It had 235 stairs down and then 235 back up. The stairs are spiral so they go around and around and around. The stairs came from an old metal ship.
Some people didn’t use the stairs and used ropes instead. That looked pretty interesting. Some other people were going on a three hour tour where you have to climb on your belly and back to get through the little cave spaces.
We had to squeeze through some little spaces too even though we used those spiral stairs. We saw a lot of parts
inside the cave that are that way because of the way water drips there for so many years.
This is a beautiful lake and it was very blue. Nobody was in it at all! Mama said she would like to swim across it but that would take a long time because it was 7 miles the short ways and 18 miles the long way.
If you walk down to the side of the lake near the water there are spiders everywhere and they are called orb weavers. They don’t try to attack people and they are not poisonous spiders but it still would not be nice to get tangled up in a web.
My Daddy almost touched a black widow the other night. He was touching the electric power box outside our house and right before he touched the handle, he saw a black widow spider on the handle he was about to touch. He knew what it was and caught it to show me. I know that they are very dangerous and should never be touched. But it was nice to look at that spider in a jar with the lid on.
These are little trains to see. They are little trains in a model of some old real trains here in the desert. The man and woman who make these were very nice and I got to see that the mountains start out as crumpled up newspaper and they put plaster over them and then paint it. This takes a lot of work and I have seen a lot of these railroad places now.
This is my second time panning. This time the water was as cold as ice and there were bugs in the water. The bugs could not bite though, because their life-cycles were over. I scooped up some dirt and water and swirled it all around, back and forth and found some sparkles. It might be real gold but I am not sure. It might be Fools’ Gold and that means it looks like gold but it really is not gold. I just like how it looks so I don’t mind. I also found a small piece of something that looked like my dress, blue and shiny.
This is called a blacksmith shop. The blacksmith is a person who uses metal and fire and tools to make things. The blacksmith uses a tool to put a piece of metal into the fire. When the metal gets in the fire it is called forged and it is so hot it turns red and orange and it is 1,500 degrees hot. After the metal is hot, the blacksmith hammers the hot metal into shapes like horse shoes or a dinner bell.
The blacksmith I met gave me a hook. The hook is called an S-hook because it is shaped like the letter S. I am using my S-hook to hang my scorpion stuffed animal so he can sleep.
I went into an old gold mine. A long time some people blew up holes in the rocks so they could go in and try to get gold. People wanted gold so they could have money. It was a job. A mine is not a cave. A cave is already in the ground and mine you have to make.
Today was a long travel day. I liked seeing the sun set. The sky is orange and red and yellow and the trees look black. This would be fun to paint with water color paints.
This is a type of art called graffiti and it is okay to do on a building if you have permission or if it is your building. If you just write or paint on a building or sign or the bus stop, that is the wrong thing to do. I like how that word sounds… graffiti.
This is called a bottle house. It is a house where the walls are made of bottles and cement. The bottoms of the bottles were the parts you could see from the outside. I don’t know if the caps were on or off or if you could see the tops of the bottles from the inside of the house. The bottles have cement around them to hold them all in place.
This bottle house was over one hundred years old. A man made it and raffled it off and a family lived in it for a long time. Then later in it was a gift shop. Now I think it is just for looking. I would have liked to go inside.
A ghost town does not have people in it. This town used to have schools and banks and a jewelry store and doctors and everything like a regular town. But then everyone left all at once pretty much at once and now these buildings are crumbling and just for looking. This was interesting to think about what it used to look like.
These burros were next to the highway. Their ears were very large and when I made kissing noises at them they all looked at me at the same time and their ears were UP for listening.
I saw this art. It is all outside in the desert. The Lego sculpture needs to be repainted and next time she is painted they probably will use the same type of paint that is used for cars because this sculpture is always in the sun and the paint fades.
I also met a man who decided he wanted to learn to play an instrument after he retired from his job. He found out that the wooden flute was easiest to learn. His first flute cost $80 and his second cost about $170 and he decided to start making them. I watched him work on one. Then he played a few songs for us and it was a really nice sound.
We drove for a very long time and finally stopped and saw this sign. I never saw a sign for showers and pizza together and it made me laugh. We did not get pizza or showers though.
Mama treated me to a pink lollipop with a cricket in it. The lady who Mama bought it from she could not believe I was going to eat it and could not believe I liked bugs and definitely could not believe I would eat the lollipop. But I showed her.
You do not have to like everything you try but it is good to try new things. I don’t think that lady will ever try a lollipop with an insect in it though. Too bad, she is missing out.
I ran all over these sand dunes. I also rolled down then on my side and I also tried summersaults. If you do summersaults you should keep your eyes and mouth closed. A little will get in your mouth anyway, I found this out. I asked Daddy if he would like to wrestle and then we did.
I was a little worried before I got to the sand dunes because my last sand dune trip was in Colorado and the wind was too strong that day. The wind made the sand fly hard into my skin and it felt like needles. There was no wind today. I watched the sun go down.
We saw a jackrabbit. I know that they have warm blood in their bodies. When the warm blood travels up through their tall ears, their blood cools off and that makes their bodies cool down and not be so hot in the desert. In my book, this is called “ear conditioning” as a joke instead of “air conditioning.” I know my drawing makes it look like our tires touched the jackrabbit but that is not what happened. I drew the rabbit first and then I did not have very much space for the car.
A long time ago a ballerina got a flat tire on her car and stopped in this place to fix it. She saw this building and wanted to make a project. She painted murals. Murals are paintings you paint on walls. Then she made up ballet dances and put on shows. But the desert is not very crowded so I dont think the shows were crowded. That ballerina dancer for a very long time and then she retired from dancing now and another ballerina does all of her dances. I saw the new ballerina and she told me that she liked my dress. She is on the poster.
I followed these tracks and found this bug. The tracks showed me the path the bug took and I could see the bug walked in a loop. It is called a Desert Weevil. It looked a little bit like a spider to me.
I hiked on a very high up trail and saw where the salty lake used to be. The salt and other minerals can’t get out to the ocean from here so they just sit out there. Usually salt gets back out to the ocean.
I got up very early this morning when the sky was still dark out.
I ate some oats with goji berries, raisins, and hemp hearts and honey (yum!) and wrapped myself in a blanket and watched the sun come up.
Lots of people were there with big cameras on stands and we all watched the sun make the mountains turn different colors. It was pretty but cold. It is a surprise that the desert can feel cold but it can and it can even make your nose run.
I have been searching for more wildflowers and I have found more! The wildflowers are very special to be able to grow in the desert without much water, just waiting for rain for a lot of years. The flowers don’t even bloom here every Spring.
I tried something out that was pretty tough. This hike up was a lot harder than Daddy and I thought it looked.
The problem was that this was just hardened mud from the rain and it crumbled during climbing up and climbing down and I got a little worried even though it was just about as steep as the crater hike up.
I learned that if I am stuck or worried then I should just listen to my adults and not freak out.
I hiked out to the edge of a crater and then I dug into the dirt at the bottom of it and looked at all the rocks.
This crater got made from a volcano but sometimes craters happen when a piece of rock flies down from outer space! Both types of craters make very big holes in the Earth.
After I dug in the crater for a very long time I climbed back up a very steep hill that was not the actual hiking path. I just did it to see if I could. A hiking man clapped for me after I did it and he said “impressive!!” I felt really proud of myself even before he said that.
There were all kinds of rocks here. I climbed and stopped to look at all the types. The volcano rocks have little holes. I looked at these rocks for a very long time. The place here where I stopped is called a fan. But I also am a fan of rocks!
At the Sand Dunes in Colorado my Daddy got me a Kangaroo Rat but then she got lost in Memphis, maybe in a hotel. Memphis is in Tennessee.
I was so happy we found another Kangaroo Rat today.
Everything needs water but Kangaroo Rats don’t drink water, they get their water from the plants they eat. They pee crystals instead of liquid and that is interesting to know about those animals. I also learned that another word for pee is urinate and that word is nicer and more about science.
Mama showed me a video about these fish before we got here, so I was very excited to finally see them.
They are so strong because they can live in the water when the water is almost frozen and also when it gets to be 100 degrees. The water is shallow. They only live a year. I thought they were called pug fish but they are pupfish. I saw a lot of them mating. Mating is when the sperm and egg meet and small fish start to grow from the sperm and egg together and that means they are going to be more pupfish later!
I saw the ranger tell some people to put their dog on a leash and stop running in the pup fish area. The same ranger told some other people to stop digging up the pupfish creek. All of those people were acting like they were at the beach! It made me mad. I spoke to the ranger and asked what pupfish eat and he said algae and insects. Algae is a plant that grows in water. I also asked if the dog hurt the pupfish and he said probably not but it isn’t allowed.
This would be a hard place to play golf because the ball would never go where you hit it. So the name is kind of a joke.
I climbed all over these rocks and they were sharp. If you are not careful you can get cut and bleed. I think salt stings in cuts so that would probably really hurt.
After I touched the salty rocks I wanted to taste the rocks because I knew they were made of salt. Mama said a small taste would be ok, so I did it and it sure did taste like salt! I wanted to try more but Mama and Daddy both said “let’s not.”
We are not near the ocean but if we were then the ocean would cover this place because it is lower than the beach. There is some water here with very very small snails in it but I could not see the snails. You can’t get into the water or you might step on the little snails.
The water is bad to drink so that is why they call this place Badwater.
I touched the ground and it felt soft but slippery and I pretended I was skating. I fell one time but I got right back up and it did not hurt.
There are not usually wild flowers here but there was a lot of rain earlier and the seeds were just waiting for that water and then POOF they bloomed out.
I hiked and found a lot of different types of flowers. I smelled them and they each smelled great. To smell them I had to get down very low.
When you go places it’s good to look out the window because you might see funny things or new things.
I saw this lady getting her tires changed. She stayed inside the car and had her hand on the wheel like she was still driving and she was playing with her phone. We were at a very long red light so I got to watch her for a long time. No one was actually working on her car, but her car was up so someone must have started the work. She didn’t see us laughing.
I found an ant hill. It had a circle hole in the top. Some ants were traveling into it. I wondered what would happen if I blocked the hole with a leaf but I did not do it because I know that is the house for all the ants and that might not have felt good to them.
I saw a lot of old fashioned buildings and I wanted to look in every single one. I saw old tools used by dentists and doctors. I also saw an old bank, a sewing lady, a watch repair shop, an old log cabin, and some cowboy boots from a man who plays music and Mama and Daddy like. We came here to see his house he lived in as a child but it was still being worked on so it wasn’t ready for us to see yet.
My favorite part was learning about the oil. I liked learning about how it gets out of the earth. I know oil is made of old dinosaurs and that plastic is made from oil too.
There are a lot of waterfalls and the water is strong. The waterfalls are very tall, taller than anything else I have looked at before. We got very close to one of the waterfalls and we got wet!
I have been hiking shorter hikes but they take a long time because this place has so many rocks, trees, and signs to climb. I think Mama and Daddy and I all stopped 30 different times so I could climb. Sometimes I see a tree with he perfect hanging branch but I try to be careful because if the branch is too small it might snap. Sometimes I see an interesting sign and I wonder if I can get to the top. I also wonder this when I see rocks too. Sometimes I want to climb something but Mama says if you can’t get up there then you’re not ready but she also gives good ideas of where my feet could go so I can do it. Also, sometimes I get too high up and want to be carried down but Daddy and Mama say no way to that too. Then they give me ideas for getting down and give me high five when I make it!
A lot short hikes turn into very long ones because I like to try things out. Here I was trying to find out where the water came from in this meadow. Then I was figuring out ways to cross it and so I moved a small log. It was heavy but my body is strong. I fell into the water and my arm warmers got soaked and my socks and shoes too.
Later I found out that my wet boots made my feet turn a new color, an orange red.
My Mama helped me take off my socks because they are very long today. I stood in the water until my body got used to the cold water and I made myself walk out to the big log. I heard a boy ask his mom if he could do what I was doing and she said no because it was too cold. I heard her say “mucho frio” and I know that means very cold. Nobody else was putting their feet in this water but I saw some people put their fingers in and say “aaaaaaaaaaa”
These deer did not mind me standing close to them while they ate. They are too used to people, Mama said. I wanted to feed them from my hand but Daddy and Mama both explained that would not be best.
This cave is very old. It had 235 stairs down and then 235 back up. The stairs are spiral so they go around and around and around. The stairs came from an old metal ship. Some people didn’t use the stairs and used ropes instead. That looked pretty interesting. Some other people were going on a three hour tour where you have to climb on your belly and back to get through the little cave spaces. We had to squeeze through some little spaces too even though we used those spiral stairs. We saw a lot of parts inside the cave that are that way because of the way water drips there for so many years. I also saw a face in the rocks.
Tonight I was out late at the theater watching a play.
Mama and I got to the theater very early and I got to look closely at the stage and I saw that the pretend buildings had wheels at the bottom. Those wheels made it easy for the actors to move the scenery around. This is the first time I ever saw wheels on the scenery.
Even though it is not Christmas time right now, the scenery had snow and wreaths because that is what they were acting like season it was. Also a part of the acing was white tissue paper for pretend snow and also silver & blue metal tissue paper for the pretend water.
Right before the play started, a mom and girl showed us their tickets and said we were in their seats. We looked at our tickets and their tickets too. So did the ushers. Their tickets had the exact same numbers and letters as ours so we figured out that the ticket sellers had made a mistake. We stayed in the seats and the other mom & daughter sat in the front row instead.
Sometimes plays or musicals have a little break called an intermission. You can go to the bathroom or maybe have a snack. If you are a little kid and can’t sit still for very long, maybe you can go outside and run around. During the intermission I drank some water and used the bathroom.
Mama and I had a nice time together. We both stayed patient even though this was really a lot past our bedtimes. When I got home I did not even want to read books and I always read books before bedtime.
