Local Food Bee

We wanted to pass along a new blog dedicated to local foods by a USEE member and Environmental Educator, Tara Poelzing. Her new blog is called the Local Food Bee and looks like it is going to be a fabulous resource.

Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Local Food Bee is a resource for anyone with an interest in food. Browse around to find recipe ideas for seasonal foods, articles addressing general food concerns, and links to valuable resources. For those living in the Utah area, find local foods via the Food menu.

Check it out! For more local food info, also check out USEE's course - Menu for the Future, or give us a call at the USEE office anytime.

From the Mailbox: Winter Programs at Jordanelle

Don't forget to sign up early for these awesome programs at Jordanelle State Park!


Rock Cliff Winter Programs

February 5, 2011 Jordanelle State Park – Francis
Animal Builders (Rock Cliff): Join the park naturalist from 10 a.m. to noon to learn about animal builders and engineers. Head out on snowshoes looking for and creating animal winter homes. Bring snowshoes or borrow a pair from the park. Pre‑registration is required. Day‑use fee is $7 per vehicle with up to eight people or free to Utah State Parks Pass holders. For more information, please call (435) 782‑3030 or (435) 649‑9540. Rock Cliff is located on the east end of Jordanelle State Park on hwy 32 near Kamas and Francis.

March 5, 2011 Jordanelle State Park – Francis
Deer Family (Rock Cliff): Join the park naturalist from 10 a.m. to noon to learn about the deer, moose and elk and how they survive the winter. Bring snowshoes or borrow a pair from the park. Pre‑registration is required. Day‑use fee is $7 per vehicle with up to eight people or free to Utah State Parks Pass holders. For more information, please call (435) 782‑3030 or (435) 649‑9540. Rock Cliff is located on the east end of Jordanelle State Park on hwy 32 near Kamas and Francis.

March12, 2011 Jordanelle State Park – Francis
Day Time Moon (Rock Cliff): Join the park naturalist from 10 a.m. to noon to learn why the moon has phases and how the moon affects wildlife. Learn art of animal tracking and how to identify animal tracks. Bring snowshoes or borrow a pair from the park. Pre-registration is required. Day use fee is $7 per vehicle with up to eight people or free to Utah State Parks Pass holders. For more information, please call (435) 782-3030 or (435) 649-9540. Rock Cliff is located on the east end of Jordanelle State Park on hwy 32 near Kamas and Francis.

February 19, 2011 Jordanelle State Park – Francis
Moonlight Snowshoe Hike (Rock Cliff): Join park staff at the Rock Cliff Nature Center for a moonlight snowshoe hike beginning at 7 p.m. Pre-registration required. Space is limited. Fee is $5.00 per person or $7 per family up to eight people or free to Utah State Parks Pass holders. $5 for snowshoe rental. For more information, please call (435) 649-9540 or (435) 782-3030. Rock Cliff is located on the east end of Jordanelle State Park on hwy 32 near Kamas and Francis.

Programs subject to change without notice.

Big thanks to Kathey Donnell for the heads up about all these great programs, and the beautiful photos!

Have you heard?

Utah is one of over 40 states and territories that have agreed to transition their core standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics to a set of standards common to all states. This “Common Core” initiative is organized and supported by the National Governor’s Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

For more information about this transition, visit www.schools.utah.gov/core/.

From the Mailbox: Teacher Discounts

Did you know that some places have discounts for teachers? Did you know there are as many as 66 of these places? They include arts/craft/school supply stores, to clothing stores, to electronics stores, furniture stores, hotels and attractions, museums and zoos.

To get the full list, visit giftcardgranny.com.

Whale Lice and Genetics

This is my last semester as a student at the University of Utah, and it just so happens that I am finally taking my two introductory courses in Environmental Studies. One of them is Biology 1210.

The first day of class, a few weeks ago, we started off talking about whale lice. Just as there are lice specifically adapted to live on our heads, there are lice adapted to live all over whales. Specifically, we talked about right whales, and a study done at the University of Utah a few years back. My professor explained that the scientists were trying to figure out if the right whales ever circumnavigated the globe, and wanted to examine the DNA of northern and southern hemisphere right whales to make this determination. Apparently, it is difficult to collect DNA from whales without making some people unhappy, so the scientists came up with an inventive solution: lice.

Different types of whale lice live on different areas of the whales. Some are transferred to the baby whales as they nurse from their mothers, which leads to a face-full of lice in adulthood.
(Image via)

Whale lice are much bigger than human lice, just as whales are bigger than humans.
(Image via)

If lice from right whales in the northern hemisphere are genetically related to lice found on right whales in the southern hemisphere, those whales must have been in contact at some point since lice are transferred by contact and cannot survive without a host right whale. Plus, it is much easier to scrape off a few whale lice than a DNA sample from a right whale.

An article from nationalgeographic.com explains more about the research and results.

From the Mailbox: Momentum Recycling

Did you see mention of USEE's discussion course in Momentum Recycling's January newsletter? Not only did they put in a nice plug for our discussion group, Sustainable Systems at Work, which will meet Tuesday afternoons from 1:00-2:00 pm at the USEE office starting February 8th, but gave some great tips on making your workplace more sustainable. Check it out:


Workplace Sustainability

Many organizations are investing heavily in efforts to increase efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of their operations, but are they taking the right steps to ensure that these efforts are institutionalized? This question is at the center of efforts by Salt Lake City businesses, non-profits, and governmental agencies, to make changes to systems and processes which will help them improve workplace sustainability.

Over the last few years, Momentum Recycling has helped dozens of Salt Lake City organizations develop waste reduction, recycling and other workplace sustainability goals, as well as tactical plans to meet those goals. Institutionalizing these goals is a major key to success, and our experience has shown that employees must be engaged in every step of the process in order to get buy-in from the workforce. With that in mind, here is Momentum’s list of the top ten things an organization should do in order to improve workplace sustainability:

1. Establish a recycling program for consumable goods.

2. Use environmentally friendly purchasing practices (close the loop, buy goods with post-consumer recycled content).

3. Recycle, donate, or refurbish electronics or other durable goods.

4. Eliminate disposables. Instead, use reusable flatware and dishware, or other durable goods.

5. Recycle or reuse packaging materials.

6. Avoid petroleum based products (plastics).

7. Reduce paper waste (circulate one copy of magazines and newspapers, use double-sided print settings).

8. Buy locally produced goods from local merchants.

9. Reduce energy use (buy Energy Star appliances, create an engine idling policy, carpool, turn off equipment at night).

10. Form a Green Team (set sustainability goals, make sustainability practices part of the employee manual).

For those who are interested in delving deeper into workplace sustainability, you might be interested in attending the Utah Society for Environmental Education’s (USEE) Sustainable Systems at Work discussion series. This five-session discussion guide for the workplace is designed to further organizational sustainability initiatives. This new program inspires innovation and creates alignment between employee actions and organizational objectives. USEE will be hosting a group starting in January, with the initial meeting date still to be determined. If you are interested in attending, please email Andree' Walker Bravo at director@usee.org or call 801-328-1549.

Another New Intern for Spring

USEE's new Spring intern is Jesse. He currently teaches rhetoric and writing at both the University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College. He also attends school, working on his second Master's degree in Environmental Humanities. If you must know, the first is a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a focus in poetry. Jesse is an avid reader and appreciator of everything fine, especially art, literature, music, writing, solitude, and food. As a native Utahn, he spent a good deal of his young life in the mountains and, after visiting the California coast every year for the last 20 or so, has become quite fond of the sea. Last year, he and his wife spent five months backpacking through Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. He speaks Spanish fluently and is available for parties. USEE is exceptionally happy to have him involved with our organization at this time.

From the Mailbox: AWWA Webinars

A pamphlet about the upcoming "From the Tap" Webinar Series put on by the Intermountain Section of AWWA came in the USEE mail today. The webinars will be offered on February 9, 2011 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. You can choose from:

"Back to Basics: The Groundwater Rule," taught by Jay Mashburn, will summarize key components of the EPA's Ground Water Rule.

and

"Sampling Fundamentals," taught by Marie Owens, will teach about the critical role of water quality monitoring in protecting public health.

For more information about these webinars, visit ims-awwa.org.

From the Mailbox: Fall of Rome Recorded in Trees

Check out this article from the Project Learning Tree List-serve!

Fall of Rome Recorded in Trees

by Andrew Curry on 13 January 2011, 2:17 PM

Preserved. Climate changes recorded in tree rings correlate with important events in European history, such as the Black Death.

When empires rise and fall and plagues sweep over the land, people have traditionally cursed the stars. But perhaps they should blame the weather. A new analysis of European tree-ring samples suggests that mild summers may have been the key to the rise of the Roman Empire—and that prolonged droughts, cold snaps, and other climate changes might have played a part in historical upheavals, from the barbarian invasions that brought about Rome's collapse to the Black Death that wiped out much of medieval Europe.

"Looking back on 2500 years, there are examples where climate change impacted human history," says the study's lead author, Ulf Büntgen, a paleoclimatologist at the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape in Zurich. "This kind of information is not only relevant for ancient agrarian societies, it might also impact modern societies."

The study, published online today in Science, examined nearly 9000 pieces of wood, mostly collected over the past 30 years by archaeologists who use tree rings to establish the age of ancient sites or structures, a technique known as dendrochronology. With tree rings taken from living trees as a baseline, dendrochronologists work their way back in time, comparing overlapping samples to edge ever further into the past.

The researchers worked out climate information the same way. First, they compared weather records collected over the past 200 years with samples from living trees to see how temperature and moisture affected tree-ring growth. Then Büntgen and his co-authors looked at timbers from historic buildings, wood preserved in rivers or bogs, and samples from archaeological sites to push the record further back. The study used 7284 oak samples from France and Germany to see how moisture showed up in tree rings and nearly 1500 different stone pine and larch samples from high altitudes in Austria to establish a separate temperature record.

The result was a continuous—and precisely dated—record of weather in France and Germany going back 2500 years. "We were aware of these super-big data sets, and we brought them together and analyzed them in a new way to get the climate signal," Büntgen says. "If you have enough wood, the dating is secure. You just need a lot of material and a lot of rings."

When Büntgen showed the data to historians and archaeologists, they pointed out remarkable consistencies with what we know of past societies. At times of social stability and prosperity, like the rise of the Roman Empire between 300 B.C.E. and 200 C.E., Europe experienced warm, wet summers ideal for agriculture. Similar conditions accompanied the peak years of medieval Europe between 1000 C.E. and 1200 C.E.

The study also showed that climate and catastrophe often line up. In the 3rd century C.E., for example, extended droughts matched the timing of barbarian invasions and political turmoil. Around 1300 C.E., on the other hand, a cold snap combined with wetter summers coincides with widespread famines and plague that wiped out nearly half of Europe's population by 1347.

"It's a phenomenal data set with some eye-opening conclusions," says University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, geoscientist David Stahle, who was not involved with the study. "The provocative outcome is that harsh climate conditions happen to be associated with upheavals in society, like the Black Death."

By counting wood samples, the analysis also created a rough measure of human activity. In eras of prosperity, more trees were cut down for building and fuel, yielding more samples in the archaeological record. At other times, like the years after the Black Death and the so-called Migration Period between 300 C.E. and 600 C.E. when the Roman Empire was overwhelmed by tribes pushing in from the east, the number of wood samples dwindles to nearly nothing. "It's an interesting proxy of demographic trends and really the most provocative part of the study," says Stahle

Article Source- sciencemag.org

More trees in a city bring surprising benefit, Portland study finds

Article source - oregonlive.com Published: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 7:49 PM Updated: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 7:49 PM

By Joe Rojas-Burke, The Oregonian

You've heard all the obvious benefits of urban trees -- shading buildings, sheltering wildlife, filtering air pollution, stopping erosion. A new Portland study suggests a more surprising benefit: healthier newborns.

Researchers used satellite images to compare tree cover around the houses of 5,696 women who gave birth in Portland in 2006 and 2007. Pregnant women living in houses graced by more trees were significantly less likely to deliver undersized babies.

Tree cover made no difference in the rate of pre-term births, but researchers found a consistent link to the prevalence of infants who were small for their gestational age. For each 10 percent increase in tree coverage within about 50 yards of a home, the rate of undersized newborns decreased by 1.42 per 1000 births. As it stands, about 70 of every 1,000 newborns in Portland are small for gestational age.

"Maybe it sounds a bit daft at first," says lead author Geoffrey Donovan, a scientist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland. But he says it's plausible that having lots of trees nearby counteracts the stress experienced by pregnant women.

Studies in animals and people make clear that maternal stress is harmful to a developing fetus and can increase the probability of underweight birth. In a variety of human clinical trials, exposure to nature and greenery significantly reduced people's stress levels and helped them withstand high-stress situations.

"That may be the mechanism," says Donovan, a specialist in forest economics whose work for the Forest Service includes studying urban trees and their effects on crime, energy use and health. The birth study, co-written by researchers from the Multnomah County Health Department, Drexel University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was published online by the journal Health & Place.

Dr. Stephen Fortmann, a senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland who was not involved in the study, finds the results intriguing. "It points out that some of the neighborhood level factors that effect health might work in ways we haven't thought about," Fortmann says.

But he says the results have yet to be replicated and remain far from conclusive. "The issue with any observational epidemiological study is confounding. Is there a causal relationship here, or is something else going on?" he says. "In this case, one immediately thinks there is probably something else going on –neighborhoods with a lot of tree cover, even in Portland, are very different from those with little tree cover."

Women located on leafier Portland streets were more likely to be younger, white and non-Hispanic, have fewer previous births, and live in newer and more expensive houses. To test for the impact of tree cover on birth outcomes, Donovan and co-authors used a statistical model to subtract the known effect of the mother's age, ethnic background, household income, education, use of prenatal care and many other variables that can influence fetal development.

"This isn't the final word," Donovan says. "Our point is, look, here are some interesting results, let's look at this some more." For now, the study suggests that Portland could look forward to three fewer undersized newborns per 1,000 births if the city were to achieve its goal of boosting the area covered by trees to 33 percent.

-- Joe Rojas-Burke; follow him on Twitter
© 2011 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

Wild About Utah - The Brine Shrimp of the Great Salt Lake

Photo Credit

Hi, this is Mark Larese-Casanova from the Utah Master Naturalist Program at Utah State University Extension.

I can still remember the colorful advertisements for Sea Monkeys in the back of comics books that I read as a child. For just $1.75, I could have a “bowl full of happiness!” It wasn’t until I visited Great Salt Lake thirty years later that I realized what sea monkeys really were. They certainly weren’t tiny, web-footed humans, and they definitely didn’t have little crown-like antennae. But, it was exciting to think that we have an enormous Sea Monkey aquarium right here in Utah.

Sea Monkeys are actually brine shrimp of the genus Artemia, and Great Salt Lake is full of the species Artemia fransicana. These tiny crustaceans, along with the brine fly’s aquatic larvae, are the foundation of the Great Salt Lake Ecosystem. Millions of birds visit Great Salt Lake each year to feed on brine shrimp during migration or while nesting.

Not much can live in Great Salt Lake, with its salt concentrations as high as 25%. But by adapting to these conditions, brine shrimp avoid many predators and have little competition for the abundant algae and bacteria that grow there.

Beginning in late winter or early spring, as the water temperature increases and there is an influx of fresh water to the lake, brine shrimp hatch from cysts, which are hard-shelled dormant eggs. The brine shrimp larva, also called a nauplius, survives on a yolk sack for the first 12 hours, but then feeds on algae as it grows into an adult.

Some species of Artemia have only females, but the Great Salt Lake population has both males and females. The male can be distinguished by his ‘grasper’ antennae, which almost look like a giant handlebar moustache, and the female can often be seen with two small, orange or pink egg sacs at the base of her tail. When conditions in the lake are good, such as with high oxygen and relatively low salt concentrations, female brine shrimp will give birth to live nauplii. But, if salt concentrations increase due to drought in summer, or when water temperature drops in late fall, females switch to making more cysts to ensure the survival of future generations. As winter passes, and spring starts to make an appearance, the life cycle of the brine shrimp starts all over again.

To learn more about brine shrimp, be sure the visit the Great Salt Lake Institute’s web site at greatsaltlakeinstitute.org. I encourage you to visit Antelope Island State Park where you can catch brine shrimp from the marina on the north end of the island. All you need is a bucket… and a little sense of adventure.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy USGS http://ut.water.usgs.gov/shrimp/
Text: Mark Larese-Casanova

Additional Reading:

USGS, Brine Shrimp and Ecology of Great Salt Lake. http://ut.water.usgs.gov/greatsaltlake/shrimp/

Wild About Utah is a weekly nature series produced by Utah Public Radio in cooperation with Stokes Nature Center and Bridgerland Audubon Society. Archives of the program can be found at www.wildaboututah.org.

Bag It!

[Image Via]

It's that time of year again. The holiday season is over, but crowds of people are flocking to Utah for something special: the Sundance Film Festival. Didn't get tickets this year? Don't worry, you can still catch some interesting flicks. We even know about one that is free, and that has an environmental theme.

It is called "Bag It!," a film that follows the story of a man who vows to stop using plastic grocery bags, and in the process examines the other plastics he consumes. It does more than just follow one man's quest, but puts a magnifying glass up to our culture of consumption and the greater environmental issues that this can cause.

You can catch "Bag It!" for free next Tuesday, January 18th, at 7:00 pm at the City Library. The screening is sponsored by the SLC Film Center. It may not be Sundance, and you probably won't see any celebrities, but this upcoming event promises to broaden your perspective on consumption and (of course) plastic bags.

From the Mailbox: Higher Ed for Nonprofits and Events at ONC!

Occasionally some interesting things pop up in the USEE mailbox. Here are two of them that you might find interesting.

Do you know about the Nonprofit Academy for Excellence? This is a program through the University of Utah that offers classes specifically for those working in the nonprofit realm. Here's what the website says:

The Nonprofit Academy for Excellence at the University of Utah inspires excellence in nonprofit management and governance. This unique certificate-based program, customized for managers, staff, and trustees of Utah's nonprofit community, promotes enhanced organizational capacity and effectiveness to professionals seeking training and development in nonprofit management. In addition to high-quality, affordable courses, the Academy offers a meeting place for nonprofit professionals to share ideas and strategies and build relationships that last beyond the classroom.

In the brochure we received, it says there are certificates offered in the following six areas:

1. Fund Development
2. Leadership and Management
3. Financial Management
4. Social Media
5. Human Resources
6. Self-Directed

How cools is that? The application deadline for the program is January 21, and there are scholarships available. To apply, just visit the program website, nonprofitacademy.utah.edu.

The next item from the mailbox is a flier from Ogden Nature Center. Just because it is winter doesn't mean hibernation for Environmental Education!

The Ogden Nature Center has loads of programs going though the winter, like Scout Saturdays, Wild Wednesdays, Preschool Discovery Days, Community Programs like a Snowshoe and Sledding Party, Kundalini Yoga, a romantic date night "Nature is for Lovers," and the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Check out ogdennaturecenter.org for more details!

Happy Birthday Aldo

From The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It's the birthday of writer and ecologist Aldo Leopold, (books by this author) born in Burlington, Iowa (1887). Aldo grew up in a big, prosperous family, lived on a 300-acre estate with a lot of his relatives. The whole family spoke German together and worked in the gardens and orchards, where he learned about plants and soil. He went hunting with his dad and bird-watching with his grandfather.

While he was studying at Yale, he practiced writing by composing long letters home. Theodore Roosevelt created the U.S. Forest Service in 1901, and a few years after that, Leopold finished his master's degree and joined the Forest Service. He worked on surveying and drawing maps.

When he was in his 20s, he was caught in a storm out in the wilderness and he ended up with kidney disease. For the rest of his life, he had bouts of poor health. And it was during these bouts that he began to write. He wrote Game and Fish Handbook (1915) and Game Management (1933), about wildlife conservation. After 19 years in the Forest Service, he became the Professor of Game Management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and bought a piece of land on the Wisconsin River. And it was there, at his home in Wisconsin, that he wrote many of the essays for which he is now famous.

He tried to publish a collection of his essay, but for seven years his manuscript was rejected. He kept reworking the essays, and finally, when he was 60 years old, he got the news that his book was going to be published. One week later, a neighbor's trash fire got out of control, and Leopold was afraid that it might spread to his farm, so he went out to help fight the fire. Suddenly, he lay down on the grass and died of a heart attack.

So Leopold's children spent the next months putting the book together, and in 1949 A Sand County Almanac was published. It became one of the most important texts of the conservation movement.

Aldo Leopold wrote, "Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left."

From the Conservation Garden Park: Plant Spotlight

Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum)

For middle-aged men, the term “bald” probably brings negative feelings. However, for this stately conifer, bald is an apt description of its deciduous nature. Losing foliage in the winter is rare for conifers, but the bald cypress will lose its needles as the weather grows cold, regaining a fresh new set in the spring. Although it is often a cause for alarm for those who are unaware of this trait, it is an interesting characteristic on a tree that has many redeeming qualities. Naturally growing in swampy and wet areas, this tree will grow in relatively dry soils as well.

Being a recent addition to the garden, the only pictures we had were in its less impressive "bald" state. The attached picture shows some very mature examples, but is not from the garden (we don't have any trees growing in standing water around here).

See the original post here.

CURRENT NEWS: University scientists begin tests on 'ice ball' air conditioning

* This is an article from KSL News. Click HERE for the link.

January 5th, 2011 @ 10:10pm

By John Hollenhorst

SALT LAKE CITY -- This is the time of year when many start to wish cold winter weather would go away, but some University of Utah scientists are trying to save the winter cold and use it next summer.

This week the students finished installing an experimental system that will store the cold underground in a giant ball of ice.

"I love winter!" said Prof. Kent Udell. "I love the cold. The cold means money in the bank for us, in terms of building the ice balls."

The project has been in the planning stages for months, but now it's a reality behind the campus building that houses the Office of Undergraduate Studies.

Udell's team from the Department of Mechanical Engineering created a system of 19 connected vertical pipes that extend 50 feet into the ground. The pipes will circulate a refrigerant similar to Freon from deep underground, to the surface, and back down again.

When exposed to the cold winter air, the refrigerant will become chilled. As it goes back into the ground, it's expected to freeze moisture in the soil, creating a ball of underground ice 35 feet in diameter.

The payoff comes when winter changes to summer. Freon chilled by the ice ball will be pumped up to the building's air-conditioning system to cool the building as the ice ball melts. Udell compared it to recording a TV show for use at another time.

"We're 'TiVo-ing' this winter weather so that we can use that for air conditioning come summer," Udell said.

The University of Utah students' experiment will attempt to cool a refrigerant similar to Freon by pumping it past a giant ice ball beneath the earth's surface. The refrigerant will then be used in an air conditioning system above ground. [Click image to enlarge]

In theory, a similar system could store summer heat underground and use it to warm up the building in winter.

"You won't need any electricity at all," said Ph.D. candidate Bidzina Kekelia. "If you put small solar panels and power the small pumps -- liquid pumps that we are putting in -- you won't be using any power from (the) grid."

Udell expects the installation on campus will ultimately cost just over $20,000. He believes such a system could pay for itself within two years in reduced energy bills if it's used on a building with a high demand for cooling, such as a computer data center. With an office building like the Office of Undergraduate Studies, he guesses it might take 10 years to pay for itself.

"This is the first time this has ever been done on this scale" Udell said. "So the cost numbers are one of the things that are going to be worked out as we find out how well this works."

Kekelia said if such a system became widely used it could reduce the need for electrical power plants.

"Which is lots of savings in power," Kekelia said. "Besides, its free. I mean, you're getting free cooling, free air conditioning or, in future, free heating."

"This should last for many decades," Udell said, "and will continue to pay dividends and give us free heating or air conditioning as the technology develops, every year from here on out."

The installation is now complete, except for the connection to the building's air conditioning system. Udell hopes to have the system operational in about a month, so they can start saving winter cold before it goes away.

E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com

Moose on the Loose

Kathy Donnell, Naturalist at Rock Cliff Nature Center, sent these great pics this morning. The moose were hanging out near the lake. Have you been to Rock Cliff? If not, it is definitely worth visiting!