Murphy-Environment

Well it's been an adventurous and fabulous week. We started the week getting adjusted to North Carolina and embracing the scenic environment with an off-track hike through Fires Creek (vine swinging including). Later that night, we meet Tony and finally learned what exactly invasive plants were and their dangers to the beloved rivers. These suspicious plants would soon be our greatest enemy. Our first day working began at Murphy High School, where we first met privet and things were never the same. Tuesday was filled with a ton of terrible thorns and cuts, puppy breaks, beautiful views, and a lot of dancing; from contra dancing to John Wall-ing--we did it all. Wednesday was The Coalition versus privet forest and we dominated, of course. Later we cooked hot dogs over the fire with The Coalition and of course there was frolicking. Thursday we planted a forest, found a nice place to rest and skipped some rocks, and don't forget about the privets!

And today was our free day and we got some much needed sleep. We made some pancakes with bananas, blueberries and chocolate...delicious! After pancakes, we headed into the mountains to Carolina Outfitters for a very cold, but very adventurous white water rafting trip. We then headed to a little restaurant on the river, which was right off the Appalachian Trail, filled with Appalachian backpackers. Our waitress was the sassiest waitress on this side of the Mississippi and we ate a meal fit for some serious hikers. Then it was time to head back to our wonderful lake house that we have grown to love (and then took a group nap). It's been a great trip; we learned a lot and made some new friends. But the ASB Coalition is off to our final mission…eat all the remaining food in our house (especially all the ice cream…nom..nom..nom)!