After being postponed for a week due to some nasty spring weather, the famous Earth Day festival in Columbia took place on May 2, 2010.  There was hundreds of booths, great music and a whole park filled with kid's activities!  Naturally, MRCN could not resist the opportunity to get in on the fun!  While Steve manned the booth and talked to the more mature audience, the AmeriCorps members got to have all the fun with the kiddos!

A morning excursion to Gans Creek yielded plenty of macroinvertebrates for the kids to investigate!  We found around 10 crayfish, as well as a bunch of mayflies, stoneflies, scuds and sowbugs.  We had to explain to the kids that we got the critters from a nice healthy stream, as our bugs would have certainly not been able to survive in Flat Branch, which flowed behind us.  Whether or not our message sunk in, our little investigators definitely appreciated the coloring books, bug catchers, pencils, stickers and tattoos we handed out!

Earth Day ended up being a huge success with hundreds of people coming out for the day.  MRCN will definitely continue participating in this great Columbia tradition.