6-21-2026 

Yeah, this weekend's posts are going to be fairly short since it's the weekend and all, but it is Father's Day. Anyway, today we woke up and went to a pretty big waterfall by the White Salmon River, and we were just kind of wandering around the area. The falls were beautiful; the water was so clear and blue,  and apparently the area is in the process of being restored to what it was before the dam. I found it kind of funny that they only removed the dam because it didn't do anything really and had no use for it, when there are still a lot of dams that serve no real purpose and obstruct the flow of water and the wildlife that live and depend on the water. Sorry for the little rant, but the area was beautiful, and the little trail was pretty to walk, and I saw a lot of baby native plants that were planted there, like serviceberry, cottonwood, ponderosa pine, etc. It was fun walking that trail and looking at all the native plants. I think that's probably my favorite part of the walk: trying to identify all the plants, and walking along the river was pretty too. It was funny; there was this flower that was everywhere, and Monett and I were praising this flower and how beautiful it is, and we were trying to figure out what kind of plant it is. I said, "It was to be some kind of orchid," and after some googling, we came to find out it was Everlasting Pea, which is an invasive species, and we were super bummed after we found out. It was pretty cool on our walk; there was this bench with all these journals and books in it, and I was reading some of the entries in the journal saying they were an environmental science class from somewhere collecting rocks, and you know, had to put something about Heritage University in there. It was a pretty cool spot, and most of the entries were poems about the river, and I thought at least they were super good. We also went to this lookout spot where the lake was when the dam was there; it was pretty good. 



To celebrate Father's Day, we went to this little cafe back in Glenwood; it was called Station Cafe. It is right at the corner of the intersection on Main Street. One of my classmates is a Dad, so we got to celebrate Father's Day with him and got a round of huckleberry shakes and lemonades, and one root beer float on Jessica. I haven't got a chance to call my dad yet because I feel like we have been constantly on the move or doing something, which is a nice escape from the irreparable dogma of living in the middle of nowhere. It's nice sometimes, the quiet, but it can be a little lonely, and the closest thing to you is a little market that's a 10 min drive. Anyway, the cafe was a cute little spot, and the shakes themselves were super good and had real huckleberries in them and were super refreshing after being in the sun all day and covered in sweat. Right now, though, we stopped at this other cafe/hotel thingy to shower up, finish our blogs for the day, and head back to camp to do some more soil analysis stuff; it kind of seemed like we were going to collect data from the surrounding stuff like the canopy coverage. Then probably have dinner or something and chill afterwards; that usually seems how it tends to go after dinner, so we do our chores, change, and sit around playing cards or something. 

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