On the weekend of July 17-19, our troop decided to hold a family lakeside campout at Lake Hartwell. Nine families from the troop got together and had a great time canoeing on the lake. Here is a recap of the trip from Gabe:

This lakeside campout wasn’t only a great campout but ended in one of the craziest ways I have ever seen in my many years of camping. We all arrived our separate ways and times but the thing everyone did was right after setting up camp we immediately went into the lake. The water was in the words of Mr. Yigdall “hotter than my bath water” which honestly in some spots was no exaggeration. Even though the water was so hot it was still refreshing, and leaving it had you wishing to go back in. The next day we woke up and ate breakfast then canoed roughly a mile to a distant island where we hung out for a little while. After this we went back to our little cove and that is when the canoe flipping began. The great thing about flipping canoes is that they float even while being flipped and can be easily righted with a couple people and some teamwork and the canoeing skills we learned. We spent most of the day playing in the lake and canoeing etc. Then we started to get reports of a thunderstorm so we immediately packed up all the canoes and non-waterproof belongings. We did this just in time, as minutes later the sky opened up! It got up to 50 mile per hour winds with heavy raining, which caused multiple tents to flood and some even to be destroyed. After the craziest storm I have ever camped in had passed we decided to pack up and go home that night. That concluded the Lake Hartwell family campout except one brave family who stayed the night. All in all, this was one of my favorite campouts of all time and can’t wait to camp here again sometime soon hopefully this September.

-Gabe H, SPL