“It was fun!” said senior Kelsey Schacherbaur.

The AP Environmental students went on another field trip. Only this time they didn’t travel ten minutes to Fayetteville. They drove all the way to Dardanelle State Park and went camping. The students left Nov. 11 around 12:30 p.m. and arrived at Dardanelle State Park around 3 p.m.

“A lot of people tried to set up tents that have never set up a tent before,” said AP Environmental teacher Charles Nokes.

The students then proceeded to set up camp, by making their tents (even if some didn’t know how to), and then later had supper. Supper included hamburgers, hot dogs, cobbler and marshmallows.

After dinner, some students chose to go to the recycling presentation and on the way back they cleaned up around the lake located in the state park and around their campsite. When they got back the atmosphere was laid back and there was joking around, ghost stories and even some scaring the student on the teacher’s part.

After lights out, the students woke up at 6 a.m. to a buffet style breakfast, complete with scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits, tortillas and juice.

The students packed up camp and went to Arkansas Tech for a series of informational classes. The first was a soy classification training, which talked about the profiles of soils. The second was range management that talked about managing pasture lands and there impacts on soil.  After the second lesson, the students then went to enjoy a nice free lunch in the Arkansas Tech cafeteria.  Although after lunch, the students went on to their last lesson on water testing that taught them pH balances, nitrate testing and testing the healths of streams or lakes around them.

After all the sessions were complete, the students piled up on the buses and went home.

“It was a lot of fun; it was a really great learning experience. It’s definitely something I would recommend for future AP Environmental students,” said Schacherbaur.