The *New*, Environmentally-Friendly Rachael!

Hello! Sorry I haven't written in a while, I hope you guys haven't forgotten me! Dad and I are very busy these days, this is the first day I've gotten to do my schoolwork in a while!

On Monday I did a good deed! Dad and I decided to go and pick up trash in the woods for 4.5 hours or so (the first 3.5 hours we just lazed around, though. ) with a group of park rangers/conservative people. Like I said, we didn't start picking up trash until the last hour or so. Before that we went on a little tour of the campsite. It reminded me a lot of Colorado, which is where my dad used to live. In the picture you can see our little group. Towards the front is Roni (Row-nee), and in the red shirt behind Roni is me!

On our tour we saw these beautiful flowers, they were all silvery and stuff. Roni said that they were the first flowers of autumn. If you look closely at the picture, you will see that they bloom weirdly, like this: first, the first few rows at the bottom bloom first. Then the rows higher up bloom after the lower ones are dead. So it continues up the stalk. After all the flowers have bloomed and died, the fruit grows.

At the campsite there were two activities for the kids. One was where you took a pine cone and decorated it with stickers and feathers and then took some string and hung it up in a tree. The other one was where you took a sheet of paper that had the outlines of a mask of a roe deer. You color it, cut it out and bend it, and you have a mask! Sorta sounds like the torture sessions at school, huh? :) (Well, I like art class, but some people don't) I did the pine cone, and you can see it in the picture.

After a while Dad, Roni, another woman and I went to pick up trash. I'm happy because Dad's back didn't hurt even though he bent down some!

If you want to know more about the organization, look at the URL on the picture, or if you can't read it go to:

http://www.tevanaki.com