Saturday, October 18, 2008

International Coast Clean up


This weekend the Environmental Club teamed up with Phi Theta Kappa to go participate in the International Coast Clean up. To start things off, the van we used for the trip was EC's Brand Spankin' New 12 passenger van. When I picked it up, it had 94 miles on it. I could not believe the van was entrusted to us on its maiden voyage.

We had three fantastic students join along in the journey. We also had two special guests, two of ECEC's alum's and better than that, they are both past presidents; Annie Strohm and Steven Cullen. Annie met us at EC and rode with us. Steven came over from Mobile, AL where he is working on his co-op portion for his degree. Both have always been extremely active ECEC members and even now as alums they join in on everything they can. Mrs. Robin Johnson and Mrs. Felicia Skipper also joined us on this outing.

Friday night we camped at the Audubon Center in Pascagoula. They have always given us a place to stay when we need it. That night we followed ECEC tradition and had a feast. This time we grilled tilapia, shrimp kabobs, boyscout style potatoes, and the Johnson's famous peach cobbler. Afterward we sat around a campfire, listened to some guitar playing, stories, and then we moved in for some games.

Saturday morning came early, 5:00 am to be exact. It took a few minutes, but we all began scampering around getting read for our day. Mr. J and Steven started on breakfast, I'm sure others helped so I'm not trying to leave anyone out, where we ate pancakes and sausage. After everyone cleaned up and we packed up, everyone jumped in a vehicle and headed toward Gulfport to start the beach clean up. Along the way we had a real close view of a sand-hill crane, beautiful bird that did cross the road, and made it all the way across thankfully.

We made it to the clean up site where we joined the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Phi Theta Kappa students. Everyone jumped in and did a great job cleaning the beach. We actually cleaned nearly a mile past what we were supposed to do. We did pick up a bag of cans that made it back to EC and we had about three bags of plastic to be recycled that we left for MGCCC.

Eventful as that was the day was about to get more interesting. Under the careful observation of Cody, a motorcyclist was stalled out and needed assistance pushing her bike out of traffic. So we helped her get her bike on the sidewalk. Well what actually happened was, she was about to turn and the front wheel hit a pile of sand, the bike turned over and she scraped her knee. Well under Cody's suggestion she checked the scrape and it was a huge gaping gash. With the help of a first aid kit and Annie practicing her vet skills, we cleaned and bandaged the wound. Hopefully she did go to the hospital for sticthes. After all of that we went and ate, then made the trek back to Decatur.

Thanks to everyone that helped on this trip. I had a great time and hope you did to. If any of you have anything you would like to add to this or editing then let me know.

Curt Skipper

2 comments:

Steven said...

Hey, This is Steven, I have a wonderful time camping with the group again. Looks like you did a great job with the clean-up. Thanks again for the invite and the food.

Annie said...

Great post. It was a blast. To bad more people could not have joined us. As always we had a wonderful adventure and a ton of fun.

P.S. More people need to become followers. I'm kinda gettin lonely :^)