Cotter Junior High School students went on a school field trip to Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center on February 21-23.

The junior high goes to Eagle Bluff once every two years.

Eagle Bluff is an environmental learning center located near Lanesboro, Minn. It is a year-round residential center that offers outdoor opportunities to over 16,000 participants every year.

James Greshik, an eighth-grader at Cotter, describes the trip as “pretty great.”

Greshik’s favorite part of the trip (barring pranking the seventh graders) was the “Raptor and Reptile presentations.”

“I now have a pretty solid feel for class trips and how they can give you more insight on those around you,” Greshik said.

Cotter teacher, Miss Halvorson, chaperoned the trip.

Halvorson describes Eagle Bluff as very “near and dear to [her] heart.”

Miss Halvorson went to Eagle Bluff for a fifth-grade class trip, and “LOVED it.”

After college, Miss Halvorson worked as a naturalist at Eagle Bluff as her first job out of college, and it was that job that helped her realize that she wanted to go into teaching.

As returning to Eagle Bluff was one of Miss Halvorson’s goals, she was very happy to find out that Cotter has been taking students to Eagle Bluff for over 20 years.

Miss Halvorson was very impressed with the junior high students on this year’s trip.

“On our trip this year we saw students not only figuring out how to simply enjoy being outside for three days straight in February after a storm that coated everything in several inches of ice, but also grow closer with their peers as they shared dorm rooms and took on new challenges, like tackling the high ropes course or trying to build fires with kindling gathered from the woods. To see junior high students supporting and encouraging each other through difficult or even scary moments the way that they did on this trip- that’s an incredible feeling for a teacher!” Halvorson said.

Halvorson is still very much involved with Eagle Bluff. She is now on the Board of Directors.

“I’ve experienced Eagle Bluff as a student, a staff member, a teacher chaperone, and now I’m even on the Board of Directors for Eagle Bluff… I’ve seen it from pretty much all sides,” Halvorson said.

Mr. Haun, Mrs. Forney, and Mrs. Wagner were also chaperones.

Photos by Mrs. Niki Peterson.