Starting The Appalachian Trail

Starting The Appalachian Trail
Welcome to Summit's Virtual Hike blog! Here you will find out where we are and what we have learned. Each classroom has a different section of the trail to "hike". Every month we will be posting what we learned and the progress of our mileage goals. Keep checking our blog to see where we have been!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A.T. Night

Thursday, March 20th is A.T. Night here a Summit. We will be sharing what we have learned with the community and eatting great food. Hope you can join us there!

Kindergarten Journal - March

Yea! We made it over the suggested 75 miles in Georgia. Most of the time we talked about the animals and habitats along the way. We have also shared pictures of the mountains and talked about how the trail has changed over the years. People have been the biggest culprit!

1st Grade Journal - March

We have completed the 88 miles there and 88 back. The children are currently working on researching facts about North Carolina in anticipation of our info board for A.T. Night.

2nd Grade Journal - March

2nd grade has completed our 293 mile journey through Tennessee. We learned the State wildflower is the Iris, Bull Cave is the Deepest cave @ 924 feet, the State animal is the Raccoon, and the Appalachian Mountains boarder the eastern part of Tennessee.

3rd Grade Journal - March

The third grade has walk/run 1,463 miles of the AT. We started at Springer Mountain, Georgia and have persevered through North Carolina, Tenneessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New york. We are currently in Connecticut. Our goal is to reach the end in Maine before the school year ends. We are about three-fourths of the way there! Since we have travel so fast and so far, we are currently gathering facts about native plants and animals, as well as landforms in Virginia. Over one-fourth of the AT trail is located in Virginia. We are linking up with the Appalachian Bluebird society and building some bluebird houses to be placed at our new school site. We hope to help connect the Bluebird trail from Virginia into North Carolina. More details later, we have miles to go and things to see and learn.

4th Grade Journal - March

To come

5th Grade Journal - March

5th has learned that the Penn. section has a wide array of large mammals such as a large black bear pop., deer, fox, coyote. We also know that the trail is rocky and hard on boots and feet. The elevation gains are from 320- 2080 feet.

6th Grade Journal - March

Since last hiking through Connecticut and New York and back again, the Summit sixth grade have since trekked an additional 340 miles on the Appalachian Trail. This puts their total AT hiking mileage at 620 miles! Speeches are currently being prepared on copperheads, red-tailed hawks, moose, bald eagles, black bears, cardinals, bluejays, bog turtles, black rat snakes, Mountain dusky salamanders, red wolves, and peregrine falcons. Benton MacKaye, the founder of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, is also being presented. The sixth grade is excited about AT night, and preparing a skit about hikers, animals and signs. We're excited and working hard!

7th Grade Journal - March

As you know we have already traveled through massachusetts and Vermont and are finishing New Hampshire.

New Hampsire: 161 miles of the A.T. goes through New Hampshire. The elevation is 400-6288ft. There are 35 peaks ove 3,000 feet.The best time to go is in July or August. White Mountains are the highlights of New Hampshire. There are very steep areas in this portion of the trail. Don't plan to hike more than 5-8 miles a day. Tempurature varies and snow is possible at any time of the year. Snow falls on Mt. Washington every month of the year. High winds and dense fog are the norm for the climate. Trail enters NH at the college town of Hanover along the Vermont state line. The trail heads northeast into the White Mountains National Forest and exists at Grafton Notch near Bethel, Maine.Some of the recreational activities include trout fishing and camping. I hope you look foward to hiking this portion of the AT when visiting New England.

Lindsey and Morgan -- 7th grade

8th Grade Journal - March

8th grade has hiked 249 miles. We have been working hard on our A.T. Night presentation as well. We have been studying the interesting facts about Maine because it is so different than any other part of the AT.