For a portion of the summer, work crews were busy enhancing the river access points on the West Columbia Riverwalk. A 20-foot concrete launchpad with steps has been added, along with an adjoining landing area for gear. At the entrance to the Riverwalk Park parking lot a set of concrete steps have been built. The parking lot and the restrooms, which have an outdoor shower, also have been expanded and improved.

“I love what the City of West Columbia has done at Riverwalk,” said Michael Mayo, owner of Palmetto Outdoor, the tubing and kayak outfitter. Mayo and Palmetto Outdoor opened in June of 2006 and is celebrating 20 years in business this year.

He said since opening Palmetto Outdoor has grown exponentially. “We started with a few tubes way back then and now we can put 500 tubers a day on the river.”

And this year was a continuation of Mayo’s success.

“We had our best July on record for the number of tubers floating down the river,” Mayo said. “And Labor Day (Sept. 7) was a huge success. We’re still crunching numbers for the month of August, but I already know we had better numbers this August than we did last August.”

The upgrades at Riverwalk will just make things better, Mayo said, and he is impressed with how quickly the upgrades to Riverwalk were done.

“The construction was completed in a short amount of time and we had access to the river the whole time,” he said. “From the beginning of the project until the end we continued to operate.”

Mayo said he’s proud to be a part of a business that brings a large number of visitors to West Columbia all summer long.

“This year, like every year, we got visitors from up and down the East Coast, and from Northern states,” he said. Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and of course they keep coming from Florida, North Carolina and Georgia.”

And Mayo said a couple that just moved to Augusta came to West Columbia to float down the river every weekend. They loved the river, so they decided on it for a special occasion.

“The couple from Augusta got married on a flat rock in the middle of the river,” Mayo said.

You’ll love it, too. So if you have not seen the enhancements at Riverwalk, get out there today and see how much better the popular destination is now. (Michael Mayo Photos)