So this morning started out pretty good. I got to sleep in a little so I was happy. We had a sleepover last night, Michelle brought her mattress into our room. I felt bad for them because I had three alarms set, I got out of bed at the second alarm, and forgot to turn my third alarm off. OOPS! :). I was even happier that I got to have two cups of coffee this morning. It was great. Though we were not on campus, we still have a meeting room where we read our blogs. Only today instead of going straight to our destination we stopped to get breakfast. I ate in the room, so I only got a coffee at Dunkin Donuts. Our first stop today was Beacon Institute and Denning's point. We got to walk along trails to get to the river. It made me kind of homesick, I miss being able to just walk through the trails, or ride my four wheeler. The views were stunning though; and the woods were as peaceful as I remember them. On the trail, we stopped at a bridge, where we saw the train tracks in the picture below. It turns out that this is one of the major North South railways for Amtrak, Metro-North, and freight trains. I though this was pretty interesting. We continued on our adventure.
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| Main railroad |
We learned that the building of the railway had a huge impact on ecosystems. Construction workers had to build dykes, to support the rails and the trains. These dykes built a dam in the water creating marsh lands and wet lands all along the Hudson. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing though. Toby hates this saying, though it fits perfectly for the situation. Marsh lands and wet lands are the kidneys of the landscape. These lands are used to filter the water the same way the kidneys filter the blood. I really liked how he used this analogy;I understood it better because I know a lot about how the body works.
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| Denning's Point sign |
We continued our walk through the trails. We even came upon the devil spawn again. What is the Devil Spawn you ask? Well, it's the seed to the water chestnut plant. I also know them as cowheads. We came across these a few times before, and every time I see them, I continue to hate them even more.
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| The Devil Spawn |
As we walked deeper into the woods, I was wondering where it was going to lead us. We trekked down a steep incline trail. The incline was so steep that Toby had to help us all down so we wouldn't fall. This led us right to the water. Unfortunately it was high tide so we couldn't walk all the way to Denning's point, though we got as close as we could. We also came across what looked to be a fishing camp. It was sad to look at though because the people that were there left all of their garbage and even some clothes there. It was horrible looking. Whenever I go fishing along the Hudson, I make sure that there is a garbage bag that is easily accessible, and before I leave I make it look like that no one was there.
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| Woods, I miss this... |
While we were standing by the water we saw this boat. To me it looks like a regular sail boat, but this particle sail boat has some history behind it. A man named Pete Seeger took this boat out on the river to protest the dumping in the river that the major industries were doing. A big example of this was GE and the pcb's that were dumped in the river. Seeger was loved by many yet also hated by many, it depended on your stand in the situations he was fighting for. I thought it was very interesting that he only died last year at the age of 94; that is pretty impressive.
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| Clearwater Boat |
Before lunch we took a pit stop; shocker I know. WE went to this old factory on the fishkill creek. If you look close enough at the picture below, you can see pipes that are coming out of the building. These pipes were used to dump the waste products into the river. During the time that this factory was running, that was the norm. No one thought anything of dumping anything in the river.
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| Back of the Factory |
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| Our new Discovery Degree Computer |
The picture above shows an old computer desk top screen in the Fishkill creek. Andor made the joke that we can fish it out and that could be our new Discovery Degree Computer. I thought it was funny enough to make it into the blog. We went to lunch in the town of Beacon. We ended up going to a pizza place. Some of us even had left overs that we ate for dinner. After lunch we took a ride to Poughkeepsie where we went to the Walkway Over the Hudson. It was really nice, especially since my boyfriend, John, and my cousin, Corey, came to walk with us. This trip is the longest that I have been away from John in well over a year, so it is definitely hard for us, but it was really nice seeing him today. Come to find out, when we got back to the dorms my dad called me and told me that a body had been found in the river right near the Walkway today. That was kind of creepy but i think it was earlier in the day because we didn't see any emergency vehicles. Anyway, the picture below shows a sand bar made from sediment coming into the river from a small stream. When I first took this picture I wasn't sure what it was, I just thought it was pretty cool looking, but when I learned what it actually was, I thought it was even more interesting.
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| Sediment sand bar from the stream |
Halfway through the walk across, we stopped and asked John to take a picture for us on the bridge. Of course Michelle had to be different and lay on the ground, and Krista wasn't looking at the camera; but I still think it is a nice picture. It definitely shows our personalities and how we are all not perfect. We have become so close in this program, I really hope our friendship continues throughout our college careers and then some.
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| Selfie on the Walkway |
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