One of the highlights my summer was a trip to Southwestern Colorado through the Hopkins Environmental Studies department. It was an awesome experience in a part of the country I had never been before; we visited national parks, met with environmental advocacy groups, and camped under the stars. I know Colorado may not sound as appealing as some other study abroad programs Hopkins offers, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone (especially those not in an Environmental Studies major)! The trip really made me realize how little importance we place on making the time to visit such natural beauties and learning how we can protect them. It’s also a great way to get better acquainted with the outdoors.
Here are some highlights and photos from the trip:
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Arches National Park: We went to a bunch of national parks and monuments on the trip, both in Utah and Colorado, but one of my favorites was Arches National Park. This place is one that I’ve heard about my whole life, so obviously visiting and seeing the arches was a very cool experience. What I didn’t expect was that there were so many other cool rock formations besides the arches; most of the hike we did was rock scrambling, which is super fun, and we were able to see some crazy configurations in the land. Also, the park is huge so there was plenty to explore. Even though there was a lot of people there, the hike to Landscape and Double O Arch (which our group did) was quiet and serene. image credit
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Natural Bridges Monument: My other favorite outdoorsy-place we visited was the Natural Bridges Monument, something I had never heard of before coming to Colorado. Even though arches and bridges sound pretty similar, I would say that the bridges we saw here were more beautiful. Although they don’t allow people to walk on the bridges, we were able to do this really fun hike to the bottom of the canyon and look up at the bridge. The bridge we visited was over a small river surrounded by greenery, which felt like an oasis in the Utah desert climate.
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Honeyville: Our group was stationed out of Durango, which is in the Southwestern corner of Colorado (right on the Four Corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado). It was a very outdoorsy and granola-y town, and had a lot of cool opportunities for tourists like us. My favorite place we went to while in town was this honey shop called Honeyville. They not only had edible and non-edible products of all kinds, but you could see some of the actual honey bees in their hives and the machines they used to process the honey!
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Silverton and Ouray: Lastly, we visited two old mining towns in the mountains, where we learned about some of the acid mine drainage issues that the region had in the past. Both Silverton and Ouray were the tiniest towns I have ever been to; when you drove down into the small valleys where they were both nestled, you could see the whole 15 blocks that make up the town. Ouray also had a few pretty waterfalls right next to its downtown.