Day 18-Hannibal, Missouri

(Kristen)

Today is the last day of our trip. But, before we could go home we had to do a couple of things. We saw a statue, a lighthouse and looked at the Mississippi River. The statue that we saw was built because of Mark Twain. Mark Twain lived in Hannibal and set his book, Tom Sawyer, in this town. The statue was of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

While we were staring at the statue, we saw a sign and some steps that led to a lighthouse. When we went up the first flight of stairs, we saw another flight, and another one. When we finally got to the top, we were exhausted. On the way down we decided to count the stairs. We found out that there were 244 steps. When we got to the bottom, we received a survivor certificate from the souvenir shop.

Then we drove to see the Mississippi River overlook in the city park. As we were looking out, we could see big bushes in the water. No, the river was flooded so bad, we could not see the tree trunks. Since we wanted to get closer, we drove over the bridge and entered Illinois. At the campground across from Hannibal, there was a portajohn in the middle of a pool of river water. Amelia and I went wading. The water did not feel bad at all, so Amelia kept on trying to sit in it.

After a few minutes, we decided to leave and head home. I could not wait to sleep in my cozy bed again. I had so much fun and can’t wait until our next trip. We ended up getting home around 11 p.m.

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Day 17-Pony Express Station

(James)

This morning we woke up, got breakfast and went swimming. Then we went to a Pony Express station in Gothenburg, Nebraska. The “Pony” was a mail delivery service by horseback. The Pony Express started in April 1860. It only lasted 19 months. We went to the Pony Express station. Inside was a little store and mini-museum, where we saw saddles, stuffed horses and cool bookmarks.

After we went to the Pony Express station, Dad and Teri drove for eight hours. When we got to our hotel, we found out we got a first floor room…hooray! We ended up ordering pizza. Kristen and I went swimming while we waited for delivery.

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Day 16-Wyoming

(Kristen)

Today it is sadly time to start our trip home. We left from Oma and Opa’s house to drive nine hours to our hotel. But who said we were going straight there?

On the way we ended up stopping at Fossils Butte National Park in Wyoming. We visited the museum and looked at the fossils. They had fossils of animals, plants, and insects. They had hundreds of fossils of all sizes in the museum. Even Amelia was looking at the fossils. While we were there we also got to drive up the butte. The trail was really rough but we made it. On the top, views were amazing. On the way down we saw a mountain pond. Then we were on the way east again.

We stopped at a place called Little America, also in Wyoming. This place is actually a truck stop in the middle of nowhere. They had a play ground area for little kids. Amelia went down the straight slide by herself and we went down a twisty slide together. She had so much fun. Soon after that, we piled into the car and were on our way. We ended up getting to our hotel at 4 a.m. (Central Daylight Time).

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Day 15-Lava Hot Springs

(James)

The next morning we had breakfast with Oma and Opa. After that we to the Olympic Pool Complex at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. The first thing we did was go in the pool for a little bit and then we rode the two speed slides. The cool part about the new speed slides is that they start up on a bridge over the road One speed slide one is purple the other is yellow. The yellow one is very fast and it has two humps. The purple speed slide is just a drop; both slides give you a mega-wedgie. I really didn’t care for the curly slides that much. The inside swimming pool has a neat climbing wall. Both Kristen and I failed pitifully at climbing it, but it was very fun to try to get to the top. When we had to give up, we just dropped back into the water. Kristen, Dad, and I went on the dive tower, which was very scary. Kristen jumped off the 5 meter platform; dad and I went off the 5 and 7 m platforms.

After we got back from swimming, Oma had a dessert party. Thirty-some people came to the party. There were two girls and two boys near my age. They were only there for 1.5 hours. Then I went downstairs and played on the Wii until the party was over.

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Day 14-Horseback Riding

(Kristen)

Today was the day that I was looking forward to, the horse trail ride. Teri, Oma, and I headed out to see the horses that we would be riding. The horse that I rode was dark brown and tall. His name is Slash and he was a really good horse. Teri rode a horse named Buzz and Oma rode a horse named Ruby. There were 12 people, including us, that went on the trail ride. We all started out by going up the mountain behind our hostess’ house. At one point when we were going up a hill, Slash decided to canter instead of trotting. He actually had a really nice canter. Also there was a small creek that we had to go over. Many of the horses jumped but I made Slash walk over it.

When we got to the top, we got off to have lunch. The sight up there was really nice; we could see Fort Hall, Idaho, and another town. After a few minutes’ break, we climbed back on and headed down the mountain. Going downhill was really painful. We had to go back over the little stream of water. My horse decided that he needed to jump this time. Well, I stayed on, but it wasn’t pretty. When we got back to the horse trailers, I was in so much pain.

The trail lasted about four hours. Slash was well suited for my level of riding ability. The people that we went with were really nice. It was so neat, so exciting and so much fun that I definitely would love to do it again.

Later that day, Opa, Oma, Teri, Dad, James, Amelia and I went to Lava Hot Springs to ease our stiffness. When we got there, we all went in the coolest pool first. Soon after that Dad, James and I went to the next hottest pool and so on. At Lava there are four pools. This time I actually went into the hottest one. Then after that we went back to the coolest one, where the rest of the family was. It actually felt kind of cool after the other three. Amelia was having so much fun because she could walk off the edge and then mommy would catch her. The water felt so good after four hours of riding. We left at 9:30, but Teri and Dad then went to a Bed and Breakfast because it was their anniversary. I got to take care of Amelia for the night.

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Day 13-Dune Riding

(James)

Today we got up at 6:00 A.M., changed into pants, had breakfast and went to the St. Anthony Dunes, Idaho. We got all the safety wear at the rental place: helmet, glasses, and gloves, and then drove out to the parking lot at the dunes. The owner unloaded the three off-highway vehicles (OHVs, what the state of Idaho calls 4-wheelers), gave us rules and showed us how to run his machines. There was one big OHV for two people and two small OHVs for Kristen and me. Kristen and I rode around a few times, then we all headed out to the dunes.

I really liked that I had an OHV that I could ride on my own. My favorite part of the dunes was that we could ride for two hours but I also liked going down the dunes really fast. I took a turn riding on the two-person OHV and when you are the passenger, it is very fun because the only thing you can hold on to is the driver. I think I did pretty well. I only got stuck three times. Kristen got stuck at least three times. The two-person OHV only got stuck once. I noticed that the white OHV liked to stall so we had to rock it into neutral to start it again. The white OHV got stuck a lot easier than red OHV. During the last two minutes, we went at full speed down and up the same hill over and over again. If you go to Idaho, I would ride on the St Anthony Dunes because they are amazing.

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Day 12 - Inkom, Idaho

(Teri)

The kids did not write an entry for today. Mostly, we slept in and played with toys that Oma had picked up at garage sales. All the girls went shopping; Kristen and I got riding boots. The boys stayed behind and broke things. Everything that Opa and Paul touched had to be fixed. They did manage to change the van's oil without incident. All the pictures today are of a little girl enjoying stationary play time.

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Day 11-Sega Canyon

(James)

One exciting thing we did today was that we went to the Sega Cayon, Utah, to see a ghost town, which is a town that has been abandoned. Teri and I thought that there wasn’t much of the ghost town left because big chunks of rocks could have fallen on the houses or the houses have been over-powered by plants. All you could see of the ghost town was three small buildings and they were very hard to find. We also saw a lot of petroglyphs, some up high and some low. We saw many kinds of different petroglyphs: humans, horses, and families. There was a set of petroglyphs that looked like a family and they were life-size. I thought that was really cool because you rarely see petroglyphs up close. I think it is a family because they are left to right drawn smallest to biggest.

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Day 10-Moab, Utah

(Kristen)

Today was a relaxing kind of day. We all went to Arches National Park to see the sun rise. We also got to see the sun set at Canyonlands National Park. In between those two activities, we went back to the cabin to swim and take a nap.

At Arches National Park, there are tons of arches and rock formations. They mostly looked like faces and animals (according to James). The formations that I saw were a T-Rex head, a penguin, a cobra, and many more animals. While we were there, we also saw a formation called Balance Rock. I think that those formations are so neat looking. Another one that we saw that was pretty famous was the Delicate Arch. They say that in the future, this arch will end up falling because it will be too thin. I enjoyed seeing all of the formations while using my imagination.

During the middle of the day we all went swimming. We all also took a well deserved nap. While we were in the town of Moab, the temperature got up to 112 degrees. Lucky for us it was dry heat, but it was still was really warm.

In the evening, everyone loaded into the car and we went to Canyonlands National Park. While we were there, we saw some of the canyon and watched the sun set. But as soon as we sat down to watch the sun set, it started to sprinkle. Luckily it stopped shortly after it started. The sunset was beautiful. Some of the sky was pinkish over to the right of the sun. Above the sun, it was red. I love watching sunsets because they are so colorful

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Day 09-Utah

(James)

Today we woke up before dawn to get to Bryce Canyon to see the sunrise. The sky was very pretty when the sun was coming up. There were pink and purple colors in the sky. The Bryce Canyon colors are orange with white in between. One formation I saw was a white heart against an orange base. We saw two herds of antelope and one antelope buck.

Next we drove the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument scenic drive. We saw tons and tons of formations. After that we drove into Capitol Reef National Park. At Capitol Reef, we went to a museum that showed how things were made in the past. They sold old fashioned desserts, like homemade ice cream, fruit pies and scones. While we were there, we saw rock formations. One was called the Cathedral Rock, which looks like a stone temple. We also saw a rock that looked like a pyramid. We also saw petroglyphs, which were too high to see properly.

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