Oregon Trip
The Oregon Coast is beautiful. It’s beaches, and sights. It’s history and great exploration chances. The sights you see and chances you get in Oregon are like no where else. There is only one. And I got to see it.
Start of Story-
On 19/11/2016 (Saturday 19 of November 2016), I arrived at Seycove Secondary School around 6:15am along with the rest of my PLP class. We all managed to stuff our way-too-much-packed stuff under our feet in the Seycove bus and left to drive the 8 hour drive to Oregon with stops for lunch and a look around Cabella’s (camping store).
The Before Studies-
Before leaving to Oregon we did some studies in class. The one that was most noticeable was the class reading “The Highest Tide” by Jim Lynch.
The book was based in Oregon with the main character being a boy named Miles. He was an insomniac who one day was canoeing around and stumbled across a dead beached Giant Squid .
Throughout the book Miles finds many sea creatures that shouldn’t have been washing up or arriving in the cove like area he lived in. He finds many unnatural animals arriving including the Giant Squid and some kind of invasive crab that’s tunnelling through the ground. The near the end of the book there is “The biggest tide in (many) years”. The tides pre-show brings many animals that shouldn’t have been there all at one time. Then the storm bring the large tide hits and chaos erupts. At the end of the book he is in his canoe drifting out to sea being carried by moon jellyfish.
The point of reading this book I believe was to be learning about the sea life on the Oregon Coast. It was useful as we did sea life studies while we were there.
Story Continued:
We arrived at our first camp area at our cabins at the KOA across from Fort Stevens. I was put in a cabin with Alivia, Melanie, Lauren and Melika.
On Sunday (the 20th of Nov.) we arrived at Fort Stevens to look through the museum and take a tour with a ranger through the fort. We learnt many facts on our way. Photos of Fort Stevens⬇️
Later we were on our way to the Astoria Column. We walked up the many terrifying spiral stairs. The view at the top was nice and I got some pictures then I rushed back to the stairs because I didn’t like the wind up there pushing against me making me feel like I was going to get blown off. However the stairs were slightly slippery after it had just rained from everyone who had wet shoes walking up the stairs. So there were those many of us slowly walking down the stairs carefully clinging to the rail and then there were those few that just rushed down the stairs pushing people out of the way. In the end we all made it to the bottom without throwing up or dying.
We spent a couple of days at the Hatfield Marine Science Centre where we did some fun activities and learnt much.
The first day we were there it was pouring rain, so lucky us- we went out onto the beach and went Shrimp Shluping.
Shrimp Shlurping-
Shrimp Shlurping is where you get a suction tube and suck strips out of the little hole houses in the sand. You choose a hole and stick the tube in dig it in a little then suck in a heap of mud then release it onto the beach and see if there is a Shripm in it.
After we got all the shrimps we did a data collection of how many were female, male and dead. After that we went to the room next door and did some crab racing.
Crab Racing-
We were put into groups of 3 and were given some crabs to race and collect data from. First we decided what we were collecting the data from. We decided on seeing if a larger crab with longer legs would be faster than a smaller crab with smaller legs. Our guess was that the larger crab would be faster. We were correct.
Learning:
during our trip we worked on multiple things. One of course was mental learning. But we didnt just learn everything and never use it for anything. It’s a project learning based program. So of course we worked on a workbook. The link to see what mine looked like is in the “links” section at the end of the post.
Cannon Beach:
Cannon Beach was probably my favourite place we went in Oregon. It was so beautiful and majestic. The waves crashing against the soft sand (two things you don’t get in Vancouver because we are in a inlet where the only waves come from boats and there is no sand in North Vancouver).
Some photos of cannon beach⬇️
Story conclusion:
Our trip was great. That was only part of it. We learnt so much. We arrived home safe and sound. We got to see amazing places and become better friends. When you put people that have only known each other for two months together for 6 days you get new friendships and strength of friendships. In conclusion we had a great trip and had a unique time together.
Links:
Alivia’s Blog:Alivia’s Blog
Melanie’s Blog:Melanie’s Blog
Melika’s Blog:Melika’s Blog
Lauren’s Blog:Lauren’s Blog
Trip itinerary:Itinerary
Work Book:Going Costal Workbook