Man Begs Parks Department For Queso Cheese Lazy River (No Skinny Dipping, Please)

Talk about a dream come true. A South Carolina man recently made a suggestion to his local parks board that sounds like heaven on Earth to us: a queso cheese lazy river.

The Charleston County Park & Recreation Commission – which boasts climbing walls, an equestrian center, campgrounds and a marina for its residents – was the recipient of the request from one Hagan Ragland. Ragland asked the recreation commission to essentially empty Rollin’ River – an 870-foot-long lazy river that winds through the Whirlin’ Waters Adventure Waterpark located in North Charleston Wannamaker County Park – and fill it up with that Mexican version of nacho cheese. (Our mouths are watering right now at the thought of it.)

To be fair, Ragland wasn’t the first to come up with this delicious idea. He was inspired by a sign at Moe’s Southwest grill, where he was eating lunch. The sign read: “Hear me out: queso lazy river.”

Ragland heard it, all right, and spread the word on how wonderful such an attraction would be. So he sent a message to the recreation commission with his request.

“Hey can you guys turn the lazy river at Whirling Waters into a queso cheese lazy river?” Ragland wrote in an email. “We could all just float in the river with a bag of chips and a long twisty straw and have the time of our lives with that sweet sweet queso. Okay let me know what you think.”

Perhaps Ragland was just joking, but he actually got a response from customer service representative Nick Epps, who also has a cheesy sense of humor.

“Thank you for inquiring about us finally turning Whirlin’ Waters into the cheesy oasis we have all dreamed of!” Epps replied. “That type of event would certainly bring us a lot of business and we could even claim it to be an environmental marvel with using natural sunlight to keep the queso river flowing.”

But that’s not all. Epps really took this idea and ran with it. He ruminated on the challenges of creating such a river – for example, locating tortilla chips large enough to float on. “It’d be a real Jack and Rose type of situation (obviously more romantic),” Epps said, citing that iconic scene from Titanic.

Epps also noted that jalapeño bits would likely get caught in the river’s drains. Still, he promised to “definitely pass your suggestion along the chain-of-command just in case I’m overlooking a fatal flaw in our reasoning (more like seasoning, amirite?).”

Ragland was bowled over by the playful, hilarious response.

“I thought it would have been like, ‘Sorry, Mr. Raglan. We can’t do it.’ It really went all out. I mean, it was a perfect response,” Ragland told Today Food. “It’s very wholesome. It made my day. It’s making everyone else’s day. And I think Mr. Nick needs a raise. I’m gonna try to send him a gift basket of some sort. I said fruit basket at first and everyone was like, ‘No, it needs to be a queso basket.'”

We’re still holding onto the dream of a queso cheese lazy river. Somebody has to make this happen. But, please, no double-dipping – or skinny dipping for that matter.

Cover Photo: ncognet0 (Getty Images)