Students from West Country Outreach School are about to embark on an exciting journey and they even have new jackets to wear on the trip.
Seven students, principal Alva Holliday and teacher David Robertson will leave for California on April 12 for 10 days of site-seeing, tours and lots of just plain fun.
Robertson, who has worked hard to make the trip become a reality, is looking forward to the experience.
“It has been a dream of mine to do this for my whole career,” he said. “It’s been exhausting, definitely a labour of love to put it all together, but it’s definitely been worth it.”
Students from the Outreach will meet up with a group of students from Sydney, Nova Scotia will on the trip.
Robertson sees the students combined experience as a positive, noting it will give the teens a chance to make new friends and learn about another province.
Each day of the 10-day excursion promises a new adventure.
On the first day students will fly to San Francisco where they will participate in a tour of the city and a cable car ride.
Day 2 will see them continuing to tour San Francisco including the Golden Gate Park, the Gold Gate Bridge, Pacific Heights, Fisherman’s Wharf and last, but certainly not least, take part in a tour of Alcatraz.
On the third day they will drive the California Coast to Los Angeles.
Day four will see them touring again, checking out Hollywood Bowl, the Star Walk of Fame, Mann’s Chinese Theatre, Rodeo Drive, Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier.
Day five will include a trip to Universal Studios and the next day they will visit the San Diego Zoo.
A tour of San Diego including Balboa Park will be part of day seven’s agenda as well as a trip to Coronado island, Gas Lamp Quarter and Sea World.
On the final two days of the excursion they will have fun in Disneyland. Students participating in the trip studies tourism and photography and studied social studies 10 and 20. They also participated in fundraising events to help make the trip financially feasible.
Robertson is grateful to superintendent Larry Jacobs and the school board for their support and encouragement.
“They were not just supportive, they were enthusiastic as well,” he said.
He is also grateful to Holliday for her support.
“We are the first Outreach School to even do this,” he said. “Hopefully we can set the bar high for others to follow suit.”
People can follow the progress of our tour by going to our school website http://westcountry.wolfcreek.ab.ca/ and watching our school's Twitter feed at the bottom of the page. We will upload information, stories, and pictures as we tour California. If people would like to follow our Twitter account, we can be found at @WestCountryOutr.