Camp Days 2 and 3

I did not get a chance to post Tuesday's camp activities because Sarah and I went straight from camp to the Emmylou Harris concert at the Oregon Zoo.


The show was great, and we did not get home until it was too late to blog.

On Tuesday, I drove the campers to Cannon Beach. We arrived at low tide and had a tidepool creature scavenger hunt.


I did not take many pictures because I was too busy counting children and watching the incoming tide. The kids found every animal on the list except for chitons and encrusting sponges.


We had lunch neat Haystack Rock which was covered with nestling western gulls. We also spotted pelagic cormorant nests, a tufted puffin guarding its burrow, and a floating harlequin duck.

Today, we crossed the Columbia and climbed into the Wind River Experimental Forest to see their canopy crane.


Matt, a researcher out the University of Washington, led us on great tour of old-growth forest.


We put on our hard hats and walked to the base of the huge crane, which once built skyscrapers in San Francisco, but now hauls biologists hundreds of feet high to conduct their work.


After lunch, we toured the fish ladder at Bonneville Dam.


We saw plenty of steelhead, salmon, and lamprey swimming by. We also learned about steps taken to reduce juvenile salmon mortality during passage.

After 21 hours of child wrangling, I'm getting pretty tired, but there are only two more days of camp left, so I still look forward our next trips.