5 Memorable Field Trips
1. Golden Gate Park - Second grade - I am certain we did something educational on this field trip; it doesn't seem likely that we would have gone on a trip solely to visit a park. I feel like this could have been a Planetarium field trip, but I'm not quite sure. What's important was the PARK! See we lived in Hayward which is about an hour outside of San Francisco, so to drive in was a BIG deal. None of the other kids had been to the park before, but I had because my parents were separated at the time and my dad lived in SF, so we were always doing the coolest shit in the big city. So that day of the best field trip, I got to show the kids how to ride down this enormous concrete slide (you know the kind that will skin your knuckles if you're not careful). You had to find these trashy cardboard pieces to sit on so you could actually slide, otherwise you'd push off and your courdoroy or wool tights would stop you in your tracks.
Golden Gate Park is a dreamland for me. It's actually larger than Central Park! It smells of eucalyptus, and it's all lush and gorgeous. The playground itself was/(is??) a visual masterpiece. So many creative toys!
(this used to be there, but I think they took it down)
2. Exploratorium - it's OMSI on steroids. Just look at it. No anecdote necessary. It's a DREAMMM!
3. Mission Mill - 4th or 5th grade - My love affair with the Mill started pretty young. I've always been so taken with its smells, its machinery, its antiquity. Don't think many of the other kids would count it amongst their favorite outings though. Teehee!
4. Ice Skating - Junior High - I think this was one of a few 'Gold Pass' field trips. You had to be a nerd (ahem...make a 3.5 gpa or above) to be part of the 'Gold Pass' elite. We also went to some wave pool in Springfield, and maybe went to the movies or something. The trip I LOVED was when we went ice skating at the Lloyd Center Mall. There was always something amazing about riding a school bus on the freeway and writing ridiculous notes from the back seat to the cars trailing us (they must have LOVED us!). Also, we always stopped in Woodburn (for gas??) and we were allowed to go to any of the gazillion fast food places for a snack. WOW! That was pretty darn coooool!
So yeah, then the ice skating was just super cool because I had never been before and it's all charming with the lil' shoes, and the falling on your ass bit, and the holding on to the side, etc. Yeah, no way I was going to turn into some Tonya Harding (ew) disciple or anything. After the skating we were then allowed to roam the excitingly huge Portland mall for an hour or so unsupervised. Yeah...you should be jealous.
5. Speech & Debate Tournament – Freshman year. – I was new, and all the ‘cool’ kids were doing it (well, maybe they were more like the ‘freaks’ in Freaks & Geeks, but they were certainly my kind of cool). I remember that for some reason our Speech & Debate club had reached its pinnacle of attendance and our advisor Miss Prick (that couldn’t have been her name, but it was close to that…Miss Perk? Miss Prisk??) excitedly used a small school bus to drive us out to….who knows where we were going. What I DO remember about that fantastic day was that:
It was a Saturday, and while schooling on the weekends is usually quite lame, whether it was for theatre or for helping make something in Japanese Club, coming to school on the weekends was a way of life for me and it’s always so charming to be one of the few to roam the empty halls.
That Miss Prick/Peck/Pisk was rad enough that when we passed by a garage sale, she decided we should stop. I got a fantastic vintage shirt there. Sigh…
That I sat next to Erin, this girl that was quite the lil’ actress and I aspired to emulate her in every way. She was reading Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker, which when I later read it to be just-like-her, I was engulfed in joy and deep deeeep love of the English language. Triple Sigh………
So yeah.....you?? Where did you go? What are your memorable field trips?
4 comments:
This is very hard. I feel like we took the same field trips over and over, zoo and OMSI.
1. I think I was in 5th grade - We went to McKay, my eventual high school, and saw the student production of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. I was so thrilled and think of it to this day
Honestly this is the only one I can recall.
When I was taking Chemistry at Chemeketa we went on a field trip to Willamette Valley Vineyards and the garbage burning place in Brooks.
My son sure seems to go on some great field trips. Someday I may even be able to chaperone one.
1. Oregon State Capitol when they were replacing the gold leaf...maybe second or third grade. 2.Seattle via Amtrack (this is a field trip I take my kids on, not one I went on tho). 3.Touring the Hult Center, before we had our choir concert there...loved seeing all the famous autographs in the tunnel under the stage. 4.Spending a day at estuaries on the coast. 5. This isn't a field trip, but our journalism teacher would often take us out to dinner after dropping off the finished paper with the printer.
The Exploratorium is da bomb.
My favorite field trip was in 6th grade. We boarded a bus at 4am and then drove to St Louis and hit several awesome places. The Arch of course and a really cool science museum that I can't remember the name of but I do remember that they had this huge conservatory and each part was a different environment (rainforest, desert, plains, etc) to show the plants that grew in each area. It was really awesome. Oh, and I ate chocolate covered ants and brought some home and tricked my sister into eating some.
i remember that speech + debate trip, it was awesome! (the teacher's name was mrs. krick, btw)
i also got something hott at that yard sale. as i recall we were late for our first round because of it. but it was worth it.
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