 I guess it's still good morning, so good morning to everybody excited to be here in support of SC7 as we have an opportunity to draw people here on July 18th. We're going to have a hike two and a half miles and I hope everybody in the Midlands joins us. We just don't want a few people. We want thousands of people to join this. As the Midlands takes part in SC7, which stretches across our beautiful state, we're very excited about the opportunity, not only about supporting this effort, but also understanding that our natural resources are not only our greatest asset, but also our ability to use those to leverage and bring people here to our community and to grow businesses. So with that, I'm going to pass it on to my my dear friend. Thank you all for being here this morning. We hope folks will come out and participate in July. We had a wonderful, wonderful event last year. We had several folks who came out and hiked with us. This year the events being greatly expanded. There'll be three days here in the Midlands. There'll be opportunities to canoe, to tube, to hike the trail that we have. And it's so important that folks get out and see this natural beauty that we have here in our home. It's the best part of our community. It truly is a treasure to be able to get out and have this type of natural beauty right here in the shadows of the state capital. I hope you'll all come out and join us and have a wonderful time right here in our home community. Good morning. I'm Casey Mayer, Elise Parton. One of the most majestic things I've ever seen happened on the Congaree River. Some friends and I were on a two-day paddle. We put in at the Casey boat landing and we're paddling down to Highway 601 in Orangeburg, which as you know is only about a half hour drive, but to paddle it, because the river goes back and forth beautifully, is actually a two-day paddle. So you camp on the banks of the Congaree National Park. And thankfully we had already pitched our tents because a storm blew in all of a sudden. So as we took shelter in our tents and waited out the storm, we then emerged. And when we came out, it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Across the bank from us is a somewhat of a bluff right there at Congaree National Park. And there were, with that backdrop, a zillion fireflies lighting up and twinkling. It truly was one of the most majestic things that I would not have been able to see had it not been for the access to the river, for the Congaree National Park being preserved. And so we are so thankful to our city being born out of the banks of the Congaree River and to be able to enjoy that river and access that river and also to enjoy the 20 miles of river walk that people can access from all walks of life. And what SC-7 is doing to bring attention to all the natural and cultural resources in our state is staggering. It's important. We are so blessed with access to all these amazing amenities and we're thankful to SC-7 to bringing awareness to them. Good morning. I am Mayor Alfred May Drakefoot from Camden, South Carolina. What a great day to be here, to be talking about this upcoming SC-7 event. And I would just like to thank my friend Tom for bringing this home, a leg of it, home. As a matter of fact, last year I said, well, Tom, next year you got to bring it more here. He had a trail last year, but we have lots more. Corsair County is a beautiful place. We have our waterways and the city of Camden is known for history, horses, hospitality, and now I can say probably Pickleball too. We believe in the outdoors. We have many, many parks that we are so, and trails that we are so anxious to show off. So on July 16th, I will be looking for each and every one of you over in the oldest in the city in South Carolina, Camden. So with that being said, again, Tom, thank you. Thanks to SC-7 and all the work that you are doing to promote this state and also introduce all of us to our outdoors. So with that being said, thank you. Good morning, South Carolina. It is so good to be with you today and talk about this beautiful ecology and these incredible ecosystems we have across South Carolina. We started this hike now three years ago, really as an offshoot of our South Carolina Floodwater Commission, where the governor, our great governor, Henry McMaster, wanted us to get out and hear from folks across the state. So we thought of what better way to do it than to hike and be in communities and have fireside chats every night along the way. My son Thomas, Jr., myself, were on Mount Everest three winters ago. We wanted to go when there was no line, and I can promise you, in the Himalayas in January, there's no line. And we decided then that there's a better way to do the seven summits than this type of cold. And we decided that we would create this trail. And with Michelle and the National Heritage Trail Card, or Michelle and I have built this thing around some of the most beautiful places on earth. And right here in the Midlands is one of those places. We've enjoyed spending time in the Midlands. We're raised here. I'm often asked, don't you realize how hot it is in July? And I said, what's going to be about as hot as it's been for the last 62 years? So I have a little bit of familiarity with it. We went from the first year, really people kind of wondering what we were doing the last year, having over 200,000 following us on our social media platforms every night. People want to get out. And as we tell people, you don't have to go to Kauai, the Garden Island in Hawaii to see some of the most beautiful waterfalls. You can stay right here. You can stay right here and see in one week two of the last great 50 places on earth by National Geographic, the Jokasi Gorge and Ace Basin. And those were sort of the bookends to our trail. And we start up in Oconi and we'll hike about 350 miles from July 1 to July 30. I've got to say how excited I am and I appreciate these mayors really reaching out. We're going to have great days here in the Midlands. Come out and see what we have going on here in the Midlands and what they have collectively brought to us along the river systems. We have the second largest number of riverways in the United States behind Louisiana. This year we're privileged to have the great medical university of South Carolina as our lead sponsor and Dr. Susan Johnson. And so we'll begin to tie in healthcare and epidemiology with ecology and we'll have these conversations along the way. But let me assure you as somebody who has spent the last 40 years traveling around the world and realizing as an old man I was wasting a lot of time because the most beautiful places on earth are right here. One of the oldest mountain systems in the world with the Appalachia that will climb to the top of Sassafras Mountain before making our way east. We'll see four states up on that platform. We'll make our way here to Columbia to the Congaree National Park after being here. The largest bottom land in the southeast. Beautiful area. Really the fireflies and thank you for that. You can't really describe that, isn't it? The fireflies is like, what do you think of the Grand Canyon? Well, you know, you just got to see it. And so we'll move here. We'll kayak down the longest black river in North America. The Edisto will make our way down to the Ace Basin which is just historic and we'll end up in Mount Pleasant. This year one of our signature events we have many will be one of the largest artificial reef building in the history of the world off the coast of South Carolina. Working in conjunction with MUSC, Department of Natural Resources, Force Blue, all retired special forces and seal divers. We'll build an artificial reef from North Carolina to Georgia so that we can begin to address some of the challenges we're seeing with amplified global climate change. We appreciate you coming out today. Join us in the Midlands. Come out and see what was described in Genesis chapter one verse 31 when the Lord said after he seen what he made and it was all very good. And I think he was talking about here and in the great Palmetta State. So thank you all. Thank you mayors for your leadership and for others. Come out and help us set a new record this year. This year we won over a million on social media. So join us and have a beautiful day in South Carolina. Thank you. Hi, I'm Dr. Susan Johnson with the Medical University of South Carolina and it is such an honor to be here to represent MUSC as a presenting sponsor for the SE7. As our state's academic medical center, we are committed to preserving and enhancing health and quality of life for all of our citizens and connecting and partnering with SE7 is a great way for us to support that mission. We are we've really been committed to encouraging folks to understand the connection between a healthy planet and healthy people. We understand how the environment affects and impacts human health and we have been really focused in in the low country on our campus. In greening our campus we developed a beautiful 40-acre arboretum to support health and healing for our patients, visitors and staff. We built a half acre urban garden on our campus where our students our visitors our patients and the community can come together put their hands in the dirt fellowship together and understand the connection between food and health. And now as we expand across our beautiful state and we have we're so excited to have a presence here in the Midlands with our Midlands and Kershaw hospitals we are just thrilled to have this opportunity to find new ways to engage our community and help to promote what we call green exercise we know that that any exercise of any kind is great for health and well-being but there are so many additional benefits to exercising in nature and just being out in nature even five minutes can improve our health tremendously both mental health and physical health so we are incredibly honored and excited to be a part of this event in July we will be all across our state promoting the benefits of health and nature and the importance of preserving our natural resources and we are really grateful to be a part of this amazing campaign. Good morning I'm Ethel Bunch president and CEO of SustainSC and we are thrilled to join with SC7 and Tom Mulliken in supporting the third annual SC7 event our mission is to connect the sustainability goals of business and industry in South Carolina with local solutions that benefit our people our environment and our economy we understand in South Carolina that our economy is really dependent on our natural resource-based infrastructure through our forestry and agriculture industries as well as tourism being a close third from the mountains to the sea we know that SC7 is literally taking us through the mountains to the sea in July and showcasing not just our beautiful cities in Greenville Columbia as well as Charleston but also the smaller towns like Traveler's Rest and showing that there's huge opportunity for ecotourism and bringing more more support of our economy in our smaller towns so we work with Boeing, Michelin, Google, Volvo, Amazon, Walmart all of these companies that have set very admirable sustainability goals they're all working to be net zero zero waste to landfill water positive and we want to make sure they're doing that investment right here in South Carolina so we can ensure that South Carolina is the future of both commerce and conservation it's not either or it is both and we are leading in that way on a national scale and so we're extremely excited to partner with SC7 and bring our businesses and our industries out to see the mountains to the sea and join Tom on this adventure and we are particularly excited about July 18th we will be a co-sponsor um and bringing everybody out to our historic riverfront right behind us and entertain and just celebrate the great outdoors historical riverfront and what our natural resources do for our economic development so join us July 18th and we look forward to seeing you then