Raleigh Museum of Natural History Field Trip

‘Twas Friday the 27th when our sixth grade took a field trip to the Raleigh Museum of Natural Sciences to learn. The trip started with a 30 minute bus drive to simply get to the museum itself, for me the trip was mostly uneventful, maybe not for others though. Once we arrived there, my advisory joined the advisory we were paired with and we set off. We first went to an exhibit on the life that lives at beaches. We learned about sand dunes and other ocean things as well. On the next floor we learned about several environments in North Carolina such as the mountains and the Piedmont, we also learned about the animals that made those areas their home.

While I cannot remember the chronological order of most of the things we did, I do remember them. We went to an area that focused on mentors and we learned about a meteor shower that happened in Chicago where a bunch of meteorites hit Chicago.  We also went to a place where people were 3D printing items and that was cool. We went to a really interesting exhibit called RACE Are We So Different. In there we learned about how race was created and how biologically race isn’t real. The exhibit was very insightful to how race affects many things like health and the environment.

After the RACE exhibit we went to an area about insects and arachnids and we got to see real tarantulas and hissing cockroaches which were kinda gross. We also went to other areas with animals like snakes and frogs that were really cute, we went to an area about dinosaurs. That’s about all I remember but the field trip was very fun and I learned a lot about many subjects.

Camp Hanes

It was Thursday morning, the entire sixth grade was waiting to get on the bus to Camp Hanes for their first overnight field trip. They all piled into the two charter buses, the buses were loud with the sixth grade’s constant talking. On my bus we watched Madagascar, a very interesting movie. I talked with Cyrus about politics along the way. We drove past the lake in Camp Hanes and the bus stopped, we got off and threw our luggage into the indoor gym and walked to the conference room. Once we arrived in the conference room we had to wait for one of the staff and Mrs. Stanbury get the cabin lists, while we waited, we played four corners and it was pretty fun. After we got the cabin list I was in a cabin with the boys in my advisory and Mr. Harris’s advisory, we were in cabin ten. We started to settle in, I was above Benjamin in the bunk bed and I payed out my sleeping bag and found out the flashlight I was gonna use was out of battery. Then we got ready for all the good activities that would come, this was the beginning of our Camp Hanes adventure.

We did many activities over the course of our time at Camp Hanes, but one that stood out the most was the rock climbing wall. Next to the main climbing walls, there were small columns with their own challenges that you could climb to get to the sky hammock. One was like a spider web of logs that was difficult to climb up on and to climb down, the other was a series of diagonal rock walls with passageways to another diagonal wall. I immediately went to the log spider web that was very high and would take a bit to climb, I started going up but there were people climbing at the same time so I had to wait. After climbing either of those ways, you could get to the sky hammock which had a nice view of the lake. I had to go down the diagonal rock wall and at one point I slid down into the entrance to another part of the diagonal rock wall which kinda hurt but was surprising. There was also the main rock climbing. I didn’t make it up very far but going down was fun because it feels like you’re floating. The rock climbing wall was really fun and there was a lot to do on it so it was definitely my favorite activity.

I’m very proud of making it up the hike pretty easily and not being scared of falling to my death. Actually, the hike was, in my opinion, the second most fun activity we did. I had a great time at Camp Hanes and may visit again someday in the future. I had never been to a sleep away camp before and this was my first time which was fun. In conclusion, I had a great time at Camp Hanes and it was really fun.