Welcome to Civics!

Introduction and Homework (you know it!)

I hope you are ready to roll into the second half of your senior year!

Over the summer, I took several trips!
At the end of June, I went with my in-laws to Sunriver (outside of Bend Oregon).  The Department of Transportation is currently designing highway underpasses for wildlife to pass through safely.  We didn't see a lot of wildlife in the resort.

At the beginning of August, my family and I started a two week roadtrip.
One of our first stops was to camp in Yellowstone National Park where according to the news, there is a strong probability of an earthquake!  There was a rumor (we found out after we left) that the park had been evacuated because the volcano that fuels the hot springs was about to explode.

Our next stop was Salt Lake city where we toured the Church of the Latter Day Saints temple grounds, ascended above the city for an overview, and got caught in a rainstorm at the open air mall where we ducked into a Starbucks to avoid being drenched.  We saw Guardians of the Galaxy at the mall theater. And we also saw these signs for bomb shelters.

After that we went to Las Vegas which was the goal of the trip.  We spent three days at a conference for web security.  Yes, there were hackers there.  However, probably not these ones.

To round off the trip, we took our son to Disneyland (which really was the happiest place on Earth and the lines were rather short!) but things like this still happen in spite of attempts to educate people about the dangers of bullying.  We also visited Universal Studios and Legoland.

San Francisco was the next logical stop because it's hard to drive 12 hours straight in California.  We did spend one night in a roadside truck stop, parked between all the truckers in our little travel van.  For the short amount of time we were there, we visited the Golden Gate Bridge and looked out over the Bay.

We stayed at Petaluma which is in Sonoma County.  While we were there, we visited the recording studios of the This Week in Tech (TWIT) podcast network.  A week later the earthquake struck that region.  There was quite a bit of damage to the buildings there.

Finally we spent the last night before returning home to Washington in the lovely campgrounds at Seven Feathers Resort.

Over the summer, concerning events happened.

An Ebola Outbreak has been crippling African countries and causing panic in more developed countries. Could it come to America and spread?  Most likely not as dramatically as in Africa....here's why!

Murder of Journalist James Foley is the latest in shocking news about the dangers of reporting in the Middle East and the state of Syria and other Middle Eastern countries at the hands of ISIS
And a second journalist was beheaded and ISIS has further gone on to take the lives of other hostages including a Japanese journalist most recently.

Ferguson and Michael Brown - Racial tensions exploded in this small town in Missouri, proving that racism is still a horrible struggle in America.

And if all of those things weren't terrifying enough, there's this.

Yes, you can drive through this tree.  No, I did not drive through it.