Blog Credits: Olivia, Annalise, and Grey

The day started off with the usual: wake-up, breakfast and packing lunch, and preparing to leave. This morning, we headed off to Krystal Acres to work with Charlotte Kratovile-Lavelle, helping to water trees that had been planted in a large field next to a small pond. All of the saplings also had a green plastic cover encircling them to stop deer from eating and killing them.

Charlotte first explained to us the some of the history of the area we were in and the work she (as part of the Island Conservation Corp) was doing, and then we began going around flagging saplings to mark which of them were still alive. After that, we formed a sort of assembly line, with two people filling large buckets with water from the pond, and then passing them off to everyone else to go water all of the flagged saplings. We then used a blue flag to mark that the sapling had been watered.

After a couple of hours, everyone was tired, and it was time to grab all of the gear and head out.

Then we were given a surprise of ice cream! We walked around the cute village and docks while savoring our well earned treat.

After finishing our ice cream, we got into the van and headed over to Mount Grant to eat lunch. We were high enough to see in all directions and played a fun game of guessing which way was North (everyone failed terribly).

Very full and happy, we headed back to the house to have project time to work on our debate prep and final projects.

After working very hard, we all attended a lecture at Friday Harbor Labs on the importance of preserving specimens. After a very interesting, but long, lecture, we were all very hungry and went back to the house to eat dinner. After a busy day, we had the luxury of free time after dinner. Everyone relaxed and went to bed excited for the next day!

Blog Credits: Olivia Tanouye and Annalise Krabak

The day started off with a 7am wakeup call to grab a quick breakfast, do last minute packing, and prepare to leave for our kayaking trip. At 8:30, the Crystal Seas Kayaking guides picked us up and we headed to Jackson beach to launch.

We spent our morning on the water, making our way along the coast of San Juan for a couple of hours before crossing Friday Harbor. We noticed whale watching boats following a pod of whales near us, and to our delight, the whales passed right by us, and we got to stop and catch a glimpse of a pod of about seven orcas swimming through the water!

We pushed on, and after about an hour we stopped for lunch on a small island. Our wonderful guides, Maggie, Maddie, and Kate, prepared a sandwich station and set out chips and fruit for everyone, which was quickly devoured by 14 very hungry teenagers.

Along the way we saw many cute sea lions and harbor seals resting on the rocks and swimming in the water.

After lunch, we went through the hardest and longest stretch of paddling, and unfortunately, the winds were not in our favor. After more than seven hours on the water, we finally made it to Jones Island.

We set up our tents and rested up until dinner, which was burgers, yum!

After dinner, we worked together to start a fire and made s’mores. Many people were tired from a long day of kayaking, but some chose to stay up till dark in hopes of seeing bioluminescence. Although it was very faint, we were able to see the lights when moving through the water.

We are looking forward to sleeping in a bit tomorrow, so stay tuned to hear about the rest of our kayaking adventure!