The San Diego Zoo’s Girls In Science just returned from a weekend camping trip up to San Onofre State Beach!

We arrived at our campsite on Saturday morning, set up camp, ate an early lunch, then hiked out to the world-famous surfing break known as Trestles. We sat down in the shade right underneath the main railroad trestle and spent some time talking about art. Andy Goldsworthy is a sculptor who uses natural items to build beautiful works of art, which he then lets nature slowly tear apart. Nothing manmade is used, so there is nothing left but what he started with when Mother Nature finishes. We let his sculpture inspire us to wander out onto the beach, each girl on her own, to build something unique and ephemeral, using only found, natural items. The sculptures were stunning, and we documented each with our digital camera before the tide washed them all away.

We played for a little while, then spent the hike back to the campsite geocaching. Geocaching requires the use of a hand-held device called a global position system (GPS) unit. Sound high-tech? It is! The GPS units work something like compasses, utilizing satellites in orbit around the Earth to give each user her exact location. We went on a treasure hunt, looking for caches that had previously been hidden by other players of our game. Having only coordinates to go by, and the GPS units to guide us, we finally found our first cache! The girls were excited to learn about the process””I suspect we’ll be doing quite a bit more geocaching next semester!!

We made it back, worked on our journals for a while, and had a great dinner followed by s’mores! The evening’s highlight was the radio shows that each tent group put on, entertaining us with what they had learned or experienced through the GIS program this semester. They were all fabulous””the GIS participants are all natural comediennes, I think!

Late to bed and early to rise, but what are you going to do? Breakfast was early, and our park ranger never showed up for our morning activity, so we lounged around a bit, laughed and played, and wrapped up the morning playing some group games with a huge orange-and-white parachute! A highlight for me was getting to spend some quality time catching up with some of the alumnae who joined us, and getting to know the new girls even better!

The program wraps up for the semester the first week in December, but we’ll start up again after the holidays. Keep your eyes peeled””we’ll be back!

Cindy Spiva-Evans is an educator at the San Diego Zoo.

Girls In Science is a program for Roosevelt Middle School girls which creates science-based experiences with professional women at the San Diego Zoo. The program is funded through the generosity of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

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