March 19, 2014 GPS Mapping at West Hylebos Wetlands Park

 The Navigators and Explorers became Cartographers this week with the help of Lester Power, one of our dads and a mapping scientist at Weyerhaeuser. We divided into groups, held our GPS devices up towards the satellites in the sky and walked the trails of West Hylebos Wetlands Park marking important waypoints along the way.


Here's the amazing composite map we made of the park.
(POI = point of interest. We had many of those!)

And here it is compared to the brochure we picked up at the park. It's almost the same!

Here's how we did it.

We made the trip to West Hylebos Wetlands Park,
a sanctuary in the middle of Federal Way, Washington
about ten minutes from our school.

Getting equipped

Clipboard and pencils? Check.

Outline map? Check.

Satellite map? Check.

Rite in the Rain paper to record waypoints? Check. 

Notebook? Check.

Rain? Check.

And we're off to explore, navigate and map the beautiful and wet wetlands!

Waypoints along the path that we programmed into our GPS devices:

Interesting trees

Skunk cabbage

Fungi

The Deep Sink

The sign of the beaver? The turtle?

Bridges

Gadgets are us!

Wrapping it up back at school:

Group C's map was quite accurate.

 Studying our maps:

We ended the day with beautiful sunshine. Mr. Power took us outside and showed us how it takes four satellites to get an accurate GPS location.

We're so grateful to have such supportive and interesting parents that are willing to come in and share their skills and passions with us. Thank you, Mr. Power!