Dear Session II Jokesters

I hope you all haven't been boring your families with bad puns! We miss you dearly. All of the pictures should be posted on shutterfly now. If you remember any that are missing let us know! Also I have posted some videos on Shutterfly that I wasn't able to get into the video. So if you scroll all the way down to bottom of the shutterfly page you SHOULD see them.

Here's your video!

Dearest Session I Campers

Here's your video!



Oh and if you haven't checked the last post from your session you might want to check out the sweet drawing that Matt taped to my door.

Slippy!!!

To collect the information on the Hellbenders we had to hold the Hellbenders easily. They were so slimy and hard to hold and grab. It was like trying to grab a wet bar of soap only it was moving and trying to bite. But the hellbenders were a lot of fun!! We all learned something new this day and it was a great and funny experience. Thanks creek connections for making this week happen.

Freshwater mussels

On Thursday we took a 2 mile canoe trip, on the way we stopped to look at freshwater mussles with Jerry. He showed us the different species in the area including the endangered northern Riffeled Shell. We saw how in some mussles different colors are present but they aren't sure why yet. My favorite shell that i saw had a greenish-blue circle on one side and a purple on the other. We saved a few mussles from drying out. There were mussles in the shallow water who needed to be burried in the deeper water. When putting back a mussle you put the muscular foot side down in the muck and leave part of the hinge out inorder for the mussles to filter-feed.

Out of this world

We were all blown away when we went to the roof of Carr Hall to look at stars and planets. As Nick 3 put it, it was out of this world. We saw five different planets. Mars, Saturn, Mercury, Venus, and of course, Earth. We then went to the Newton Observatory and got to see a giant antique telescope. We got to see the moon through it and it was so clear, you could see the craters. Then we went outside and saw two satellites going by. We then looked at clusters of starts through the telescope. It was a great experience.

Dancing with the Stars

Last night was a good night to go seeing the stars and planets. Mercury, which can only be seen 12-14 days in the entire year, happened to be visible this week and we were lucky enough to see it. Jamie Lombardi showed us this as well as Venus, Mars, and Saturn. Even though they looked like bright discs, it was still really cool to be able to see them. Saturn was especially amazing since you could see it had a thin little dash-like thing around it (Saturn's rings). And if that weren't enough, we were taken inside by Mr. Lombardi senior to see an antique telescope that was 110 years old! It was powerful enough so that the moon looked like a close-up of a white tennis ball with a bunch of craters on it. After that, Jamie Lombardi zoomed in to the Ring Nebula (400 light-years away) with a really powerful telescope. It looked like a blackish blob, but again, it was really cool to see.

scary night walk hwoooooo

it was so much fun we were going to to the woods in the night and looking for salamders we caught a hole lot of diffrent ones but the most common one we found was a dusky. How we found them was we looked underneath tree trunks that was on the ground and under rocks in the ceek we also so toads and crickets and we tryed to find some snakes but we didnt boohoo :( but on top of that i had fun yay for fun!!! :D well today is the last day ill will miss everybody bye.

What the ... Hellbender?!

There were hellbenders a-plenty yesterday. This particular one, having been caught by Nick 3, is named Xavier Worthington Ramsbottom Smide III. We would pull up enormous rocks and wait for the dust to settle and then go for the kill (...catch) and grab the hellbender sitting there. There's a disease infecting hellbenders called Chytrid which we tested for by swabbing their feet and sides. No kidding, these things were like huge slimy bananas, only more slippery. By far, these were the coolest animals we've caught at Creek Camp (sorry catisflies, you just didn't make the cut).

Herps!

Hellbenders! we went herp (the study of reptiles and amphibians is herpetology) hunting and caught around a dozen hellbenders, the second largest salamander in the world, right here in PA. They were extraordinarily slimey and most slipped right through our fingers but we eventuallycaught all we saw. We weighed them, tagged them if they weren't already, took genetic samples, and tested them for an amphibian-killing fungus called Chytrid. After we let them go back to their giant rocks where we found them because if we just threw them in they would kick out the hellbender living under the nearest rock. They were awesome.

We're Going On a Tree Walk...

We went on a "tree walk" with Mr. Mark Louis. First we started out with the park's Black Willow tree, which beforehand Anna and i just HAD to climb. It's around 200-250 years old and the third largest in the state, which is special because Black Willows hardly grow to that size. They're measured by trunk size, diameter, height, and crown size (how far the branches spread).

Next,we came to a Black Cherry tree from which we learned that a substance called cyan (sound familiar?) is produced within the tree. we were given a taste test of the inner bark of a branch to find an awful bitter taste...the cyan. cyan is consentrated and mixed with a variety of other things to create (yes you guessed it you're so smart!) cyanide. For those who dared to taste, i did, we learned what cyanide tasted like (chill! it wasn't enough to affect us in any way), NOT to eat random things you find in the forest, and that Black Cherry leaves a bad aftertaste for about 8 hours...yeahh ick, though actually if you wait a bit before eating you can eat things and they won't taste strongly like cyan.

We learned about the importance of trees along the banks of creeks and rivers as well as how parts of some trees have cells that are like stem cells for human, they adapt to whatever is necessary to help that tree grow.

Gather around, we want to learn about trees!

I'm out on a limb...of a GIANT TREE!! Hello, all the way over there...
Happy Creeking!

~Aimee

This is for you, Nick 3

Nick 3 has some pretty bad puns. If you ever get the chance to hear them.. don't.

"Its a carp-et of fish!"

"These bats are making me batty"

"I may not be ripped.. But I'm rippled" - While wind was blowing up his shirt.

And that's just a few..

The Puns Get Worse... Part II

Part II:

-Some of us lost limbs or died while learning about Abandon Mine Drainage.

-We almost practiced canoeing, but i guess aluminum boats in a lightning storm on a lake isn't too smart...

-We found out that Matt could be a great Kindergarden story-teller.

-A custody battle developed over the Lorax.

-The Bread Ball Bowl 2010 was played, and ended in a tie.

-We learned about Aquaponics, and how vicious pumpkin seed panfish can be.

-RR

wow. We went to the spillway today and saw the mob of carp that were "carp-eting" the place. after a few slices of bread we saw the fabled gold carp and Matt And Kelsey played Bread Ball: Gold Edition, the loser had to pay the winner ten bucks. unfortunately, no one won but it was fun to see the carp literaly swim over each other to grab the bread.

Some dam stuff

Today we took a dam tour with the dam guy and watched a dam slide show. When we were done with the slide show, I was asked what I learned but I didn't have an answer so the dam guy gave me a while to think it over. As we were heading over to the dam, I was given some ideas as to what I should say when I was asked again. As we were leaving, I thought I had gotten out of it, but then he remembered. I told the dam guy that I learned some dam stuff and everyone thought it was rather clever. I think we're all sick of dam jokes. Including Nick 3's bad puns.

Holy Carp, Something Smells Fishy

The sight of so many fish fighting over so little food made us carp about jumping in and walking on them. Seriously, the water was carp-eted (haha). We all enjoyed feeding them and watching the furious feeding frenzies and Matt almost lost $10 to Kelsy in Breadball.

FOOD!!!

WOW!!! Eddie's hot dogs so very tasty and our wonderful counselors in the same picture!!!! AWESOME!! Today (Wednesday) we all went to Eddie's (for hot dogs) and across the street for some I scream You scream we all scream for ice crem from Casey's!! Today was a delicious day with all the yummy in the tummy food!! As you can see from the picture above even the counselors were loving the food, so it had to be good!!! Hope all familys get a chance to come up to Eddies and Caseys to try the hot dogs and ice cream!!! As Lorak would say NUM NUM NUM!!!

I Scream You Scream We All Scream For Ice Cream

In a word. Nom nom nom. We had footlong hot dogs, french fries, and delicious ice cream from Casey's. The flavors varied from the usual sorbet and mint chocolate chip to "nerd heaven" and "cinamon bun swirl".

"Its a carp-et of fish!" - Nick 3

The title is a quote from Nick 3, famous for his bad puns. Today we went to the spillway where we saw carp and fed them bread. They were all over the place. There was even a bright orange one. As soon as you throw the bread in the water, they all attack each other for the food. There must to have been thousands of carp. It was really interesting.

amazing owl walk in the grave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT WAS AMAZING! well what was amazing was a owl walk. we had this guy come in about owls and talked a little bit about them after his speech we gather all our thing and went to the meadville grave. then we searched for owls we saw a barred owls young one and older ones they were sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo AMAZING!!and so beautiful i just wanted to take one home but we know that answer, anyways i love owls they are my favorite flying animal. My also favorite part about the trip was the GRAVE! i love the grave specaly during the night time:). im a kind a girl that loves scary and dark things sort of like goth stuff but doin worry im not goth so anyways we had a great time at the owl walk i think i was the only one that loved IT SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!well i g2g seeya bye hooo hooo hooo hooo

So today we went to go see a some sort of Pitt lab. Apparently, they were testing pesticides on not only one thing, like a tadpole in a petri dish, but a whole ecosystem with not only tadpoles, but also snails and plankton and crustaceans oh my! There were more than forty of the tub like test groups so i guess it must be one heck of a job to get the readings from all those. After seeing the test tubs we went to a small stream where there were nets full of different kinds of leaves like maple and oak and we soon discovered that different aquatic invertebrates eat different "stuff."