Journals--Day 2 Girls

Day 2 June 22, 2006--On the Road

Ahh.. I have been refreshed from waking up on the real mattress instead of sleeping on the bus or airplane. Those two didn’t “help me to have a good sleep.” Thank God that I got a good night’s sleep. I am now ready for my day to learn lots of things from the places that we will go. I was so excited to observe the new landscape, landmarks, and much MORE.

We started to eat our simple breakfast. As we drove, we had to create the questions to ask the rangers before arriving to the Bonneville Dam. It was the boys’ duty to learn about the events of the field trip and the girls doing the camera and video taping stuff. Anne told us that we will be staying until noon.

Once we arrived to the Bonneville Dam and Lock, which really did catch our eyes and interest. From us interest started to show. While we took the picture, the Ranger walked toward to us and started to introduce himself, Jonathan Russo, who is the fan of Boston Red Sox for the baseball. Nancy was so stunned because we are New York Yankees fan except not Angelina. The Ranger, Jon Russo, started to lead us to enter the Bonneville Dam and Lock and explained to us about how the river flow and the dam worked together. It was so cool to learn about the fish (the salmon) which is so popular in the northwest. After that, we went to the fish ladder and it was so weird designs that the U.S. Army Corps of engineers had built. However the Corps are trying to integrate to the natural water and channel flow smoothly. Next, we went to the generator to make the electricity for whole the state of Washington. The strange thing is because in the Northeast, they are use the hydro water to run the generator. There are about eight to ten turbines to run together. After that, we went to view the fish, which is 90 feet above of the sea level ground. We started to eat lunch and took some pictures of us at noon. The ranger, Jon started to say bye and have great week and blah. I don’t know what he said because I can’t hear, right?

Nancy told me that we will go to the Horsetail Fall which is so beautiful water fall. Meanwhile, we drove all way to the Horsetail Fall and we were staring at the water fall for few minutes and started to say, “It is so beautiful waterfall and we wish our parents would see this image.” Nancy told me that the waterfall is from the Mountain Hood and Mike did walk in the water with his shoes on! He was so crazy. We took some pictures of us and the teachers were so pleasant to view the waterfall. Suddenly, Anne told us that we need to take off because there will be another last place fieldtrip to visit.

I was shocked because we drove all the way up and in the “maze” to the Crown Vista House. It was so much smaller than I imagined. It was so interesting to view the cool stream along us. We went downstairs and saw the lots of histories, and we had noticed that in long ago, there was a restaurant in the Crown Vista House. Then it became a museum to show the old building on the top of the mountain. The first owner of the Crown Vista House was the fine woman who wore the fancy dress. One thing I was embarrassed because I did enter the women’s bathroom, because I don’t know that there was the sign for the women’s bathroom only so I entered without looking at it. Suddenly there was no urinal in there, I wondered why… Soon I realized that I was in the wrong bathroom!!! The woman who was behind me was so blushed and giggled at me. I was feeling like I don’t care if I make a mistake because everyone did make mistake!

We got back to the Washington School for the Deaf and started to cook dinner for us to eat because we were so hungry. After dinner, Anne reminded me and the boys to write 2 journals about today and what did we learn. Later, we did not expect that we did not finish the journal by the deadline for Anne to upload all the journals for Mr. Francisco to update the website. The result was: I am the last person who has completed the journal. Stay tuned, please…

On The Road Trip Day 2

This morning, I really feel very strong because I didn’t really sleep well last night. Finally, I can sleep for “one night”. We ate breakfast and I ate cereal and one half of a plain bagel. I didn’t feel really hungry that time.

We went to Bonneville Lock and Dam to learn something new. We met the ranger, Jonathan Russo who knows everything about the dam and locks. We had to stay at that place until noon and it was the boys’ duty to ask the questions with the ranger and write down what he explained. We looked around the dam a lot and we are very fascinated with the fish ladder. It was really interesting to see how the fishes swim and their mind. I think the stories are very funny about the seals trying to eat the fishes in the fish ladder and beaver who got stuck in the fish ladder.

The ranger really explained to us well about the generator and how it works and the powerhouse. We learned a lot of vocabulary about the lock and dam and it is a little hard to remember what they all mean. Then we went to view the fishes by trying to passing the fish ladder and it is funny to see lampreys try to swim but they just “stay” at one place by sucking on the wall. Then we ate lunch and we just still enjoy seeing the fishes swimming.

After that, we just looked around about the history of Bonneville dam and lock and it was very interesting to learn how they work and how they are very clever. I feel really sad that Native Americans are “decaying down” their traditions of fishing because people use their new technology, fish wheels to gathering a lot of fishes!

Then we went to Horsetail waterfall and it is such a beautiful waterfall! But the water is very cold and we took some of photos of us and the waterfall. Nancy told us that the water comes from the mountain, Mt. Hood. I walked on the water with my shoes on!! Anne told us to go to Crown Vista House to view the Columbia River and its history and some of the histories are very interesting because people honor to a woman who founded this place.

After that, we went back to WSD and while we were riding in the van, we smelled something very bad. It came from a paper mill which uses the trees to produce paper. We arrived to WSD and we were very hungry! We had to make our dinner which we cooked; spaghetti, tomato sauce, and garlic bread. It was okay but I ate them all.

Then, we boys had to type about our day of Bonneville Lock and Dam and we just finished after about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Then we have to type what we did today and type some details about the fish ladder and everything that we learned. Good night!

DAY TWO June 22, 2006 On the Road

This morning, I woke up without any difficulties of getting myself up because I got myself a good night’s worth of sleep. I didn’t falter all day because I was energized and charged with all of the excitement that we all were about to start our first day of traveling and learning.

The first thing in the morning, we ate breakfast then packed our lunches and our backpacks. We set off on our journey to the Bonneville Lock and Dam, about forty miles east of Portland but not too far of a drive to there from WSD. Lucky for us, we got to drive by the beautiful Columbia River. I cannot say how beautiful it was because the atmosphere was just exciting and refreshing. I refuse to give you the description of the river because you wouldn’t felt and saw what I felt and saw although you can imagine it or see it in a picture. You just have to come to this place and see it for yourself. I must say that Washington is truly a beautiful place and I would like to live there someday although it rains most of the time here but not this week. We came here on the right time because this week and the next, there will be sunshine and perfect weather that you can expect.

Anyway, enough of that talk, let me tell you all about our day. As we arrived at the Bonneville Lock and Dam, we met a ranger/engineer (Jonathan Russo) who worked there. He gave us a tour around the dam and showed us the generator room where all of the electricity is produced. There were eight huge generators and we got on one of them and saw the water flowing through the turbine inside the generator. Jonathan Russo gave us a wonderful explanation how this process of producing electricity works and it was quite interesting because in the east, we mostly uses coal, oil, nuclear energy, and natural gas as our sources for getting electricity. In the Northwest, hydropower facilities and dams are very common because it powers almost everywhere here.

We all saw the fish ladders by the dam. A fish ladder is very similar to locks where the fish such as salmon, shad, sturgeon, and lamprey moves up the levels into the upstream where they can be able to get out and continues their migration. We even got into a special viewing room where we can see all of the fish traveling through the fish ladders. We saw must have saw hundreds of fish such as lamprey, sockeye salmon, Chinook salmon, and shad. We all ate lunch there and asked Jonathan Russo some questions about the river and dam. We all said good bye to him as we went on to visited a section in the dam where there was a museum about Native Americans and the evolution/history of salmon fishing industries. It was interesting because I found out that people in the past used to have what we call fish wheels where there is a huge wheel on the side of river that collects the fish. It is illegal to use that method today. The invention of the fish wheels is one of the reasons why the numbers of fish are reducing.

Afterwards, we all went to different places all around the region. We made a stop at a hatchery where they produce mostly sturgeon and salmon and there were a couple of ponds with different fish such as rainbow trout, white sturgeon, and some kind of sturgeon which were really huge. I mean it by them being more than the size of us all. That kind of sturgeon usually grows up around 7 to 13 feet long and can grow as large as 20 feet and weigh about one and one third of a ton. Seeing this sturgeon was intimidating because I never had see a fish larger than me other than sharks. After visiting the hatchery, we made a stop at a site where there was a waterfall. We all took picture of this beautiful and astounding waterfall and sat for a while to enjoy the view. We all drove to a place on the top of mountain where there was a tower-like house. It used to be a restaurant which was owned by some rich lady. There used to be few stores around this tower but none of them are still here. At this tower, we had about good two hundred seventy degrees of view of the Columbia River and the landscape by the river. Then we got on the van and drove back to the cottage.

Guess who cooked the dinner for tonight? I was the group’s acting head chef. It was a very hard work for me because mostly of us here don’t know how to cook or hate to cook. But still I enjoyed cooking. For dinner, we all had ziti with meatballs and sauce, garlic bread, and salad. It was my first night cooking for everybody since that we ate out yesterday. I’m lucky because I didn’t burn the cottage down. Everybody had a great dinner. Afterwards, we all went to work on our journals and part of our investigation. I better say goodbye to everybody back in the east because I’m sure that everybody’s sleeping since its past midnight there. Ciao and take care!