What can you accomplish in two days with 78 teenagers who want to work hard? Um, anything you want! That’s quite the task force.
For twenty years now, the ninth-grade students from Rowland Hall School in Salt Lake City, Utah, have been making an annual trip to Best Friends. This is not your average field trip. We’re talking four days, three nights, camping and more. They camp out at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes, a state park not far from the sanctuary, and spend their days at and around Best Friends.
They pack an impressive agenda, too. While in town, they collect plant and other biological samples for lab work back at school. Those samples keep them busy all year long. They also have creative writing classes at Angels Landing, a gorgeous natural amphitheater on the sanctuary grounds that you have to see to appreciate fully. Back on the camping end of things, they go on night-time hikes with black lights in hand to check out scorpions. (Scorpions glow under black lights.) Not a bad school trip, eh?
To top it off, the group spends two days performing service at the sanctuary. They always leave it to Best Friends to find a project for them. And we’re not talking about something small-ish like cleaning out a dog run or anything. No, this is one big crew, and they want a big job. In the past they have cleared entire trails, mended huge sections of fencing, you name it. This year they took on a project perhaps more ambitious than any other: cleaning out Area 51.
Area 51, for those who don’t know, has become a sort of central storage area for roughly three metric tons of rescue stuff: cages, igloos, fencing, carriers, and on and on. Major rescue operations tend to produce a whole lot of such material, and it has all gathered in one spot at the sanctuary over the years. The area was in dire need of a little organizing.
Well, these kids were equal to the job. They rolled up their sleeves and jumped in with both feet. You can hardly recognize the place any more.
Camping, education, night-hikes, service, and hanging out with animals — could there possibly be a cooler school trip? Thanks to all the kids from Rowland Hall. Hope you keep coming down for another twenty years.
Story by David Dickson
Photos by Sarah Ause
Want to volunteer at the sanctuary too? Contact Best Friends today to make arrangements.
