Field Trip Number Two

From Monday, October 12 to Friday October 16 the Earth Stewards: Sustainable Living in a Threatened World Program took a field trip to the Columbia River, two dams and the Scab lands area. Led by Professors Rob Cole and Robert Smurr we visited various locations in in the Columbia River area in Central Washington. The focus was on the Columbia River, the effects of the dams on the "natural" environment and on the salmon as well as the effects of the great Missoula Lake Floods and how they formed the region. The first night we stayed at Brooks Environmental Learning Center. It was bitterly cold and it snowed in the morning. The remaining days we stayed at Banks Lake Resort. This was a posh resort near Grand Coulee Dam.
It was a five day field trip. I admit that I had more than a little trepidation at the prospect of spending five days in the field with forty people I barely knew, all of whom were nearly half my age, but my worries were for nothing as this group proved to be a very cool, understanding, witty and intelligent bunch. I have posted a few pictures below and will add to the album as I process the pictures I took. (below)

I had to downgrade the quality of the pictures for this slideshow because my computer did not have the processing power to handle the larger images but individual still images are available in a higher quality for anyone interested

Field Trip to Local Area

Yesterday the Earth Stewards: Sustainable Living in a Threatened World Program took a field trip to the Olympia area. Led by Professors Rob Cole and Robert Smurr we visited various locations in Olympia and the surrounding area with the focus on land and water usage (or mis-usage as the case may be). This field trip also served as a warm-up for the five day trip next week.
We could not have asked for better weather. Blue skies and sunshine with a temperature hovering around 60 degrees all day.
The trip lasted approximately six and a half hours. I tried to compress the gist of it into a five minute slide show (below).

Today in downtown Olympia

Downtown Olympia today. Fall color is starting to come on...

Welcome to a new year at Evergreen!

Evergreen is known for it's (deserved) reputation for embracing diversity but it is not a common occurrence (a least in my world) for my own ethnic heritage to be acknowledged along with so many others so the opening ceremonies of the Convocation, on the Friday before classes started, was gratifying to me.