Back in March, Sandy and I helped with a volunteer project through A Year to Volunteer at Sam Houston Jones State Park in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

The park had been closed since August of 2020 after Hurricane Laura had ravaged through the region.  The park endured massive damages loosing over 85% of its trees as well as enormous destruction to its infrastructure.

The Y2V group that we were a part of was the largest group to undertake a project in A Year to Volunteer history.  If my memory is correct, we had 52 volunteers and 26 rigs.

Among many other things, our group built a fence at the entrance, repainted the office, built tent pads, built a 500’ fishing pier/boardwalk, repainted signs, cleaned up tons of debris, grinded countless stumps, planted wildflowers, refinished playground equipment, cleared and rebuilt the Orange Trail, built culvert dams, and painted a flag pole.

It was a project that was extremely gratifying.

I think even more so for Sandy and I because we have friends in the area and we helped with relief efforts in the area a couple of weeks after Laura came through.

We were able to get to back to Sam Houston Jones State Park this weekend and were absolutely blown away to see the transformation that has taken place just since we left.  The park officially opened back up in June and even with it now open, there are improvements continuing to be made almost daily.

The campground has a complete makeover, cabins are open and many more new trails have been cut throughout the park, just to name a few of the additions.

We made a little before and after video and hope that you enjoy it.