Domestic Trips for 2012
Dogsledding
Travel with us to Northern Minnesota to enjoy an experience unlike any other. We will spend four days on the lakes and trails of the Boundary Waters, driving two-person sleds with a team of four to five Inuit dogs each. Experienced guides will provide hands-on training on the first day, and then you will handle your own team of dogs, including feeding and harnessing them every morning. We will stay in lakeside lodges each night, where you can relax by the fire and enjoy fabulous meals that are prepared by the resident chef. There will be a chance to try snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and a Finnish sauna. We will also pay a visit to the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota, to observe and learn about the native timber wolves. Get ready for an amazing experience, and prepare to fall in love with dogsledding!
Leaders: Bettina Gregg, Kristina Meyers
Cost: approximately $1900
Enrollment: 8-12
Dates: March 16-21, 2012
Northern California Cycling
Join us on some beautiful rides through the rolling hills, vineyards, and valleys just north of San Francisco. We will drive from Portland through the California Redwoods to the Sonoma and Napa Valleys, where we will camp at night and ride during the day. Rides will vary from 20-50 miles; distances that anyone with a good bike (road or mountain) and a willing spirit can handle. Join us for fun, exercise, and exploration of a beautiful area while learning about safe cycling!
Time: Trip leaves March 15 and returns March 22
Cost: $425 – 450
Enrollment: 12-15
Leaders: Deri Bash, Pat Freeman, Gary Crosman,Lou Elliott (ex OES parent) .
Ashland and William Shakespeare
Join us to explore theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. OSF is the largest and oldest regional, rotating, repertory theater festival in the United States. It has 325 full time performers doing a cycle of 13 shows over an 8-month season in three separate venues. While Shakespeare plays are the specialty of the Festival, it also offers other wonderful classic and modern works each year. We will travel to Ashland to see 3 plays and a film as well as take a tour of the theater facilities. Our play choices in March of 2012 will include Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida, the musical comedy Animal Crackers, and a new play based on a Chinese fable, The White Snake. We will also see a play at a theater in Portland and receive a back-stage tour.
In Ashland we will stay in the Ashland Hostel, three blocks from OSF and the downtown shops, and have a chance to cook for ourselves, eat out at restaurants and shop in the beautiful and fun downtown area. We will also take time to see a play and tour the Gerding or Artists Reparatory Theater in Portland together during Winterim week and attend one film. If you love watching and discussing theater with a group, this Winterim's your ticket!
Leader: Debby Schauffler and Julie Sikkink
Enrollment: 8-12
Time-block: Trip
Cost: $395.00 includes four days (March 19-22) in Ashland, two days (March 15 & 16) in Portland.
Backpacking in Utah
This will be a trip to the Grand Gulch (aka Cedar Mesa) area of southern Utah, a region filled with remnants of ancient cultures generally known as the Anasazi. The trip will contain a service learning venture overseen by staffers at the regional BLM offices. After flying to Salt Lake City and driving to Cedar Mesa in rented minivans or SUVs we'll backpack for several days in canyons both beautiful on their own and full of archeological sites--structural ruins, pictographs and petroglyphs. We'll be able to explore some of the best-preserved ruins in this wild setting--some call the area the "Outdoor Museum"--with few bureaucratic restrictions. In the process we hope to learn just how such a place can function in such an open manner--who cares for the ruins? Who studies them? Why are they not more closely managed, guarded and guided strictly by rangers as are similar sites in National Parks?
In an effort to understand all this while enjoying a wilderness trip, we'll offer our services to BLM rangers and archeologists and participate with them in some sort of backcountry service work--trail maintenance, damage control near ruin sites or possibly assisting with actual archeological work.
In a nutshell this trip offers students a chance to visit deep and scenic wilderness; a chance to experience the joy and wonder of discovery not just of the natural world but of ancient cultural sites hidden in the canyons; and a chance to assist professionals charged with protecting and maintaining such places with projects crucial to the area's future.
Leaders: Bevin Daglin & Professional Guide Doug Ironside
Enrollment: 6-8
Time-block: Trip (March 15-22, 2011)
Cost: $990.00
Civil Rights, Civil War and the Blues: Mississippi
In the 1950s and 60s Mississippi was a closed state, dominated by the White Citizens Council, Ku Klux Klan and the Sovereignty Commission. Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered in a reign of terror to enforce white supremacy. Today Mississippi has more Black elected officials than any other state in America. The people of Mississippi are striving for racial reconciliation by openly confronting their history. We will go to Ground Zero of the Civil Rights Movement and meet the men and women who changed America. We will learn about Till, Evers, Freedom Riders, the "Siege of Ole' Miss", Fannie Lou Hamer, Freedom Summer '64, SNCC and Stokely Charmichael's first call for Black Power. We will meet Mississippians from fellow high school students to political leaders engaged in the quest for racial reconciliation. We'll also take a day to visit Vicksburg, the most calamitous defeat for the Confederacy in the Civil War. And since we're in Mississippi, we'll go down to the crossroads and see where the Blues were born. Note, this trip will return on Friday, March 23.
Leaders: Ron Silver (OES Parent); Rick Rees
Cost: $1400
Enrollment: 6-10
Time-block: Trip
G Forces in Amusement Parks
G-Forces is going to be an action packed week of roller coasters, calculus, and sunshine. The trip will take 10-12 students to Southern California to experience some of the world's largest and most intense roller coasters at Disney Land, Knott's Berry Farm, and Six Flags. Not only will we be riding roller coasters, but we will be wearing accelerometers to measure the g-forces of each roller coaster we ride and analyzing the data to better understand the forces being applied. If you enjoy sunshine, lots of math and going fast, then this trip is for you.
Leaders: Steve Decker and Jacquie Garner
Enrollment: 10-12 The minimum math requirement is PDM/Honors Precalculus.
Cost $1500
Time-block: Trip
