My second ever Alternative Spring Break Trip happened last week. Jasin and I took a group of eight students down to Florida to the Suwanee River and we spent the week camping at a primitive camp site, canoeing, and doing service at the Stephen Foster State Park. The weather was great until Thursday when the storms rolled in (bad lightening) so as a group we decided to cut the trip short by a day and make the 9 hour drive back to Clarksville.
We left on Friday, March 5 and drove to Florida and set up camp and the students made their first dinner without the use of a kitchen (they made hamburger helper). We spent the weekend canoeing to other state parks and spending the night while helping the park rangers with keeping up the river camp sites. By Sunday evening we were back at Stephen Foster Heritage State Park which would be our home base for the rest of the trip. The service that we did was focused on a restoration project that the park has been working on for 5 years. We worked on a 7 acre area that was overgrown with invasive hardwood oak trees which were killing out the native long leaf pine trees. The students planted over 2,000 pine trees and cleared 2 of the seven acres of oak trees. The temperatures were in the mid 70's but the sun was intense and most of us got sun burn from working. We did several canoe day trips and even had to portage around some class III rapids. The trip went flawlessly and there were no incidents! On Friday night after we returned, Jasin and I had all the students over and we cooked the remaining food from the trip and they played board games till 11 30 pm! They really enjoyed each other's company.
I brought my video camera with me on the trip and had the students give interviews throughout the trip to talk about the experiences that they were having. I plan on using the footage to make a commercial for my programs!
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