Recently, we went on our first field school on the Oregon Coast. Let me tell you about it.

(If you don’t want to read a 1,600 word blogpost, you can read this book at the end of the post that we had to do on the trip.)

Day 1

The day didn’t start off too well. We were supposed to get on the bus by 6:15, but the teachers were late, so we stood around until 6:30. We started loading when they got there, and I was Mrs. Willemse’s special friend. In about 40 minutes, we were at the border. Nobody got arrested, so that’s good. And then we were back on the bus, and now in Washington.

After about 3 hours on the bus, we stopped at Cabela’s. It was really neat. There was a huge mountain of taxidermy animals, a plane, and even an aquarium. The strangest thing to see was the guns. There were so many guns, and almost none of them were locked up. The coolest thing there was probably the taxidermy elephant. I also wasn’t expecting the aquarium.

After that stop, we got some lunch a Clark’s Restaurant. It was a pretty small place, but the food was pretty good. After we finished, we waved at cars, hoping they would honk at us. And then we got back on the bus.

Finally, we were near the Oregon border. But before we went, we had a quick stop at Dismal Nitch, which was named because when the Lewis and Clark expedition landed there, they described it as a dismal nitch. However, when we got there, it was not very dismal; in fact, it was warm and sunny.

After that, we drove to the Astoria Column. The Astoria Column is a 125 foot tall tower with a frieze painted on it depicting events in Astoria’s history. Astoria was founded by John Jacob Astor in 1811. Astor was the first multimillionaire in America and never actually visited Astoria. He also died on the Titanic, so this guy had a very eventful life.

After that, we had dinner by the shipwreck of the Peter Iredale. We didn’t learn too much about it when we were there, but I looked up some stuff on Google about it. The Peter Iredale was ran aground on October 25, 1906 and the 27 crew members and the two stowaways were all right. However, the ship wasn’t, and instead of salvaging it, they just left it there, where it still sits decaying. It was pretty neat.

Then, we went to our cabins at Camp Kiwanilong and went to bed.

Day 2

The first thing we did on day 2 was go to the jetty. It was neat. At the time we were there, they were actually rebuilding it because the ocean was washing it away. Apparently they have to rebuild it quite often because of erosion.

The next thing we did was go to Fort Stevens. Fort Stevens is an old military base first built in the American civil war and was in use in WW2. Some of the ammunition used for the cannons there could be upwards of 1000 lbs. In WW2, there was a Japanese submarine that fired 13 rounds at the fort which all missed, but this is significant because it was the first attack on the U.S. mainland in over 100 years.

After learning about that, we did our first quest. Quests are almost like a combination of a scavenger hunt and geocaching. It didn’t go great. We guessed at most of the clues and then got stuck for the last 30 minutes and went back in defeat.

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For our last event of the day, we went to Highlife Adventures, a family owned zip lining business. It was pretty neat. Some of the lines were very high up, one you could race your friends and one they dunked you in the water. It was very fun because I have never went zip  lining before.

Day 3

The first thing we did on day 3 was pack up our cabins because we were going to be slowly moving from Astoria to Newport.

After packing up, we drove to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. It was pretty cool there. They told us about the history of travel on the Columbia River over the years. There, we learned that the most dangerous part of the river is the bar. The bar is where the river meets the ocean, and the waves get very big. Since 1792, there have been around 2000 shipwrecks around the Columbia River bar. 

After that stop, we went to Cannon Beach. Cannon Beach is a very shallow and sandy beach with a massive intertidal rock called Haystack Rock. We were supposed to walk over to the rock when it was low tide, but we came at high tide for some reason, and so we only walked along the beach.

After that, we drove for a quite a while, until we arrived at the Tillamook Creamery. The creamery was built in Tillamook because lots of farmers live in and around Tillamook, so dairy can arrive fresh. You can also watch the cheese being made and learn about the cheese making process, which was interesting, because the cheese making processes is something that you don’t really think about. They also make the world’s best yogurt. 

Finally, we arrived at South Beach State Park, where we got into our yurts and went to bed.

Day 4

On day 4, we went to Yaquina Head. When we went to Yaquina Head, half the beach was closed off because seals were giving birth. All the baby seals we saw were 1 to 5 days old. While we were there, we looked in the tide pools. There, we found urchins, anemones, sculpins, crabs, and mussels. The strangest thing I saw was a creature known as the Wandering Meatloaf, which is kind of like a big slug, but also not at all like a slug. After finishing on the beach, we did another quest. This quest took us on a hike up a hill with a beautiful view of the ocean. We did a lot better on this quest. We argued amongst ourselves a lot less, and actually got the stamp and completed the quest.

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After that, we drove to the Hatfield Marine Science Centre. There was some pretty interesting things there. There was a tsunami machine, an erosion machine, a mini wave power generator, and lots and lots of fish. The interesting thing about the animals at the centre is that they capture them from the wild, study them for about 2 weeks, and then put them back. After about an hour of looking around, we went into a wet lab, which the public can’t go into. In the lab, we raced crabs. We predicted what would effect the crab’s speed, and put our hypothesis to the test. 

Day 5

On day 5, we went back to Hatfield and into the lab. We grabbed little suction contraptions and went out to the mudflats. There we sucked up sand in hopes that there would be shrimp inside. And there was. There was SO much shrimp. Then we went back to the lab to collect data on the shrimp. After that, we built an R.O.V. (which is like a remote controlled submarine) out of pvc pipes. Ours worked out pretty well and was able to move around under water.

After we finished that, we went to downtown Newport to go whale watching. We saw some Grey Whales that were migrating from Mexico to Alaska and lots of sea lions. After that, we did our final quest. This quest was by far our strongest. We were one of the first groups to find the stamp and get back to the bus.

Day 6

We started our sixth day by leaving our yurts and starting to drive back up to Vancouver. But we made some stops along the way. One of these stops was Depoe Bay, the world’s smallest harbour. An interesting thing about Depoe Bay is that it is the whale watching capital of Oregon, and you can see the whales from the shore.

After a few hours of driving, we arrived at an amusement park called Bullwinkle’s. It was pretty fun, especially the go carting. The only thing was that the lunch there was pizza and I don’t like pizza so I didn’t get to eat until dinner. I didn’t want to bug the teachers because they were probably tired and I thought I could survive without lunch. Clearly I have not met my goal of self advocating. I also thought the meeting time was 3:30 instead of 4:30, so I was sitting near the exit for about 40 minutes wondering if they had left me behind. 

After that, we got to sleep in a hotel which was a nice chance from sleeping in yurts. 

Day 7

The final day we were there, the only stop of note that we made was at Wolf Haven. Wolf Haven is a sanctuary for injured or captive wolves. It was really neat there. We learned about how the government actually attempted to eradicate wolves, and how that had a major impact on the ecosystem. We also learned about the Red Wolf, the most endangered wolf in the world, with only 295 still alive, with 179 of that number in captivity. 

Over all, this trip taught me many things, including how to deal with annoying people in your room, how to do buffets, the government killing wolves, grey whales migration locations, and many other things. I also did much better than I thought I would at not being peopled out. The only time that happened was on the last 2 days. Overall this trip has been a very valuable experience for me and I am excited for the next one

Ok, bye!