Going Coastal 2019

I am a Grade 8 PLP student who loves to do technical tricks like magic, cardistry, coin tricks, and butterfly throwing. I also like to do tricks on my skateboard and I can backflip. 

The Wildlife Park is important because it allows people of all ages to learn about animals, their habits, and ways of living. This helps us to protect the animals and allows us to help them if we see them in the wild. It allows animals that wouldn’t survive in the wild to still have a useful and good life. People tend to protect what they can see, and most people never get a chance to see these kinds of animals outside of the Wildlife Park. That is why it is so important for them to continue their work.

In fort Stevens I learned all about how they used the disappearing cannons to defend the Columbia River. I also learned a lot about how they aimed the cannons. To aim the cannon they took a measurement every 15 seconds from a tower where they could see the ship. This information was relayed to mathematicians in a bunker who would determine the speed of the ship. From this they were able to predict where the ship would be next. This information was relayed from the mathematicians to the people manning the cannon. The people manning the cannon would aim according to this calculation and then deploy the cannon by releasing a counterweight, raising the cannon up in its hole. After the cannon shot, the recoil reversed the counterweight and the cannon “disappeared”. 

Hatfield Marine Science Center Assemble a Whale

At the Marine Science Center we go to assemble the skeleton of a whale. We decided to start by assembling the spine. To arrange the spine we sorted the smaller vertebrae and placed them at the head and tail of the whale. Then we assembled the ribs, the bigger ones near the front of the chest and getting smaller towards the tail. We worked together well and shared the work. What we struggles with was making the final decisions about where to place the bones so we often had to rearrange pieces and weren’t as organized as we could be. Next time, I would divide the class into groups to arrange certain parts of the skeleton, like the spine or the ribs or the flippers, then bring all the parts together after each section was sorted.

You are not allowed to bring home rocks from Cobble Beach because they are protected. Their unique shape is formed by the rocks rolling up and down the beach with the tide. Because of the number of visitors that come to the beach, if everyone took home one rock, there would soon be no rocks left.

I took some photos from my video of the cheese factory to show the production line because I can’t draw that very well. The factory is here because of grass. Oregon grows lots of grass, which is good for cows. And cows make milk, and milk makes cheese.

Tillamook Cheese Factory and Izzy’s Buffet

Unfortunately the Whale Watching Center was closed when we got there. 

Depoe Bay is known as the smallest navigatable harbor. On March 11, 2011, the port was damaged by a tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Japan.

Mr. Hughes and Ms. Willemse Arcade Battle

Columbia River Maritime Museum Crossing the Bar Section

This is what I would look like if I would have crossed the Columbia bar.

No, I would not want to cross the bar. It seems like a trip that I would not be able to complete. If I had all the right supplies then I might want to give it a go, but I don’t really want to risk my life just to say I did something. I would most likely not make it because I don’t have the right training. All in all, I don’t think I would because of all of the risks even if it would be fun for the first few minutes. I don’t think I would have fun for much longer after that.

I think it is important to have places like High Life in small towns because you need to have fun and small towns usually don’t have a lot of big activities. It is also a draw for people to visit who wouldn’t normally spend time or money in a small town.

This is a Yurt. It is permanent structure with a solid floor, heater and electricity. It’s walls are made of canvas like a tent. We stayed in them everywhere we went on the Oregon trip except for the last day. The last night we spent in a cabin. 

Columbia River Maritime Museum First Nations Section

Some things the colonists brought with them were good, but some were not so good. The good things that they brought were gun powder and guns. This helped the First Nations with new ways of hunting that were easier and faster. This allowed them to have more food and pelts to trade for goods. Some things they brought were not so good, such as new diseases that the First Nations weren’t familiar with and their regular medicines weren’t able to treat. This resulted in a large number of First Nations people dying, including the hunters, which meant that they went from having a lot to starving. 

The Astoria Column is 125 feet tall and is covered on the outside by a mural that depicts historical events. 

Hatfield Marine Science Center Speedy Science

For our experiment on what factors influence the speed of a crab in the lab, we decided to use the criteria of number of limbs. Normal crabs have 10 appendages; eight legs and two pincers. Crabs sometimes get aggressive and fight, which can result in the loss of appendages. When we tested the crabs, the crabs with fewer appendages were slightly slower than the crabs who had all of their appendages. We decided that the crabs with fewer appendages were slower because it was harder for them to maneuver with fewer legs. 

This is a video of me at Golden Corral dipping food into the chocolate fountain

Replace this box with a map shows Vancouver to Newport, then add a drawing tracing the route of our trip.

On the trip we got to try lots of new things, not all of them I liked. I don’t like sauces so I didn’t like the peanut sauce on the chicken. My Mom would be proud of me because I tried it anyway.

Cannon Beach is most well known for Haystack Rock, the largest intertidal rock in the world.

The weather was so bad on the day that we went to Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach that we got out of the bus, but our cameras and iPad didn’t. I have drawn a picture of the rock with a sea star on the bottom as the creature from the Highest Tide.

On our quest day, we had to find different locations where there were boxes that had stamps in them. We would stamp ourselves to show we had found each location. We were led to the locations by clues. For my group for the first few quests, we had trouble working out what to do because we were guessing a lot, instead of really looking closely at the clues. We got confused and lost. We then figured out we had to read the entire paragraph to understand the clue. After that we got better and were successful. My favourite spot on the quest was this great view of a beach from on top of a hill.

Hatfield Marine Science Center R.O.V. Challenge

For our ROV challenge we had to build an ROV that could move underwater and pick up cutlery using a magnet on the bottom. We built it using PVC pipes and connectors, electrical tape and three propellers. The propellers allowed us to control the direction, left or right, or up and down. We were all on the same page with our design so we were able to assemble it and attach the flotation easily. We got our magnet positioned really well with it being directly on the bottom. This meant that we could pick up the cutlery easily by just getting the ROV on top of the cutlery. The thing we found didn’t work very well was our ROV wasn’t very streamlined. It was too wide, which made the turning a bit difficult. What I would do next time is to make it more streamlined by making it longer and space the cords farther apart. 

I am looking forward to it because I have been to the cobble beach before when I was little and I really liked all of the sea life that I saw so I am looking forward to bring back more of my memories and hopefully make some new ones.

This is a photo of a really young me at cobble beach

I am really excited to hopefully see a sea otter because I have not seen a sea otter other than the time that I was little and saw one at the zoo. I also have seen videos of how playful they are and I would like to see them play around in person. I have also heard story’s of my parents scuba diving and have had encounters with them and have told me about how fast they are in the water, so I want to see that myself.

Hatfield Marine Science Center Animal Adaptations

Animals adapt to their environment by changing the way they do things everyday. An example of this would be if the tide moved a crab from one tide pool to another. The crab would have find a new place to hide, find where its new food source was, and may even have to change the way it caught its food. Sometimes it might even change its colour in order to be better camouflaged in its new pool. 

Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitors Center

There is a tsunami machine at the Visitors Center to demonstrate the enormous amount of force a tsunami carries. Because Oregon is open ocean, meaning there are no other land masses in front of it until you get to Japan, it is more likely to have a tsunami of large magnitude after an earthquake. It is important for residents and visitors to understand what that would mean so they would take a tsunami warning seriously and evacuate quickly if necessary. 

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