Mountains to the Gulf 2017 

We are excited to announce our fifth annual Mountains to the Gulf excursion!

A group of 20 educators will be selected to travel across Alabama for a week long excursion with some of the Southeast's top experts in geology, watersheds, herpetology, and ecology. Stops along the way are Little River Canyon, Cheaha State Park, and Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Partners include Legacy, Partners in Environmental Education, Alabama Water Watch, Environmental Education Association of Alabama, Georgia-Alabama Land Trust, McDowell Environmental Center, and Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

What some of our 2016 Mountains to the Gulf participants have to say: 

• “I loved learning more about my state and its diversity, I am proud and anxious to get back and share what I learned with my students”
• "The most amazing 8 days of a teacher's professional life!"
• “I wish it was longer, make it 10 days instead of 8 days!”
• “I gained a new appreciation for the diversity of our state”
• “This trip was an amazing display of coordination –you all are to be commended for an awesome job”
• “I now have some tools to pull Environmental Education into Alabama History classes”
• “I now understand the big picture of how everything is connected”
• “Loved this, Thank you!”

Legacy, Partners in Environmental Education partners with several other organizations in an amazing teacher expedition called Mountains to the Gulf.  A group of twenty teachers from across Alabama is selected to travel the state of Alabama for a week with some of the Southeast's top experts on geology, watersheds, herpetology and ecology.  Some of the experts who participate are Dr. Jim Lacefield, author of Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks, Dr. Bill Deutsch, founder of Alabama Water Watch, Heather Montgomery, author of many children's books, and Jimmy Stiles, herpetologist.  They will guide the our teacher group through all ecoregions of Alabama.

Stops are made along the way at Little River Canyon, Cheaha State Park, Lake Martin, and Dauphin Island.  We gather fossils from roadside cuts and stream beds in Southern Alabama.  The final two days are spent at Dauphin Island Sea Lab where we explore salt marsh estuaries and go out on their research vessel to trawl and learn about the living species in our gulf waters.  We stay in hotel style lodging along the way and travel in a charter bus.