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Sunday, September 28, 2014

An Outstanding Success

Saturday dawned clear and cool, a perfect setting for National Public Lands Day here at J. Strom Thurmond COE.  It was amazing and very heartening to see all the people from surrounding communities, clubs and organizations come out to help make some of the COE parks a better place for everyone to enjoy.

Over 150 kids and adults turned out and they pitched right in.  A girl scout troop helped Marti with the weeding and mulching around several of the gate houses.

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With plastic buckets, the girls carried mulch from piles to the gate houses.

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A couple of the finished gate houses, now looking good for another season.

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Another team, comprised of local college kids and soldiers from the Wounded Warrior Project pitched in to help cut and clear brush from some areas.  It was hard work, but in just a few hours all the work was done.

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Even this little guy worked his heart out.

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All the bluebird houses were screwed together by another troop of girl scouts in record time.  The girls loved using battery powered drills to screw the pieces together (closely supervised by adults, of course!).

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Many trails were cleared, trash and debris that floated down along the dam was removed by divers and hauled away by Sea Tow boats.  Picnic tables and benches were stained, grills were cleaned and painted, there were many projects that kept every volunteer occupied.

However, we couldn’t end the morning of hard work without feeding these wonderful folks.  A cookout was put on for them.

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While the burgers and hot dogs were cooking, some games, like beanbag toss,

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and volley ball were available. 

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Where did they get the energy after all that hard work?

I helped out a little here and there too, and enjoyed my “feast”.

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A great day, good planning and willing volunteers made the National Public Lands Day at J. Strom Thurmond COE an outstanding success!  Judging from the interest and enthusiasm of these young kids, the future of our nation’s parks will be in good hands.  :c)

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

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16 comments:

  1. It's always nice to see volunteer efforts that benefit so many.

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  2. Wow Paul that is a lot of work done in one day. That's sure how to get things accomplished in a hurry. Great job!

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  3. What an awesome turnout you had! Better be careful or there won't be any work left for you to do :)

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  4. It looks like local folks are very proud of their local COE park! Nice job by everyone involved.

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  5. What a great thing to see all those young folks volunteering!!!

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  6. We thought about all of you as we headed back to the beach and we're so glad to see that the weather cooperated to make the day a great success!! Again, thanks to all the volunteers for all you do to make our time in the parks so very special!!!

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  7. Sure made those gatehouses look spiffy! Glad they fed you guys too, good job!

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  8. It seems that there are more and more volunteers appearing throughout the U.S.

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  9. It's great that you got all those volunteers to help with the work. It looked like you had a good group of workers too.

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  10. What fun ... nice to see the kids volunteering.

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  11. Fantastic that you got so many volunteers. Glad the blue birds will have those houses to build a nice nest.

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  12. II know bluebirds love those houses and will appreciate the effort. We've actually seen on two occasions males fighting each other over one being too close to another ones nest box. They get down and dirty when they fight and we had to break up the fights. Nice that there were so many volunteers to help clean up.

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  13. Lots of volunteers makes short work of a lot of jobs, looks good.

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  14. Glad you had such a good turnout. Ron and I will have to do that sometime.

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  15. Sure great to see all those young kids out helping. Heck, for a lunch of hotdogs and beans I'd help if I was in the neighbourhood!!

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