ROSS pics

Hey guys, here's the ROSS camp pictures!

What do you call a banana slug eating a moldy mushroom? A decomposer decomposing a decomposing decomposer! (Yes, I realize this mushroom isn't moldy, the mold was for the purpose of the joke. Just go with it.) This by the way, is a decomposer decomposing a decomposer. We found this banana slug on the ecological staircase, a trail that goes through multiple habitats, such as pygmy forests and redwood forests.

This is the beach at the end of the ecological staircase. The beach actually wasn't this dark; my camera just made it look that way.

One of the amazing tree stumps from the outside...

                                            
                                                     and from the inside.

Another tree stump! This one is the biggest stump in ROSS. Sadly I don't have a picture of it from the inside.

The cabins.

Our awsome bridge.

My friend and my brother being the scarydairyegg for a skit. The Scarydairyegg was an evil monster that hated green so it was burning down all the trees in the forest. It was a half chicken, half cow that threw exploding eggs. Their skit was very odd.

One of the amazingly advanced toilet paper holders.

That's all for right now! Hope you liked my pictures!

Camps

Hi guys! I know I havn't posted in a while, and I'm sorry. Anyway, my life has been pretty busy latly, with climbing, band and soccer all going at the same time. Anyway, here are some of the cooler things I've been up to: I just got back from ROSS camp, (I'm not sure what the R stands for, but I think the rest stands for Outdoor Science School.) and it was awsome. ROSS casmp is in Mendicino woodlands and is, as you may have guessed, near Mendecino. There were tons of banana slugs and stuff, and there were tons of huge redwoods, not to mention the awsome redwood stumps. (You'll hear more about the stumps in my next post. As I was the oldest student there this year, I got to be an assistant naturalist! It was pretty cool, and I think that one of the highlights was this hike where there were lots of huckleberrys. For those of you who don't know, huckleberrys are in the same family as blueberrys, and are a shiny black color when they are ripe. Normally huckleberry season is earlier in the year, but up near Mendecino it's colder, so the berrys grow later. Now, time to tell you about Venture Rendezvous. Venture Rendezvous is up near Willits, and is an awsome camp for Venture scouts where you get to do stuff like shooting guns, outdoor rock climbing and sailing. We stayed in these tiny tent cabins that could only fit two people, but they were pretty nice. My troop had the best cabin area, Sailors Rest. It was right near the waterfront and wasn't too far from the dining hall. My favorite activity there was probably the shooting guns. For the guns, you had to give the people running the ranges a ticket for every round. You got five tickets to start with, and you could buy more for 1$ each at the "Trading Post" There were multiple kinds of guns there: rifles, shotguns and black powder rifles. The one I spent the most time on was the rifles (I even shot a happy face into the target!). They had a big rifle range with shooting spots on one side and paper targets on another. We got ten shots for each ticket, and at the end of each round when everyone had used all their bullets, we all put down our guns and replaced the targets. I had a whole lot of fun at both camps and am posting pictures of ROSS camp soon.