that my Dad took during our Summer weekend retreat at Woodland Altars in 1974. I’m not exactly sure what the retreat was for or when it took place, but my guess is that it was around the Fourth of July holiday. Also I am not sure if this was a retreat of the Bear Creek or the Beavercreek Church of the Brethren. When we moved to Beavercreek the year before, we had switched from Bear Creek to Beavercreek, obviously due to the closer proximity. 
I previously shared the 
In the early Summer of 1974, my Mom and Dad took me on what was probably a weekend getaway to the National Recreation Area known as the Land Between the Lakes – the lakes in question being Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. This area extends across two states, from Kentucky into Tennessee. We would have undoubtedly stayed on the Kentucky side. Unfortunately, neither Mom or Dad have a great deal of recollection of this early vacation, so all information must be inferred from the nice batch of photos below. There were certainly quite a few of them for such a short trip.