Thursday:
As a group we went out in the morning to visit a population of an endangered plant called Northern Monkshood, in a local park.
This is the endangered Monkshood.
The hike through the park was pretty awesome. To start off it was a long downhill hike/climb where we had to go down a series of rocks to drop about 50-60 feet from where we originally were. Then it was a pretty straight forward hike up to a sort of cave area that we stopped at to learn about the Monkshood.
First stop, the REU group, Dr. Mitchell and our Metro Parks guide Rob |
We finished up by hiking up to the Monkshood site where Rob told us about the threats to Monkshood, the conservation and restoration efforts in the area and the challenges with keeping the population going. On the way there we hit some pretty nasty mud and got a little messy:
We then decided, before heading back, to hike farther into the park and go exploring a little more. It was a fun and beautiful hike with the river to our right and the tall rock face to our left the whole time. The coolest critter find was by far this salamander and her nest that we found underneath a rock:
AWESOME!
We headed back around noon to get some lunch, and washed up in the pool of water below this waterfall:
Then we got lunch at the Chowder House (absolutely incredible New England Clam Chowder there).
That afternoon we took a hike through Gorge Metro Park and visited the Gorge Metro Park Dam then hiked through the park and saw the sites (and animals!). Not much to be said for this trip so here are some pictures:
Me, Alysha, Bayoan, Greg, Debbie
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