A small but hearty group of students from four Oregon High Schools, college mentors from Eastern Oregon University and instructors from EOU and Arlington High School met the week of June 13th for the ninth annual Cottonwood Crossing Summer Institute at Cottonwood Canyon State Park. Oregon Parks Forever helps fund this event.
Students learned about solar energy and constructing park benches with built-in solar charging stations for visitors to charge their electronics while out in the park; others found over 500 species of macroinvertebrates in the John Day River; a third group learned about storytelling through photography, with the addition this year of night-time photography of stars in the dark skies at Cottonwood.