Earthlings Adventure Club Blog: Teepee base building, giant ant hills, and Manzanita!

October 17, 2025-

Hiked Twin Gates trails at UCSC Natural Reserve, up Empire Grade. Biome is mixed evergreen forest and meadow that includes manzanita and live oak chapparal. This is an awesome place to visit and hike because it's definately off the beaten trail, and has exceptional manzanita trees. Santa Cruz Manzanita species are considered rare even in Santa Cruz and are endemic (native) to the area, I believe the ones along Twin Gates trail to the right of Empire Grade are these species, because they are very tall, reaching at least 12 feet, which is characteristic of Santa Cruz Manzanita, in comparison to common Brittle Leaf Manzanita, which can only grow to usually 8 feet. Manzanita has edible fruits and husks. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band was documented to make drinks with Manzanita berries as well, including teas and ciders. It has been tested that Manzanita berries have three times more antioxidants in their berries than pomegranates and blueberries.

We flipped some logs, found some beatiful spider webs, and spent a good portion of our day collecting large redwood branches and building a teepee. One student worked on their weaving, while others rubbed rocks together and interacted with the surrounding nature. We found an absolutely massive ant hill, about the size of a standard bean bag chair. I shared what I know about ant hills and ant inner workings, that ant hills actually have different rooms and complex tunnels. These tiny rooms even have different purposes, some for storing food. Ant colonies are complex societies that function as a super organism. I didn't take a photo of the ant colony but it resembled this: and was about a foot and a half tall!

May have been Alleghany Mound Ant, found in Santa Cruz and are known for building very large mounds.

Identified Yerba Buena, a native crawler plant that can be found in different biomes, has many benefits, and smells amazing! It contains menthol essential oils, which is it's easiest identifyier, by minty smell. It can be used for oral health, to relieve digestive issues, can help clear nasal passages, and can be used on insect bites or plant rashes due to its antiseptic properties.

We also tied together twine to form a teepee with three large sticks. Students helped to fill out it's shape by placing more large sticks on base structure.

Found a banana slug and impressive web (no spider present)

Also saw a Spotted Towhee, at first thought was a robin due to it's coloring, but identified white marks on feathers. I might have been the only one to truly see this, by the time I pointed it out it was gone.