Please Join the Aiken Land Conservancy for
Bloodies & Bagels

Thanksgiving morning, November 25th, from 8:30 am to 10:30 am
at the Aiken County Historical Museum, as a prelude to the Blessing of the Hounds in Hitchcock Woods. All family, friends, and houseguests are welcome too!

Celebrate the season with a Bloody Mary and a bagel (coffee and juice will be available also). Donations are greatly appreciated and all proceeds benefit the Aiken Land Conservancy. Bagels, cream cheese and coffee courtesy of Einstein Bros.Bagels.

All proceeds benefit the Aiken Land Conservancy.
For additional information, please contact us at 855-ALC-LAND or www.conserveaiken.org. No RSVP is necessary.

Bloodies and Bagels will be held at the Aiken County Historical Museum to the left of the main museum entrance. Signs will be posted. Participants will then have an easy walk through the museum grounds to New Street and down into the Hitchcock Woods for the traditional Blessing of the Hounds at 11 am.

A New Educational Kiosk for Hidden Bay: An Eagle Scout Project

[Note from the ALC Watershed Committee: Below is a description of an Eagle Scout project that
Benjamin Rawls and his troop will be implementing at Hidden Bay. Benjamin’s initial costs for building a new educational kiosk at the bay will be approximately $1400—once the kiosk is constructed, it will cost at least another $3000 to install high quality, outdoor, weather-resistant information panels. If you would like to make a donation to the ALC to help with Benjamin’s project, please make checks payable to the Aiken Land Conservancy, write “Hidden Bay Education Project” on the memo line, and send to ALC, PO Box 3096, Aiken SC, 29802. If you donate online (www.ConserveAiken.org) please e-mail us at mail@ConserveAiken.org to specify that your donation goes to the bay project. Thanks~David Scott, Watershed Committee]

by Benjamin Rawls

My first real experience with Hidden Bay (the Carolina bay adjacent to the Odell Weeks Activity Center) was when I went to the nearby climbing wall to work on the Boy Scout climbing merit badge. This was the first time I took a walk around the bay and saw that it served as a special wild life habitat.

A Carolina bay is a large pool of water occurring along much of the Coastal Plain in the Carolinas and portions of Georgia and Virginia. Carolina bays are isolated wetlands that serve as important habitats for many plants and animals. What is truly unique about bays is that they form almost perfect ellipses. Another interesting tidbit is that no one really knows exactly how they are formed.

Several years later, I was looking for an Eagle
Scout project to do, and I thought of the bay. In
particular I thought of the old kiosk that I had seen
by the entrance to the bay.

An Eagle Scout project is a service project done by
a Boy Scout in order to obtain the Eagle Scout rank,
the highest rank possible for a Boy Scout. The
purpose of the project is to show the leadership
skills of an Eagle candidate and is the last step in
qualifying for the rank. There are several require-
ments for the project. It must provide a service for
a community, a religious institution, or a nonprofit
organization. A Scout has to design, obtain funds
and materials, and lead other Scouts in carrying out
the project. I am working with Glenn Parker from the City of Aiken, David Scott from Savannah River Ecology
Lab and the Aiken Land Conservancy, and Boy Scout Troop 121 to complete the project.

My particular project is to build a new education kiosk, and to clean up the litter around the bay itself. The kiosk currently at the bay is ageing and in less-than-peak condition. The new kiosk will be larger, more secure, and provide more pertinent information about the bay and the nearby area. Information will include descriptions of Carolina bay ecology, research, Hidden Bay trails, and school projects.

As for the litter clean up, the bay collects runoff from the surrounding area, which causes a lot of trash to be washed into the bay. This trash has migrated all over the bay and its bank. I plan to go around the bank with my troop and gather up as much of the trash as possible. This will hopefully help prevent some environmental issues.

As I mentioned earlier, part of an Eagle Project is fund raising. I need to raise about $1,400 for materials to complete the kiosk and more will be needed to get signage for it. Please send tax-deductible donations to the Aiken Land Conservancy. Know that the money will go to the Aiken Land Conservancy for the Hidden Bay kiosk, not the Boy Scouts. Thank you for any donations you can give.

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