Memorial Day weekend means more people will be outside and several will be experiencing the Greene County parks.

Greene County Conservation Director Tanner Scheuermann tells Raccoon Valley Radio their department did lots of preparation to get the county parks ready for the summer. One of the more major projects was removing and replanting trees.

“Over the last probably two years out at Spring Lake Park, and just in the remote areas, but we’ve got to hit the areas that are near the roads where they could potentially fall on the roads and hit targets, and things like that, we’ve removed probably 200 plus trees, ash trees out there. And then we just wrapped up at Hyde Park here, we removed right around 20 trees in of the remote area there as well.”     

Scheuermann appreciates the help from the Secondary Roads Department and the John Deere plant in Paton that not only donated 135 trees, but also employees to plant them in Spring Lake and Hyde Parks. He also got a grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Forestry program and another county conservation account to buy additional trees.

Scheuermann points out there are two new camp hosts at Spring Lake and Hyde Parks and he asks for everyone’s patience as they begin their first summers.

“Those are the folks, a lot of times they’re our first contact with our campers, if they have questions and things like that. So they’re all in place, I think they’re both going to work out fantastic.”

Scheuermann adds that people can go to mycountyparks.com to register for most of the campgrounds, the two cabins at Spring Lake Park and shelters at the county parks. There are also kayaks, canoes and paddle boat rentals with the concessionaire at Spring Lake Park.