Leo has gone on the Guadalupe River Park field trip twice - second grade and fifth grade. Serafina went once in first grade. I've gone zero times. In all my chaperoning, I've managed to avoid this field trip. Honestly, I don't love outdoor only field trips in the winter and this one always ends up getting schedule during the winter months when there is a risk of rain or cold weather. I don't like being cold. But today I finally got to experience Guadalupe River Park for the first time. Leo's middle school needed drivers so I said yes and crossed my fingers for good weather. We got beautiful weather and I'm glad I got to experience it.
Here's the middle schoolers milling around waiting for the docents to take them to their first station. This was after they tortured me with bad rap music on the drive over.
Our first station was encountering different animals. The first animal we observed was a rat who was quite active and cute. Our next animal was these crayfish that were not very interesting at all. In fact, Leo was much more focused on assembling the model crayfish.
This toad was completely unimpressed by my stellar chaperoning skills.
Guadalupe River Park is in the middle of a very industrial part of San Jose and very close to the airport, right under the flight path. There were loud planes coming in for a landing every couple of minutes and you can see the power lines in the distance in this picture.
The park got its name because a archeologist found a woolly mammoth skeleton in the park and named her Guadalupe. There is a river there, but we weren't able to visit it because there is a large homeless camp on the river and the water has become very polluted.
After a nice nature walk, the kids learned about salmon and played a game. I took this picture right before a loose dog came wandering over and distracted the kids. I corralled the dog away from the kids before a docent came to get her and find the owner. She was a sweet looking pit bull and Leo asked if we could keep her if no one claimed her. That wasn't going to happen today.
After lunch, the kids were allowed to play at the adjacent park. When I had little kids and all I did was visit parks with my friends, I would have been so annoyed if a bunch of huge middle schoolers came to invade the park. But these middle schoolers had so much fun. They were full of joy and energy and it was awesome to witness.
This seesaw was their absolute favorite. They kept trying to launch each other off of it and several kids, including Leo, went flying off. I was worried someone would get hurt, but they were all just laughing and screaming. It was all they talked about on the way home.
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