Greetings from the Beaver State!

Well, with Mom's wedding come and past, I find myself here at the base of Mt. Hood. It is beautiful here but SO different from life back in Utah.
I've been here about a week now and it has been an adventure for sure. I've already gotten to do so many great things.
There are 5 of us interns. 3 girls and 2 boys. We are from North Carolina, Missouri(2), Michigan, and Utah. We are all so different and it took until about Thursday for us to really open up to eachother, but we're having fun now and starting to be ourselves around each other. Being LDS, I stick out from the group as well as the locals like a sore thumb. I'm not saying thats a bad thing, it is just taking everyone some getting used to because I live differently than the others here.
Here are some of the interesting things I've gotten to do since last Monday...

- I have hiked miles and miles. My favorites include the Beautiful view from the top of Hunchback Trail, and Tamanawas falls- where we interns were stuck in a HUGE hail storm.

-We also got to help the Mt. Hood fishery with their smolt traps. Smolt traps are traps in which the forest service catch young fish such as Steelhead trout, and Coho Salmon and study them to make sure they are healthy and abundant in the rivers that flow off of Mt. Hood. We got to hold the fish in order to weigh them, measure them, and give them tatoos so we can track them.

-We also have spent time up at the Timberline Lodge, a ski lodge built halfway up Mt. Hood in 1937. It is an amazing lodge where we as interns will be leading tours and working a lot this summer. Mt. Hood is the second most climbed mountain in the world. I've been halfway up it!

-We have spent a lot of time exploring the area and have visited some beautiful waterfalls and tourist areas around the Columbia River Gorge. Including the Columbia River Gorge museum, where we met a bald eagle who lost a wing and is kept alive and in good care. We also met some injured owls and a Paragen Falcon.

-Some other things on our to-do list for the next several weeks here at the ranger station and around the mountain include... snowboarding at Timberline Lodge, Bungee jumping at the Ski-bowl recreation area nearby, leading some campfire talks and hikes for tourists, backpacking, CPR training, researching multiple topics concerning the mountain, and kayaking the Salmon river! We looked into some Kite Boarding lessons on the river, but at $180 per person, we were quickly detered from the idea.

Well friends, those are my adventures so far! I'll be back and willing to share my upcoming adventures soon!