Eco Adventures

Most students at Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach campus, including those in the Honors Program, are not from Florida. In fact, the Honors students come from most of the 50 states and more than a dozen countries. Because of this, part of their education ought to include gaining a better understanding and appreciation of the natural Florida environment and ecology, as well as some of the issues involving the collision and cooperation between urban and natural settings in the state.

Each spring semester, the Honors Program students are encouraged to participate in the “Spring Eco-Adventure.”

Past outings have included:

• exploring the inland waters of Mosquito Lagoon and the ancient Timuquan Indian Turtle Mound
• learning about the vast but threatened Florida Aquifer, and then floating the unspoiled stretches of the crystal clear, spring-fed Santa Fe River at Ichetucknee Springs State Park
• floating another region of the Santa Fe River at Ginnie Springs

The first entering class of students in the Honors Program (2003) was invited to participate in the first annual “senior trip” adventure, this time into the wilds of Everglades National Park.

Photos on this page were taken during this trip, which included a guided “swamp slogging” walk into a large stand of bald cypress, hiking dry hammock regions in the Park, canoeing an expanse of mangrove swamp and bicycling along a 15-mile stretch of pathway at the park’s north entrance.