We got a tour of the headquarters with Katie and were introduced to all the people who were working. We met a lot of people who were involved with conservation, but through means other than direct invasive removal such as ...
During lunch, we met Amber, who works for an organization called Clean Wisconsin Clean Wisconsin is a non-profit organization that works to save the environment, much like The Nature Conservancy does, but only focuses on problems within Wisconsin and is more heavily involved in policy and legislation. We also met Nick Miller, the head of the Science for Wisconsin TNC, who had just come back to the states after 6 months in Chile thanks to the Coda Fellowship that The Nature Conservancy provides.
The Coda Fellowship is an exchange program that allows TNC employees people who have certain skill sets to work in different countries or regions of the United States where those skills might be necessary in the conservation of the land.
Both Amber and Nick came to the conclusion that conservation is not just a job that involves pulling invasives They told us that the different parts of Clean Wisconsin and The Nature Conservancy (i.e. land management, law, map making, science, along with pulling invasives) come together to allow the organizations to work efficiently and well.
After meeting with everyone at The Nature Conservancy headquarters, we went to our hotel. It was large and beautiful. There was even a couch and hangers that came off the rails. We found out that the pool opened until 12, so we were pretty excited about that, too.
We then went to the University of Wisconsin - Madison and got a special tour of the school. We passed by the school hospital, the different buildings that each had a designated study (i.e. biology, psychology botany, law, chemistry, arts, and business). We also passed through the school's botanical gardens, designed by the U. W. Madison landscaping students. They also gave us buy one get one free ice cream coupon at the Terrace!
Aldo Leopold had once worked for U. W. Madison and had actually worked on the first prairie in the world at the Arboretum. Because we were so close, we decided to visit it. As we drove into the parking lot, we saw what an amazing job Leopold had done; it is a great prairie. However, the information panel didn't mention much about Leopold. Instead, it talked a lot about John Curtis which made us a bit disappointed. We took some pictures around the area and left to go sight-seeing.
Marissa got very upset when she saw this thistle (they are her mortal enemy!), but we all reminded her that since the thistle had the leaf bottoms were white this was the native thistle. So she gave it the thumbs up!
After the Leopold Center, our first stop was the capitol. It was amazing and we went around the whole building taking pictures everywhere. There was a wedding held there too! We also tried to get to the observation deck, but we were a few minutes too late.
Afterwards, we walked down State Street going into gift shops, clothes stores, and book stores. We saw some silly monkeys and took a picture with them. As we kept walking, we reached the lake. Marissa explained that it was the Terrace, an area where people took walks and hung out. It's a really pretty place. We also got ice cream with our buy one get one free coupons.
We thought Marissa could use this, she was a little upset at our recommendation.....
OH Joan.... We found her the perfect gift.
Marissa wouldn't stop playing with this sword.... We are a little concerned.
We walked back down State Street to get some sushi at Takara restaurant. Three of the five of us had never had sushi before. We started slowly with some appetizers. We had gyoza (fried pork dumplings) and edamame (Japanese green peas). Emily and Rebecca had a hard time using chopsticks. Rebecca also put a whole edamame pea and started chewing! We had to explain to her that she's supposed to squish the individual peas out. Then we took it up a notch with a few cooked and basic rolls: California roll and Philadelphia roll. Surprisingly, they all liked it. We even got some raw rolls and rolls with eel! Emily wasn't very fond of the eel, but she liked everything else.
After our yummy Japanese dinner, we went back to the hotel. It was pretty late so we decided to watch some TV and go to sleep.
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