2023 Yellowstone Group B - Day 2

 

This morning we woke up bright and early at 7:00am after a restful night of sleep following a long travel day. To start off the day, we did a group activity where we learned about Yellowstone and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). We learned about the importance if the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (where we are camping) and its unique geothermic properties. We also learned about the complexities concerning land management in the GYE and the many tribes that are indigenous to the area.

 

We traveled into Yellowstone National Park and discussed bear safety protocol. We then set off on our hike and conducted an observational study for the National Park about how hikers in the park prepare for bear encounters. We kept note of how many people we saw with the three bear preventative equipment we learned about, bear spray, bear bells and firearms. As we were only able to observe the hikers, in order to collect our data, we used a code to communicate our findings with each other; pizza slices in general were for the groups we saw, cheese slice if they didn’t have any protective equipment, pepperoni slice meant that they had bear spray, pepper pizza represented that they had a bear bell, while pineapple pizza represented that they possessed a firearm. As we hiked, we also learned a lot about the different plant species along the trail.  We also discovered an elk carcass that was still in excellent condition and was amazing to see.

After getting back to camp, we did an activity for which we had to use our skills to describe or draw the outstanding landscape that our campground has to offer. From that activity, we learned different approaches to view nature and scientific inquiries based on our findings from that activity. After dinner, we had played a Quest for Knowledge scavenger hunt in which the group organizing it connected many things that we learned on our hunt. On our hike, the yarrow plant was pointed out to us by our instructors as it had medicinal properties and feather like leaves. As one of the clues, the group described those properties that we previously learned and had us find yarrow during the scavenger hunt.