Day 1 : Here we go

July 7th / day 1  

Upon arriving….45 minutes late to the meet up at the university I was thrilled to see some familiar faces. After getting everything assigned to us we received a great and very informative lecture from Jonalee Sequeochs which is the coordinator for the Yakama nation cultural plan she explained how  climate change affects the water flow throughout the valley and how that could directly impact us I will admit due to sleep deprivation I did miss some parts of the lecture but what I did catch was very great information.  

After finally leaving we took a couple detours the first was to collect the willow branches we would need in order to cook things over a fire the ride there was pretty fun there were only five people in the van, Pablo, Maria, Rudy,our tour guide Jacob,and myself, together we made up the “Fab Five” a name we all voted on. Along the way, we collected some firewood and stopped to take a few pictures with the state's largest ponderosa pine. When we finally arrived we all stopped to admire Mt. Adams or as the native tribe members refer to as “Pahto” 

Pahto

potato hill

Seconds after the pictures the mosquitos began attacking us because I knew that they were not going to leave us alone I admitted defeat and stopped trying to brush them off which somehow this seemed to work because the stopped biting me. Most of the day was spent setting up tents and cooking dinner. I was then given the task of setting up a hemic It was my first impossible task of the trip. I took all day just to figure out with the help of three other campers that Jessica had given us a broken hemic. later that day I got the boring job of doing the dishes afterward and was forced to suffer through the cold. On the Brightside, we took some great pictures.