Palmetto State Hangers/SC State Parks Palmetto Campout

[Gresh]

First of all, thank you to the SC State Park system and Sesquicentennial State Park in particular for inviting us to be a part of this event.

Palmetto Campout is an event held annually (this is the sixth year) at Sesquicentennial State Park and at Huntington Beach State Park to introduce families who may not otherwise get the chance to go camping to the basics of just that. For $50/family, they're provided with 4-man tents, goody bags that include fun things to do while camping, and meals for the weekend (provided by the park and cooked by one of the local Boy Scout troops). Events and games include interactive cooking demonstrations, firebuilding demonstrations, camp games (like slackrope and cornhole), paddling lessons, geocaching demonstrations, hiking, storytelling (courtesy of PSH member and forumgoer Pudden), and for the first time this year, a hammock camping demonstration!

Palmetto State Hangers members REV, JunebugDawn, Squidbilly82, Pudden, and myself all showed up to Sesqui on Friday night. If we're gonna get to camp free, might as well make a full weekend out of it! We all went out to Little Pigs barbecue like we always do, came back to camp with quite the fill of vittles, and settled in for an evening around the campfire telling lies.

We all got up way earlier than we had to on Saturday morning (except me...camping away from 4.5 month old Sequel means I squeeze every ounce of sleep I can get) and moseyed over to the main campground, where the 26 familes (and approximately 150 people) were setting up and registering for the event. We got our kits hung and got down to the hard part - demonstrating the obvious comfort of a hammock. Naps were had. Demos were scheduled to start at 2:00, but by 11:00 we'd already had several families trickle into our display area (including one lady who had no arms and only one leg...she and her husband ended up joining PSH that day). A lunch of hot dogs was provided by the park, along with a "Make your own trail mix" bar that had nothing but delicious sugar on it. Since we were set up immediately next to the food tent, we got first crack at the other menu items as well - "walking tacos," "Chinese jerky," and a few others. After all was done, we packed up and strolled back to where we were camped for the weekend, past the Boy Scouts firing up two giant trenches that were meant to cook over 150 foil packs.

We however had delicious steaks from a local butchers shop (courtesy of Squidbilly82) before lazily passing the time before we were due back at the main campground for Pudden to tell his lies...er...ghost stories. We were told by several of the staff that we'd gone over amazingly and they felt that we would make good partners for the park system to work with in educating people. One Ranger spent his first night in a hammock, and the Regional Director has said that he'd likely be joining us as part of the group. NETWORKING!

Sunday morning, we all packed up and headed home.

A fantastic time was had by all of our members in attendance, lots of folks learned a lot about hammock camping, and we even got a few new members!

[Pudden]

Despite being the first one out this AM... If the wife summons. Gresh said it the best already. We had about 40 adults and about 25 kids come check us out. Rangers from multiple parks were on site and come over. I think PSH made some friends and excellent impressions. I had about 30 for my ghost stories and had a book purchased for the event and signed after. The family even had to get picture with me to put in the book! Little Pigs was awesome, as was the ribeye courtesy of Squidbilly. Heck, y'all know us PSH folks... we eat good and this event was no exception. I hope we can do more of these events and that I get to tagalong...