GLENDO — The Two Moons campground in Glendo State Park hosted its trick-or-treat event “Two Boos in Two Moons,” Saturday, October 30, 2021.
From six to eight p.m. the day before Halloween, people could visit the campground and walk a looped path through the campground, stopping at six stations to receive candy.
The event was overseen by Brian Johnson, the park superintendent for 27 years. As the superintendent, it is his job to ensure that the park runs smoothly.
“Oversee all park management, maintenance, the operations and future planning of the park,” said Johnson. “The main thing we do is just make sure that the public has a good, safe place to recreate and make memories.”
This is the second time the campground has hosted the trick-or-treat event. The reason for the event is to provide fun the local children.
“To give the kids a safe place to come trick-or-treat get out, and experience the park in a different aspect,” said Johnson.
The event had sponsors from seven Glendo and Converse County businesses and organizations. Volunteers from other parks were on hand to offer help for the event.
“A whole bunch of volunteers and the staff here at Glendo State Park,” said Johnson. “We have staff from Edness Kimball Wilkins State Park in Casper, staff from Guernsey State Park, and staff from the Pioneer Muesum in Douglas here also.”
Despite the COVID outbreak, attendance to state parks has increased during this year and the previous year.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in outdoor recreation,” said Johnson. “Average visitation per year is about 365,000 people. In 2020 with COVID, our visitation was 610,000, almost a 250,00 person increase.”
“2021, our number are up above the normal average. We haven’t seen all our numbers yet to know exactly for this year, but it is above normal. Not sure it will be as high as 2020.”
Johnson estimated that the same amount of people attended the first half of this year’s event as the whole event of last year. He wished to see it continued with more businesses involved.
“We sure do hope it will continue forward,” said Johnson. “This year we were very lucky with a lot of sponsors. We would love to see this grow, and hopefully we can get some more sponsors next year and have this grow.
James Meyer 