Antelope Canyon, Arizona

It may seem like a step backwards from the Grand Canyon to go to a tiny slot canyon, but in my opinion the slot canyon was just as good if not better than the Grand Canyon.  The Grand Canyon was huge, but it didn’t have the same elegance that the slot canyon had.  The slot canyons were carved slower with less dramatic flash floods. In addition the wind carves with sand to smooth it out. The incredible shapes that the canyon forms are no less than otherworldly. Since I couldn’t do this place justice by talking about it I will have to use mostly pictures.

This was called the pirate

Our guide showed us how to get cool shots. This was
one of them. The rocks get better illuminated when
you turn on chrome.

Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona

The next day we went to Glen Canyon Dam. Glen Canyon Dam is blocking Lake Powel near the mouth of the Grand Canyon.  It is 16 feet shorter than the Hoover dam and produces the same amount of power (approximately 4.5 billion kilowatt hours annually).  For some reason the security around the Glen Canyon dam was more relaxed than it was around the Hoover. Maybe it was just that there were fewer tourists. When we were trying to get into Hoover our truck, camper, and Thules were searched.  When we were getting into Glen Canyon we just drove in and had a picnic on the front lawn.  There was no search or anything. There were as also surprisingly few tourists, we might have seen about 10 other people there. We spent about 20 minutes in the visitor’s center before our tour.  Before going into the dam we had to be checked for weapons and such. Before going through the metal detector we had to remove any metal objects. I personally only had a phone, but some people had metal on their boots, belts, earrings, hats, shirts, zippers, necklaces, and handbags. One woman was getting POed because she had a coat with metal, a belt with metal, and a bunch of other things.  When her belt buckle the size of a credit card got caught in the metal detector she was asked to remove her belt.  At this point she starts yelling at the guards “Well you’re practically asking me to strip down etc…” she had also been through the metal detector three times and I was trying not laugh.  After that we got to an elevator that took us down about 100 feet. We went out onto the dam and saw various exhibits about the turbines and cables used

in the dam. Apparently the turbines had just been replaced with stainless steel copies. Originally they were cast steel, and they had started to rust. Next we went on another elevator, this one going down about 500 feet, by this point my ears were popping like crazy.  Since the dam is so big it has several miles of hallways, in light of this all the workers ride three wheeled bikes to get around. At the bottom there is a two acre section

of grass over where the generators operate. Shockingly there aren’t many golfers working at the dam, it seems like the perfect place. We saw the eight turbines where the power is made and that pretty much ended the tour. My favorite part was the view from above. I could see the river and the sand bar stretching into the canyon.

Grand Canyon

Yes again. The Grand Canyon was just as I remembered it, just colder. There was a few inches of snow on the ground.  This time my grandparents and aunt were with us and we only stayed a few hours.  It went by really fast. Our itinerary was wake up a six and drive for two and a half hours. We took a helicopter ride (more on that later, it was awesome), did some sightseeing, then went to an old watch tower. The drive there was long and boring, like most drives, but when we got there it got more interesting. The entire reason we had to wake up so early was because we had a helicopter tour scheduled for early in the morning, and we were supposed to get there a half an hour early. We arrived on schedule and took off as planned. It was just me and my grandpa with a few other strangers. My aunt, mom, and grandma had no real interest in being 6000 feet in the air, and my dad gets sick in amusement parks. They missed out on something amazing. During lift off my knuckles turned white, but my mom said my face was completely lit up. It

felt like we were going in a & shape during liftoff, and it scared the living crud out of me.  We went for a few miles over forest, but at 90 miles an hour it passed by fast. My favorite part was when we reached the edge of the canyon and we dropped a little. It

wasn’t as dramatic as going into a nose dive, but suddenly we went from 50 feet in the air to 5000. Instantly after going over the edge my perspective changed completely. I wished my eyes were bigger to take in the view. At the beginning I was worried that the ride would be like an amusement park, constantly bumpy and swinging around, but it was as smooth as could be expected.  There was still the occasional drop that left my stomach about a foot above me which turned out to be pretty fun.  The part that scared me the most was the playlist. In between the

times our pilot was talking to us music was playing in our headphones. During takeoff the song “Ground Control to Major Tom” was playing. Seeing as that song is about an astronaut who cuts communications and goes into space I was a little worried because if our pilot decides to follow in his footsteps he will not float. The second song I recognized was “Hold Back the River”. This one seemed a little ironic since we were flying over one of the

strongest rivers in the world. The final song that I recognized was “Renegades”. This one wasn’t that scary, but at first I thought it was “Unsteady”, and that’s not the kind of news I want to hear from my pilot at 6000 feet.  Admittedly my anxiety may be coming from seeing so many helicopter scenes in James Bond movies. It retrospect it might not have been the best idea to watch “Spectre” right before the tour. The opening scene is with a helicopter. For anyone who doesn’t know what I am talking about I will give a link to the video of the scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrT9uOd8MAg  When we made it back to the landing pad we got a few pictures with the helicopter and went to see the Grand Canyon from the ground.  Needless to

say the views were not as great on the ground. Having already been there for a week we had already seen all the sights. Personally I don’t see how my aunt and grandparents could do the Grand Canyon in a few hours. It took me a week and I still feel that I could have stayed for another week or two assuming that it warmed up.  It’s a little hard to camp in snow. I would have liked to whitewater raft the canyon, hike to the north rim, and stay at Phantom Ranch at the bottom. Honestly there are so many things I would have liked to do, so I plan to come back someday.  On our way out we stopped at an old watch tower. It was closed so we walked out to it and walked back.

Arcosanti

Even though we did Arcosanti the same day as Montezuma’s Castle I decided to do them as two posts because the blogger app doesn’t do long posts well. When I tried to post Yellowstone I thought the computer was going into cardiac arrest. In light of that I didn’t want to over exert it.  Arcosanti was designed to be an Arcology. An Arcology is designed to be a more sustainable city. The architect Palo Soleri believed that the modern cities were too spread out. Arcosanti was designed to house 5000 people on 25 acres of space. In perspective a modern housing facility will house 5000 on several hundred acres. This city was also designed to be self-sustaining. It grew its own food, made its own electricity, and supplied its own water. At least it would have if it worked. Now it houses about 60 people year round and supplies 10% of what it needs. The rest has to be bought. Their primary income source is bells. Yes you read right, bells. The people living there make bronze and ceramic bells that they sell to tourists. The original idea for the city was for it to be huge, unfortunately there wasn’t enough funding to complete it. The people who live there work there in exchange for rooms and food. There are several greenhouses along with about a dozen olive trees, so the jobs may be gardening or making the bells. A few years ago my parents went here and bought a ceramic one.

Montazuma's Castle

The first blog-worthy thing we did in Arizona was go to a place called Montezuma’s Castle.  The funny thing is that the castle wasn’t even a castle, and it isn’t related to Montezuma in any way.  I will talk about why it was named that later.

The Native Americans made this place when they settled in Arizona.  Originally they were migratory people who followed the herds of animals. Then for some reason they decided that they were done moving.  When they were migrating they built temporary pit houses instead of things like Montezuma’s Castle. These pit houses were easy to build, so they didn’t have to spend a lot of time on housing.  For any people who missed my post on Chimney Rock in which I talked about pit houses I will explain them again. Pit houses used the most “cutting edge” technology of the time. Their master design makes them cool during the summer and warm during the winter, (whatever winter there is in Arizona). They had a small entrance so larger predators couldn’t eat the inhabitants. There was enough sunlight shining through to work by during the day if they didn’t want to work in the blistering heat. Yes, the pit houses were truly a marvel of engineering. If anyone wants to know how to make a pit house I will include the step by step process below.

1.      Dig big hole

2.      Lay logs on big hole

3.      Cover logs with mud

4.      Enjoy

One of the most important things is the “door”.  The “door” is a hole in the roof that doubles as a chimney.  The Native Americans believed that smoke was beneficial, so climbing through the stuff was a good thing.  It was important to make the hole big enough to climb through but small enough that the heat won’t escape too quickly.

Back to talking about Montezuma’s Castle. It was situated about 50 feet up the cliff in an alcove. In fact it reminded me of balcony house in Mesa Verde.  If you missed that post click here.

I wouldn’t have liked to live in Montezuma’s castle. The windows were tiny, it was all mud which is so 2006, and it was in a cave, so there was awful reception. In addition it was so rural. Those more urban cliff dwellings have more benefits, and it is a shorter drive to work. I don’t know how the natives got suckered into buying this place.  I kind of got side tracked there, but seriously, it looked uncomfortable. The alcove it was in was about 20 feet deep, and since there was only five very small floors there was another dwelling about a quarter mile away. This one wasn’t as well preserved. The first dwelling was only about 10% redone; the other 90% was all original. The second was mostly ruins, probably because it was on a cliff side and not in the cover of an alcove.

It was called Montezuma’s castle by early American settlers who came to this area well after the Native Americans moved out, (more on why they moved later). The settlers assumed that the dwelling was made by Aztecs, hence the name Montezuma.  to find out who Montezuma is click here. They called it a castle because they thought that there was buried treasure, so they dynamited a wall to find a few empty pots and some dried corn. Now to why they moved out. Scientists have had many theories, but the most concrete one yet is, “because they did”. I always hate those answers. The worst “because it does” answers for me are on the five fundamental forces. In the beginning of the year I was always asking why. Why does gravity happen, why does electromagnetism work.  The only answer I have gotten is “because it does”.

Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

I know what you are probably thinking; it’s taken us this long to get to the second most visited Nation Park.  The thing is, in a way that’s the reason we waited this long to come here. After Yellowstone I had seen enough tourists to last a lifetime.  We got into Grand Canyon well after
dark.  Luckily I had just had coffee, so I had more energy than I ever had during the day.  We set up the camper, and I jogged a quarter mile to shake off the caffeine. 

The next morning we found out that we had to move campsites, so we packed up, and since we couldn’t put our camper in a site yet we had to park with it. Our first thing we did that day was bike to a place called Hermit’s Rest. Along the way we stopped at a few view points. All of them aren’t shown on this map, but we stopped at about six different spots. All of the views were amazing, but on the third or fourth they all started to blend together.  We went to Trailview Overlook, Maricopa Point, Powel Point, Hopi Point, Mohave Point, The Abyss, Monument Creek Vista, and Pima Point. At the end there was Hermit’s Rest, which ironically had the worst views.  We thought that Hermits Rest would have the best views of all.  The Abyss was the one we had heard about the most. It was supposed to have the best views, but we might have come at the wrong time of day because it was completely shadowed.

Day two was the best day, it was the worst day.  It was the day of wisdom, it was the day of foolishness.

-Charles Dickens 1859 (slightly paraphrased)

This was our sunrise

No, not really, it was not the day of wisdom. If I had any wisdom I would have stayed in the camper and taken a nap, but when have I ever been intelligent (no remarks in the comments!). We got up at the crack of dawn and started hiking. The views were best at sunrise because the sun shone on the rocks and made them glow. Also the sun wasn’t shining on us, and that was nice. We went down the South Kaibab Trail for 7.4 miles down to Phantom Ranch, where we ate lunch.  

You can't see it, but the sign says Phantom Ranch

When we were finished we started back up the daunting 4314 feet of elevation spread over 9.9 miles. Just for fun how about someone graphs what our average slope was. My dad made me, but seriously the hike was hard. By the end my legs hurt so much that I collapsed on a bench and waited for my parents. I hadn’t realized how fast I was going on the way up, but I found out when my parents came up an hour later. Before going on the hike we read that most people couldn’t do the Grand Canyon in one day. Some of those who tried either died of heat or were still hiking well after dark. The National Park Service website says “The National Park Service DOES NOT RECOMMEND hiking from the rim to the river and back in one day.” I did it in nine hours.

The next day we rested and recuperated because it hurt to walk up stairs.  At the end of the day we went to a ranger talk about things to fear in the canyon. We learned about scorpions, spiders, and snakes and how dangerous they are. It boiled down to that we shouldn’t fear these things. We should be afraid of falling off the edge.

On day four we did another hike down a steep trail. Part way down I sat, and when I got up again I whacked my head on a tree branch. After that I felt dizzy, so I couldn’t go much farther. That evening we went to an I-MAX movie about the park.

Day five we rested again and went to another ranger talk in the evening. This one was all about fire and how we need it. Forest fires are natural. They clear out smaller trees and make it so the bigger trees can get enough water. In addition the burned trees provide nutrient rich soil for the larger living ones. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put out campfires to decrease forest fires, but we shouldn’t stop them entirely. The forest needs controlled burns to give that good soil, and make sure the trees get enough water. Plus when we suppress fires the brush collects.  When brush collects, the fires can become hotter, higher, and more dangerous, so when this happens the big trees burn and fall.

I can see why the Grand Canyon is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.  The sheer immensity of it is incredible. If any of the other six natural wonders are even near as cool as this one I hope I can see them one day.  If anyone has been to any of the other wonders please tell me about them in the comments. I would love to hear about them.

For the next month we are going to be in an air B and B.  An air B and B is just like an ordinary Bed and Breakfast, just without the Breakfast. Basically someone is renting out their house to us. Since we are going to be more stationary I won’t have as many blog posts. Honestly I’m kind of glad that we are out of the camper. I was starting to go insane in that place. After Sedona we are going to Hawaii for a month and working on an all organic coffee farm. I probably won’t have many posts there either.  After Hawaii we are going to spend a week in San Diego, then fly up to Canada and ski at Whistler for another week.  Then we are going to be skiing for the remaining two months at several mountains in the west/mid-west.

Mohave Desert, Red Rock Canyon and Las Vegas

Honestly, I always thought it was pronounced Mohaby.  I found out that it is spelled with a V at our first stop, the Red Rock Canyon visitor center. I know, it seems like we stop at a visitor center in every place we go. Compared to some of the other visitor centers this one was decent. Outside there were exhibits about different parts of the desert.  They were about water, earth, fire, and air, and how the ecosystem is affected by them.  The only down side was that the staff wasn’t all that friendly. We asked one guy with impressively exuberant eyebrows whether there was a wifi network. He responded, and I quote, “No, you are in nature, no wifi! Deal with it!” (Honestly I don’t know how many people play wii, but those eyebrows were not from this earth. They were perfect rectangles with half inch long curls on the end.) That evening my dad and I climbed a little mountain to check out possible climbing spots for the next day.

The next day, as was to be expected, we went climbing.

 

There was a slab we had found the previous day, about 30 feet tall with a crack running down the side. We set up an anchor at the top and climbed it. It wasn’t easy. There wasn’t a straight line up the wall so I had to go way to the side. The problem with top roping is that if I went too far to one side and fell I would pendulum and hit the other wall. Luckily that didn’t happen, but my shoulders still hurt from climbing.

My dad was very careful belaying me

After that we went in to Las Vegas, (yes, again) and stayed in a hotel, (yes, again). That evening we watched the election, and my dad and I got ice cream. I was really surprised with the results of the election. Admittedly most of my political knowledge comes from Saturday Night Live. In their spoof of the third debate, one of the questions is, “Mr. Trump it has become very clear that you’re probably going to lose?” he responded “Correct.”  The next morning I worked on school work, (yes, again). 

Borax Mine, Boron, NV

On the way to Red Rock State Park near Las Vegas we did what was undoubtedly the most exciting thing out of the entire trip.  We went to a laundry detergent mine. Ok that wasn’t the main part of the visit. It was really a boron mine. A boron mine is where borates are mined to make borax. We went to a visitor all about borax and how it’s made. I know sounds like torture, but it was better than driving. The visitor center wasn’t that interesting. It was a little building all about how boron is mined and how it is used; frankly I found it a little boron.  First it is mined and crushed. Then it is washed, dried, and crushed some more. By the end it resembles cat litter.  We learned that boron is used in, (take a deep breath), cleaning products, plates, fruit fertilizer, footballs, insulation, plastic fencing, cleaning rags, rubber balls, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Sequoia National Park, Califonia

 The first day in Sequoia we enjoyed some relaxing time in the sunshine next to our camper.

The second day we went to General Sherman Tree. General Sherman Tree is the largest tree in the world. It isn’t the tallest, but it has the most mass of any tree on earth. It is roughly the mass of 16 blue whales put together.  We did a fairly long hike to get to the tree, and up close it wasn’t that impressive. After being to Redwood and Humboldt, it looked just like a lot of the other trees we had seen. It wasn’t that tall, and it was clear that the top had been struck by lightning several times. Still, now I can say that I have been to the biggest tree on earth.

San Francisco, Califonia

Our hope was to get into San Francisco before dark. Well, major fail. We drove for eight hours, so it was unlikely we would get a campsite before dark. In addition we stopped at a Bass Pro Shop for about 45 minutes, then at a Barnes and Nobel for a half an hour.  When we got our campsite in Anthony Chabot Regional Park it was pitch black, so we set up the camper and passed out.

The next day was almost as thrilling. We moved campsites, and I worked on school work (happy fun time!) In the evening we went to a movie, “What Next”.

Day three we biked to San Francisco where we went to a place called the Exploratorium. It was a science centered museum mostly about light refraction, biology, and optical illusions. We learned something kind of disturbing before we even got into the museum; bikes get stolen often.  The weirdest part was that bikes parked on the right side of the museum got stolen more than bikes parked on the left, go figure. We had two six foot cable locks and found out that the museum store lent out U locks, so we got three. By the time we were done locking our bikes it looked better than most bank security systems, but it was a necessity. My mom and dad’s bikes are high-end mountain bikes, so compared to all of the other single speed bikes next to us, anyone who wanted to steal bikes would go for ours.

When we got into the museum we were advised to start at the back.  The lady at the counter where we checked in told us that a school group was coming so we should stay at the back.  She said that school groups never stayed for more than a few hours, and they almost never made it to the back.  About ten minutes after we got in, a small army of fifth graders flocked the museum. It proved wise to stay at the back of the museum. The school group was loud, obnoxious, and they took forever to look at one exhibit (no offense to you readers in school).  After the school group moved through we went to the front and checked what there was there.  There was an exhibit that looked like a geyser and was demonstrating the formula PV=NRT.  If you want to know what that means look at the bottom, it’s confusing. We saw a plant called Mimosa Pudica, or the Sensitive Plant, that curled its leafs when I touched them. There were a lot of other exhibits, but I can’t describe, (or remember) them all. There was a ten foot whirl pool, a twenty foot twister, a sandstorm, a fog generator, and an exhibit that dropped dry ice into a pool of water. Dry ice is made of frozen carbon dioxide rather than water.  When it makes contact with water it generates a fog. In this case the reaction caused the ice to speed around the tank and spin around. 

In the front of the museum there was a triangle of mirrors that reflected each other and made an infinite room. Another mirror made it appear that the room behind me was distorted and upside down, but I was in perfect focus. That one almost made me puke. Yet another mirror created an illusion that there was a spring two feet in front of me until I put hand through it.  One of my favorite exhibits involved magnetism. There were two pieces of metal that looked like elbow macaroni facing each other. All around them was black sand. Black sand is made of iron ore so it can be magnetized. When I sprinkled the sand on the pieces of metal it magnetized and made little spikes. Overall I really liked the Exploratorium. It was more interactive than a lot of museums

After the Exploratorium we biked the Golden Gate Bridge.  Since it was getting dark we couldn’t go all the way across the bridge, but that was probably a good

thing. This bridge is shown collapsing in so many movies I almost hyperventilated.  The view off the bridge was amazing, and if not for the cars and trucks going by at 40 miles an hour, it would have been very peaceful.  On the way back we saw something that I wished I had recorded. 

There was a guy on a bike with an Australian accent screaming at a group of tourists for walking on the wrong side of the path. Right after that little scene I saw something I hadn’t seen on the way up. There were about a dozen bronze plaques saying Gun Positions 1, Gun Position 2, etc… I learned that these were where the defenders would place their cannons in the case of an attack.

The next day we went to an observatory and space museum. We watched two movies and explored the museum. Near the end we went to the telescope section where there were the two observatories and a room full of old-timey telescopes. I poked my head into the observatory just to check it out, but as luck would have it there were a few astronomers in it, so I got to look through the telescope and see Jupiter.

PV=NRT is the ideal gas law. It means that pressure times volume equals the number of moles of a substance times R, the universal gas constant times T, temperature.  This means that if one thing changes something else has to change as well, (what you do to one side of the equation you must do to the other).  If there is a tub of water and the temperature increases either the volume will increase, or, if there is a top on the tub, the pressure will increase.  

Redwood National Park, Califonia

Our first experience in Redwood was one of the most famous attractions in the national park, Tall Trees Grove. Tall Trees Grove, as the name implies, is a grove full of tall redwoods.  The entire place was covered in green. The trees were coated in moss, and ferns dangled from the tree branches.  There were some burls that were 

over twice as big as me, on trees that took me a good 30 seconds to walk around at a leisurely stroll.  Near the end the moss became thicker. It looked really cool seeing the moss up to a few inches thick. I could have slept comfortably on one layer of the moss just fine. There was one tree branch that was covered in bright green ferns.

 

The next day we went through a place called Fern Canyon. As the name implies it is a canyon that is full of ferns. The part that I didn’t expect was that there was a freezing stream running through the canyon. We tried to avoid the stream for as long as we could, but eventually we had to cross on a log about two inches thick and not at all stable. Luckily the water was only a few inches deep, so when I fell I didn’t sink up to my knees. Unfortunately that was enough to soak my shoes and socks.  The walls were the most interesting part. They were 20 feet tall and completely covered in ferns.  Little streams created miniscule waterfalls that dampened the walls, so the ferns could grow.

Afterword, since our shoes were wet, we went to the ocean. The waves were pretty big. Not as big as some of the ones we saw in Costa Rica, but they were big enough to soak us and cover us with sand. I always like my shoes a little loose, unfortunatly by the time we were done I couldn’t move my toes through all the sand in my shoes. 

Humboldt State Park, Califonia

I don’t know if my parents were trying to get out of a three hour drive by saying Humboldt was pretty much the same as Redwood National Park. If so it didn’t work. I’m not saying Humboldt wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t the same as Redwood and I really wanted to go to Redwood.

When we got into Humboldt it was late and drizzly. We set up the camper and went on a mile long walk on a loop through the forest.  We saw a lot of big trees and huge burls, (those weird lumpy things that grow on the side of the tree).  We learned from interpretive signs that burls were full of clones of the tree.  If the tree gets damaged the burl sprouts hundreds of new tree saplings, so eventually one or two of the saplings will become trees. Sometimes several trees grow and the tree they came off of dies and rots. When the mother tree is gone there is a ring of trees called a fairy circle.  Another thing we learned about was called a goose pen. A goose pen happens when a fire burns partway through a tree and leaves a burned out alcove in the tree.  These goose pens can range from a few inches across to big enough to camp in.

Lake Tahoe, Califonia

Our stop in Lake Tahoe had very mixed results.

It was too cold to camp so we decided to check into a hotel for the night. While there we learned that there was too much snow to hike or bike at any of the places we planned. The only place that we could bike was a bike path that went around the lake.

That evening we took advantage of everything in the hotel. We all took showers and watched as much TV as we could. The only bad part was that my bed was lumpy and uncomfortable.

The next day we went out on the bike path. I decided to bike while my parents walked. Eventually I got bored; the entire path was paved and relatively flat. Even worse, there wasn’t a view of the lake, so I couldn’t get a good picture. I decided to turn around, and that’s when things started going wrong. I just turned around when the sun came out, and I started getting hot. I unzipped my jacket but realized that I looked like an idiot. I was going 20 miles per hour, and my jacket was flying around behind me, making me look like a peacock having a spasm. I slowed down to zip up my coat and was putting up my hood when there was a sharp curve in the path. Instinctively I slammed on my brake which was a good thing and a bad thing. If I hadn’t hit the brake I would have ridden into the highway and probably gotten hit by a car. Lucky me, I only flipped over my handle bars at 15 miles an hour onto solid concrete. In the end I needed

five stitches in my chin and a capped tooth. Also, a week later as I write this, my right arm, the one I landed on, can’t lift up anything heavier than ten pounds.  In addition it hurts to drink hot and cold. Plus, I can’t get my chin wet, which as one might imagine is hard in Redwood National park, a place that gets 90 inches of rain per year. I am constantly in fear as well because tomorrow my mom takes out my stitches.

Mono Lake, California

Mono Lake was like being in another world. Admittedly

almost all of the reactions that I have read seem to say that, but it is the only description I can think of.  From above, the water glittered turquoise.  At water level,

Mono Lake was no less amazing. The calcite tufas (more on them later) loomed like something from an alien planet. Since the lake was significantly lower than usual the tufas were more exposed than they would be normally. 

Before we even got to the tufas there were several signs regarding the ecosystem of the lake and how the tufas are formed. Just a heads up, this is the educational part, brace yourself.  Fresh water springs bubble up under the lake. These springs have lots of calcium in them, and the lake around them is full of carbonate. Now this is some pretty tricky chemistry, but bear with me. What do you get when you mix calcium

and carbonate; wait for it, calcium carbonate. I know- no one saw that coming.  Since calcium carbonate is essentially limestone it builds up around the spring and forms the tufas. 

After we saw the tufas we went to a museum about the lake and tufas.  We learned about the Native American tribe that lives there. One strange thing that we saw was a thing called a brine shrimp.  They are tiny little shrimp that was one on the main food sources for the Native Americans. There was a scale that would show how heavy someone is in brine shrimp.  I am the equivalent weight of about 770,370 brine shrimp, so just imagine how many shrimp it would take to satisfy someone’s hunger.  We also learned that there are three types of tufa: glacial, sand, and limestone.

My favorite was sand tufa, it was really delicate looking, and it made the coolest shapes.

As we drove away, the tufas looked so small. This was really weird because when we had been next to them, they were easily twice as tall as me.

Yosemite National Park, California

My first view of Yosemite was from Glacier Point. The views were amazing, and it gave me a good sense of where we were on the hikes that followed. Right in front of us Half Dome loomed, and off to the right three waterfalls: Vernal, Nevada, and one other that we couldn’t recognize. After glacier point we took a hike called Sentinel Dome.  It was a three mile hike that provided a different view of Yosemite Valley and Half Dome. We saw several climbers on the side of Half Dome as well which looked terrifying.

On day two we hiked an incredibly steep trail to upper Yosemite Falls.  The cool thing about the trail was that we saw the waterfall several times, so we knew we were getting close.  The only problem was that we also knew the waterfall was all the way up there.  The trail

reminded me of Walter’s Wiggles in Zion. It was almost all traverses until the top two tenths of a mile when it 

straightened out and (finally) brought us to the falls.  At the top there were naturally eroded pools that my mom

soaked her feet in while I did some bouldering.  There 

was a crevasse about ten feet up the wall that was a very relaxing place to sit. On the way down I heard some very interesting conversations. Most of the time I was running, but I got stuck behind two women who were talking for at least five minutes about different Patagonia locations asking, “Have you been to this one?” “No, How about

 this one?” until I couldn’t stand it anymore, so at the first chance I passed them and ran as fast as I could. Honestly, if I heard “Patagonia” one more time…

On day three we did another hike called the Mist Trail. It is called that because it went by two falls, and when the river is raging it kicks up a ton of mist. When we were there the river was lower, so there wasn’t much mist. The first fall, Vernal, was kicking up a little mist, but my parents told me that when they were there the mist drenched them. On the way down we took a short section of the John Muir Trail. The John Muir Trail is a 211 mile trail running from Yosemite to Mount Whitney in Sequoia National Park, and it was named after John Muir. John Muir was a man who was involved in making Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainer, and the Grand Canyon national parks. 

 

On day four I got to sleep in. That alone would have been enough for it to be a great day, but it got even better.  We went to Swan Slab, and I did my first lead climb. A lead climb is when one person climbs up with a rope behind them, placing protection behind them and clipping the rope in.  Pieces of protection are little metal triangles that jam into cracks in the rock. When I hooked up several pieces they made a line that the second person can use to climb.

On day five we visited two groves of giant sequoias. We went to Merced Grove first. It was a three mile round trip hike through 20 sequoias, each several feet wide and 300 feet tall. It was kind of terrifying to stand next to trees that tall.  The bark was really soft, and we read that it could be a foot thick.  Tuolumne Grove had more attractions. There was a tunnel in one tree, and one fallen tree had a hollowed out trunk that I walked through.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Las Vegas was a lot more fun than I expected. When we pulled up to a hotel to get directions I didn’t suspect a thing. When we went in I was still oblivious. I became a little suspicious when we went out back and my mom asked if I wanted to go swimming. When I asked where she had gotten an access pass she told me that dad had just asked for one and they had given it to him.  Wow, at that point alarm bells should have been ringing in my head, but cut me some slack. I was hot and tired, and we had stayed in one hotel the entire trip so I wasn’t expecting my mom to tell me that we were staying the night at a five star Vegas hotel. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. The hotel had a pool and a 1/8^th mile long lazy river. In addition it meant we would have more time to explore the city of sin.

Needless to say I spent an hour in the lazy river before realizing that there was so much more to do. When I got out I ordered a sandwich and a Sprite, then kicked back is a beach chair in the sun.

After a while we finally went into Vegas.  My first reaction was “wow,” some of the things in Vegas were just inappropriate. In fact, I don’t think teachers would be OK with me talking about them. There were lights everywhere, and all the things that I had heard about before, such as the Statue of Liberty, the MGM, the Eiffel Tower, a giant Harley Davidson, the pyramids with a sphinx, and a giant balloon that was completely lit up. 

Public art on about five benches,
completely made out of Legos

 
We started walking through the city and before long we came to Hershey World where everything was chocolate. There was the world’s largest chocolate bar, Hershey kiss, and peanut butter cup. There were also two statues of liberty, one made out of chocolate, one made out of Twizzlers.

When my parents finally managed to drag me out of there we started looking for a place to eat.  Eventually we settled on a place called Margaritaville. Thankfully there was more than margaritas. I gorged myself then for desert I got key lime pie. Everything had something to do with lime, Key Lime pie, Lime dressing on the salad. It was all really good and made me wish we could eat like that every night By the end of dinner I was so full that it hurt to walk, so we took the shuttle back to the hotel and turned in for the night.