Tres Froid Weekend on the French Santee

Had a Great Trip on the French Santee!
A little on the chilly side (mid 20's on Saturday morning), but no one suffered frostbite.

On the right you see the troop as they relax briefly after breakfast and our flag ceremony.

Our first trip on Saturday morning was to Battery Warren on the South Santee River. The scouts managed to drive a couple of deer right between the scoutmaster and Mr. Smith, who were standing about 15 feet apart.


The afternoon was spent in a trip to Hampton Plantation. Behind the scouts in the picture is the old plantation house and the oak tree on the right is the Washington Oak, named because GW on a stop at Hampton for breakfast on his southern trip in 1791 was asked by Mrs. Horry if it should be cut down, GW offered the opinion that it should not. The tree stands today as a monument to our 1st President.

One out of state visitor reading an exhibit on the French Santee at Hampton was heard to say, "But of course, Santee is French." I'm not sure what it is French for, but our Santee Indians would not have been amused.


On Friday and Saturday nights we had prime visibility to look at star clusters, the Orion nebulae and the moon through a 5 inch reflecting telescope.

Big thanks to former scoutmaster Joe Coates for his cooking for the adults and cooking lessons for the scouts. You can see on the left that Joe's kitchen was well equipped and well manned!

I would also like to thank Jack Cochran and Al Aiken for coming out on Saturday for skills instruction of our younger scouts. We had a few scouts who were able to finish up some requirements for rank advancement due to their efforts.


The trail on the French Santee ended on Sunday after our Huguenot Scouts Own Service, when the troop departed on a preplanned 5 mile hike. We took compass bearings and took a few short cuts through the forest from the forest service roads. One scout had a fashion casualty and so we sent half of our group directly back to base. The remaining group, seen in the picture below, found out that maps printed off the internet are not necessarily complete. They had to make a 1/2 mile detour through the pine forest to the Old Georgetown Highway and stopped shortly to rest (not eternally, though a couple were ready) at the Brick Church (St. James Santee) . This group ended up covering 7.8 miles, learned many valuable lessons (don't hike with the scoutmaster anymore) and were very tired, as we returned for a late recovery at home base...finally back at the scout hut at 3:30 PM (original recovery was 2:30 PM).