Living Outside: A Trip Down the Skagit

We had our first field trip on Friday for class. We loaded up the vans at 9am, and headed to the first key stop of the day: a bakery. After getting fueled on a gigantic cinnamon roll, we headed to the Padella Bay Estuary. The Estuary is right on the bay and looks out onto the oil refineries in Anacortes. It was a low tide day, so we were able to poke around and lift up rocks and run around in the sand.

One of the side projects for the day was to also identify the birds that were singing all around us. I can safely say that i have no idea how to identify any birds except a seagull. So, i obviously failed miserably at this. However, after Friday i think i can identify a thrush... but i'll get back to you on that. We also had to begin identifying some trees, and i successfully identified a Douglas Fir, but that was after i was scolded for saying you could identify fir trees by looking at their "pine cones." whoops.

After our trip in the Estuary, we headed over to Mount Erie where we had stunning views of the valley and North Cascades below. During our time sitting on rocks, i learned some fun facts:

- Puget Sound was under approximately 4000' of ice during the Pleistocene era.

- The olympic Mountains receive the most rain per year on average - 180"

- Bellingham & Seattle just receive 34 - 36" a year

- The Piedmont Glacier deposited rocks from Canada all throughout the region during the glaciers melting period.

- Eagles are pretty cool.

I gotta run to class, but here are some more photos.