Mullein

Today was awesome! We left campus around 7:30am to go to Cherry Creek National Park. It was about 30 minutes away. It's HUGE. Once we were there, we walked to our destination by using the trails. It was quite a walk. Everyone had to wear their steel-toed boots too. I should have broke them in earlier. My feet were killing me.

Once we were at our destination, we were taught of some tool safety and more of what we were doing. The teams split into two. On my team, there were five people. After we got organised, we were brought 400 six graders that would help us. They had to walk about a half mile from their school. Five students joined our team. Their names were Yanni, Tasha, Bommi, Elan, and Sarah. We did an awesome ice breaker that they taught us. It was called Ninja. Then, we were on our way to start our mission.

The Sun Unit was going to, as they called it, "thrash" Mullein. Mullein is a weed that is taking over the park and keeping other plants from growing. It can be up to 6ft. tall. We first cut off the top part that held all the seeds and put it in trash bags. We then cut the stem from the root and just left it in the field. It helps prevent it from growing more. All the teams were assigned a specific spot. I must say, ours was the biggest. It was more than twice the size of other teams. We cleared it all out though. It was awesome! We had a total of 7 bags filled. The students did a great job. They also had a lot of fun.

At lunch, we went back to the main area. After eating, the students had to go back to class and the NCCC members had to finish the trail building. It was originally assigned to a different unit, but they didn't get to finish. We had it all done within an hour. I can't believe it. We were filling wheel-barrows with dirt in 3 seconds! I wish you could have seen the team work.

We got back to campus before dinner. I was glad that I finally got to do more than just sit through presentations all day. It was a great experience.