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I visited an artist’s home. He is an artist who uses a lot of bright colors and uses a style of splattering or spattering the paint. He used his artistic technique on the outside of this home and also the inside. Most people use just one or two colors on the outside of their home. This artist used many! He even painted some of the trees, rocks, and a small piano that stays outside.

I visited a beauty museum inside of a beauty shop. The man who owns it collects beauty items and also assembles beauty art pieces. Mama talked to him about how he is going to have a display at the San Francisco International Airport Harvey Milk Terminal. Harvey Milk was a man who worked in San Francisco government and he was shot and killed. He made a well-known speech called The Hope Speech.

Harvey Milk described how gay people should not hide— that they should be proud and seen. He felt this would make other non-gay people discriminate less (treat them better) and make less bad things happen to people who were gay. 

Anyway, I learned that the owner of this museum and salon will have his art featured at this remodeled terminal. I feel happy that I saw all of this in the place it usually is. I think it is pretty cool that the art will travel and be seen by a lot of people!

This is a small museum and it is very full of crochet items made by an artist named Shari Elf. She has an art studio next to the World Famous Crochet Museum. My sister and I looked at everything up high and down low. Shari has a little sign that basically states that these items are for looking at and not touching or moving around. This museum building used to be a photo processing booth. Before photos were on phones, cameras had to have their photos developed in order to be seen. I enjoyed the colors and seeing how many items were crocheted. I learned some crochet when my sister used to live in the hospital and volunteers did activities for people living in patient-family housing. One of the volunteers taught me how!

I visited an outdoor marketplace full of treasures. This is a place where people can come in and set up a little outdoor shop. There are also a few shops that are like regular buildings but they look very old. I got a pair of blue ankle boots with pointy toes. They are old and not quite yet my size but my feet are growing so eventually they will be right. We saw a lot of colorful art as well such as stained glass windows and this beautiful Crystal Cave. Sadly, the Crystal Cave was being remodeled when we visited so we had to stay outside and just peek in. Next time, I hope we can go inside.

At my house we are always listening to music. When we go to see live music shows, we usually get to bring a treat. This time we all tried Red Vines. We saw Dwight Yoakam. He is a country music singer. We stayed up very late watching him. My sister fell asleep for part of the concert. I wore some solar eclipse glasses for the show and that meant I could see almost nothing.

Daddy says this is “Rock n’ Roll history!” I got to go to a concert with loud music at night. The musicians in this band are older than my grandparents and they run around and are very active! I learned that the singer goes backstage for a little extra oxygen in the middle of the show and this helps him feel pretty great.

We have a record player at home and I know how to put the records on without scratching them. Before and after this concert I have been playing this music.

We were up very late at night! I did not see ANY other kids my age, and definitely no kids who were my sister’s age.

I visited an organic farm. This means the farm workers do not use any dangerous chemicals to help the plants. This also meant that my sister, my friend, and I could pick vegetables and herbs directly from the plant and eat them. I ate a lot of small tomatoes, cilantro, chives, peppers, and on the side near the fence, blackberries. I also was able to pick beautiful flowers and create a flower arrangement for my room. My sister learned which tomatoes were ripe. She already knew about blackberries— that they have sharp thorns and also that you don’t pick the ones that are still pink.

Blueberries are very easy to pick. They roll off the plant and into your hand when they are ripe. There are no thorns. When picking, you don’t have to reach too high up. Younger kids can pick them easily too. My family has picked over twenty pounds so far this July.

I taught my sister how to pet goats and be brave. The adult goat is not pregnant but her belly is wide on both sides because she eats and then digests her food all of the time so her abdomen bulges. I love to pet goats. We also patted young cows, called calves and two pigs. The pigs have feet that look like high heels. They turned over so we could rub their bellies. I really hate that people eat these animals and wish that they would not wear their skins either.

I am allowed to chew gum during standardized testing at school because it is supposed to help your brain focus on the testing. Otherwise, no. But I did get to chew a ball of gum while visiting this museum and when I am 9 I may chew it more regularly.

This Gum Gallery is run by a woman who started collecting with her sister in the 1940s. There are gums from all over the world and from all different years. Mama and Daddy noticed gum from when they were young.

This was a great place. We just had to call Joanne and she said to come on over! She was so kind. She gave me a hug and kiss when we left. She was very nice to my little sister too.

I took a Junior Ranger booklet to-go and will mail it in for a badge to be mailed back to me. The outside temperature was 111 degrees so we did not hike. I still learned a lot though. The seed math was challenging for me. Mama is going to work with me on math each day this summer so I am ready for next school year’s math.

I went to a national Park called Big Bend. The Big Bend is the turn of the Rio Grande is. I got to get right next to the Rio Grande, the shallow water was warm. It was not very wide where I went and right across from where I was, it was Mexico! Sometimes when I look at the desert it does not look like a lot is going on, but then when I start looking at the ground and at plants, I see different bugs and animals. I found two dead butterflies and brought them to the ranger. She and I worked to identify them but it was not easy. We thought one was definitely a Monarch. The ranger said that she usually has a hard time identifying butterflies because they are so quickly moving but we laughed because these ones were definitely NOT moving and still it was difficult! I worked to earn my Junior Ranger badge here. I also spied a small, beautiful, velvety, red bug. It did NOT blend in!! That probably means it is poisonous or pretending to be! I was wondering if it would be ok to touch to see if it were soft. Mama said please do not touch it. I also let a millipede cross the road and touch my boots. We carried her to the other side to show Daddy and my sister and then it left.

This is supposed to be funny because there is not a Target store here, actually. Just a small, old abandoned concrete building.

Art can be so many different things!

Mama and I talked about this and how Dr. Martin Luther King Junior said I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. We also talked about how he likely has experienced racism in his life already. This town had just had a big storm and lots of trees had been knocked down. People were all gathering on their porches and enjoying their friends and families outside because their electricity was still off.

I went to a recording studio and record studio and looked around. Daddy and I recorded a song on a 1947 Voice-O-Graph. A Voice-O-Graph is a way to record your voice into a small record. The booth is the size of an old fashioned telephone box that you get inside. Voice-o-Graph used to be at fairs and other fun events and there was even one at the top of the Empire State Building in New York City! Once tape recorders started being popular, these were not really popular anymore. This one has been fixed up.

I visited a Bourbon distillery. Bourbon is a drink with alcohol in it and it is not appropriate for children. Bourbon is mostly made in Kentucky. I learned that 95% of it is made in Kentucky, actually. The tour guide explained how it is made. There is a lot of very special equipment. There is something called mash at the end and that doesn’t have any alcohol in it– I think it is the used up corn and grains. Farmers come to the distillery to pick it up and feed it to their cows. This made me worried at first because I thought that feeding them this would kill them. I don’t eat cows.

When I was a few years younger I stopped by this place that has a slide with little carts and it is called an Alpine Slide. I was too small to ride it then though, so we kept driving. But this time we went here on purpose to ride. It was so fast and fun. I rode with my Daddy. Mama rode with my sister. Mama had to really hold on to my sister because the lift up is pretty open and up high. The bar that protects you is sometimes up high or down low. Mama and my sister got a down-low bar for one ride and so she had to be extra careful. My hat flew off on my last ride and then was run over, so now my hat has markings on it.

I learned a little bit about Ramadan. My auntie explained it to me. She is part of a religion and she is a religion called Muslim.

Ramadan is a special time when Muslim people do not eat or drink all day unless the sun has set and it is dark outside. It is called fasting when someone does this.

I learned that going without anything to eat or drink each day all day for a month helps someone remember to not take things for granted and appreciate what you have. 

I learned about hydroponics and aquaponics. They are pretty much similar. Aquaponics is where water is used to make food and plant vitamins are added to the water. In hydroponics, fish make the plant vitamins and that helps the plants grow as food. I saw this inside of a pizza restaurant!! The food being grown was basil for pizzas and the fish that were giving their poop to the plants as vitamins were Japanese Koi. I had pizza with cheese that was made from nuts instead of from cow milk. Sometimes this is not so tasty but this pizza was so very, very good.

Another thing I liked here is I got to try Sweet Tea. I love tea and this is just tea with a lot of sugar in it so it is very tasty to me.

The last thing I liked was that the art on the wall was all made from pizza boxes. I love when art is made out of non art supplies.

I hiked, watched a film, worked on my Junior Ranger booklet, and earned a new badge! Mama bought us a stuffed River Otter and a baby Opossum. I saw a dam on my hike but no river otter. I wish I had seen one! What I did see on our hike was a snake in a creek I was crossing. The snake was flopping up onto the rocks and the snake had a SALAMANDER IN HER MOUTH!!! We looked at the snake examples in the Ranger Station and we are pretty sure she was a Northern Water Snake. My sister hiked without holding hands and said “hi” and “bye” to every single person we met on the hiking path. She fell several times and each time she just dusted her hands off, (we tell her “dust it!” when she falls so it gives her something to do instead of cry) but the last fall gave her some big scratches on her little knees. I felt so sad for her but she was too mad to let me kiss her. I only saw one salamander but there are many, many types here. The one salamander I did see was in that snake’s mouth!

I hiked, watched a film, worked on my Junior Ranger booklet, and earned a new badge! Mama bought us a stuffed River Otter and a baby Opossum. I saw a dam on my hike but no river otter. I wish I had seen one! What I did see on our hike was a snake in a creek I was crossing. The snake was flopping up onto the rocks and the snake had a SALAMANDER IN HER MOUTH!!! We looked at the snake examples in the Ranger Station and we are pretty sure she was a Northern Water Snake. My sister hiked without holding hands and said “hi” and “bye” to every single person we met on the hiking path. She fell several times and each time she just dusted her hands off, (we tell her “dust it!” when she falls so it gives her something to do instead of cry) but the last fall gave her some big scratches on her little knees. I felt so sad for her but she was too mad to let me kiss her. I only saw one salamander but there are many, many types here. The one salamander I did see was in that snake’s mouth!

I have been to most of the states but this was a new one for me today. North Carolina. I went to a visitor center to learn about this state.

My sister wears diapers, she does not use the toilet yet but she is at the age where if she has to poop she hides and squats and peeks at us. Inside the Visitor Center I saw her doing that and all of the ladies working there had been talking to us and saying how darling we were. I told Daddy, “She’s doing a big duke right now!” And the ladies there said “Oh my” and another one said “Wellll then!” And they seemed quite surprised. Mama was not happy that I said this. Duke is a slang term for poop but it’s not a very rude word or a “bad” word. But Mama and I discussed how talking about poop, no matter what the word, is rude in public. I also learned that people in this area might have more rules and feelings about manners or special ways to behave.

Something very funny to me is that I learned that Duke is actually a college… a very expensive one that is hard to go to if you want to go there. I saw a sign that said Duke Center and that was just SO funny to me.

I met a woman who grew up on a farm and was selling strawberries. She is going to be 86 in July! Visitors could pick their own berries or buy ones that were already picked. If picking, there are guidelines for selecting berries. For example, do not pick ones that are a little bit white or green at the top. They are not ready! These berries had gotten wet in the rain so they were not going to last too long, which is good since we ate the whole box load.

Well, this was an interesting food to try! I sure liked it. My sister did not.

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I visited the Castle Clinton National Monument and earned a Junior Ranger badge. While I was doing this with Daddy, my sister walked around with Mama looking for birds.

It was an old fort to defend. Later on, it was used as an immigration center like Ellis Island, then later on gardens, an opera house, and an aquarium. Now it’s close to where people buy their tickets for taking the ferry to Liberty Island or Ellis Island.

It used to be connected to Manhattan by a bridge but then the water area was all filled in with land and so now it is a part of a park called Battery Park.

The day I was going to Liberty Island, the ranger would not give me a Junior Ranger booklet because she didn’t think I would be able to finish it if I were going to see the Statue of Liberty. So I went back the next day and got one and completed it and the same Ranger was there.

Afterwards, I had a conversation with my parents and learned what the word personable means. Not everyone is personable. Rangers are usually personable.

A while ago, I read a book about some people surviving the World Trade Center bombings in September 2001. I know a lot about it. Today I visited the World Trade Center memorial. A memorial is a place where people go to remember someone or something. This memorial is in the place where one of the very tall World Trade Center buildings used to be. It is a square shaped (just like the buildings) fountain wall going down deep into another square almost like a box. No matter where someone stands they cannot see to the bottom of it. The names of the people who died are in metal and if the person who died is having their birthday, a white Rose is placed at their name. This place felt sad. It was easy to share for a long while. 

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. This bridge was built 136 years ago. The man who built it got his foot crushed and his toes had to be removed. This sounds horrible but then his body got sick from an infection in his blood and he ended up dying. After he died, his son took over the bridge building work but he got very, very sick from working on the columns that go under water and he was no longer able to do the work. So his wife studied architecture and math and took it over!

I visited my friend who teaches at a boarding school. A boarding school is where students live at the school. My friend teaches Physics. I know about inertia and momentum so I think that is what physics is about. This boarding school did not have students in it when I took my tour because they all went home.

I earned my Junior Ranger badge for the sand dunes in Indiana. I learned a little bit about the animals here- mink, raccoons, and small foxes.

I like finding different plants from different places when I travel. The trees and moss here are different than at my home.

I swam inside of a crater filled with water. It was warm water and I liked that a lot but what I did not care for was wearing a life jacket because free swimming is not allowed. Every single person has to wear a life jacket.

I learned that the water was around 90 or maybe 95 degrees and it is naturally there, not filled up by people. The water gets heated by the earth’s insides, where a lot of heat is trapped. The walls and ceiling are made by minerals building up a little bit at a time for a very long time. I think it was 10,000 years. There is a hole in the top and I could see the sky. About 25 years ago or so, people used to get into the crater through the top! But now there’s a tunnel to go through the side.

I got mixed up in my mind about this at first. I thought that all craters were created by meteors and that’s just not true!

I found a beautiful area near the gas station where there were cotton tails. I took the fluff out and it was so windy it all flew into our car and Mama screamed with surprise. Mama got back in the car and just let me do this for a while. I loved it. This was a really fun stop to let all this fluff blow around.

Population means how many people live someplace. This place used to have a family that lived here but they moved. You can’t exactly buy a town but a businessman from Vietnam bought everything in this town and a man who was in a war in Vietnam was actually the caretaker of the area for him. I have not been to Vietnam but my Grandpa has because he was in a war there. Mama told me that this businessman bought the general store and sold his Vietnamese coffee at the general store and so we wanted to buy some but the general store is permanently closed so we could not!!

I visited a special rose garden where rose water and rose oil are produced. I got to help stuff the container used for distilling the roses and making oil.

It was just glorious to smell the enchanting scents and I spritzed rose water on myself and my sister and Mama.

I learned that to harvest the roses for rose oil, it is so expansive. Each pound of roses creates about one drop of rose oil!!! This is why it is very special.

I went to Mel Gould’s Buryville. Mama says there is a documentary about him so we will watch that soon. He was born in 1929 or 1930 or so, in California. He moved to this area in 1955 and has filled his property yard area with metal sculptures from vehicles and machines. There is a lot of wind here and wind is included in all of the sculptures, meaning they move on springs or twirl with the wind. They were really nice to look at. His underground workshop is an old school bus, camper, grain solo and a 55,000 gallon gas tank that he buried!! It would have been very interesting to look at. We all also hoped he was home and well enough to come out to maybe offer us a tour but we didn’t see anyone at all. I learned that Mel Gould helped the artist, Christo with some engineering of art before. Christo has made very big art and is very well known. I saw pictures of a fence made a long time ago by that artist. We put $3 in the donation box.

I learned all about people traveling from the East part of the United States to the West part. People who traveled by covered wagon had a really hard time. They had to leave behind their belongings on the route because sometimes they had to push their wagons up hill. This meant they left items behind like a piano. I know if you are moving you would want to bring your piano but it seems very difficult to take a piano on a journey like that. So many people had to leave behind their books that it was called “the prairie library” which sounds a little bit silly. I also learned about the Pony Express where mail was sent on horseback. Also I listened to audio about the Reed and Donner groups who had a VERY hard time. The gold rush brought a lot of people west also. When cars were very big and gas for the cars was inexpensive, people also traveled the same ways. This museum was in an arch shape and went over an entire freeway!

Found some ants. I do not think they were fire ants.

This is an old mission church in Texas and there are not many left like this. I did not expect to find this, just saw it while traveli g along.

I sat in the front row, on the floor, of a small music hall to hear live music. This place is very well known. We had to wait an hour in line and the music was 3/4 of an hour, which is 45 minutes!  Mama, Daddy, and my sister stood in the back but I was offered a spot in front and I was so close, I almost had to duck when the trombone player played his trombone!! Afterward, the musicians talked to us in the hallway. They were very nice and said I was like a princess and my sister too. I usually wear my headphones at concerts but I didn’t wear them tonight but I did okay. 

I visited a huge warehouse where many of the Mardi Gras floats are made for the parades each year. The business has been handed down in a family and they make a lot of floats. But even with so many in this warehouse, I learned that they only make 1/3 of the floats for the parades. That means 2/3 are made other places. But the 2/3 isn’t made in one place, so this one still makes a lot. They make heavier pieces but for the floats, they carve styrofoam, which is very light and then, since that is not nice to paint since the paint won’t really be colorful, papier-mâché is added and then that gets painted. The floats are pulled by tractors but the tractor wheels aren’t filled with air, they are solid rubber so they don’t pop on a parade route!!!  Mardi Gras parades go on for many days and are very popular here in this city. 

With Mama, I exercised a total of 7 miles in one night while Daddy settled down my sister and got her to sleep. I noticed that one lap on the treadmill was 1/4 mile and I knew that this meant I needed to do four laps to equal one whole mile. 1/4 + 1/4 is 2/4 or 1/2. Then another 1/4 is 3/4 and another after that is 4/4, which is one whole.

I went on a tour of a well known cemetery that first was used in the year 1789. That was 230 years ago. I learned that people
were buried in tombs above ground instead of underground and a lot of people say that this is because the ground is too wet here and coffins would just pop up out of the soft ground. This could happen and probably did, but mostly these tombs are there because the cultures of Spain and France did this type of burial, and many people from Spain & France moved to this area. I also learned that in one tomb, maybe 80 people could be buried. The person who died was placed inside. Because the inside of the tomb is warm, the flesh decomposes and goes away quickly, in about one year. Then the bones are swept down to the bottom of the tomb and the space is ready for the next person. My sister sat in the mud and dug in the dirt there for a little bit and when we got back to our room, Mama had to cut her fingernails to get the cemetery dirt out. 

I went to a café with a famous pastry called Beignets. They are pretty much small, square pieces of fried dough, not too different than donuts.  They are piled so very high with powdered sugar! I saw waitpeople with powdered sugar all over their shoes. It was funny to see that. This café has been open since the year 1862! That is 157 years. I learned that the café is only closed on Christmas Day. It might also close if there is a hurricane also, but it pretty much never closes. It is open all day and all night long, which is called 24/7. That means 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. I love beignets. 

I toured a museum where Dr. Pepper and other sodas were invented and made. Some of them are no longer made. I found out that pharmacists used to make the sodas! I enjoyed sampling a Dr. Pepper. I don’t usually drink soda. I know a lot of people call it pop. 

I went to a place that used to be a dairy farm. Back in 1978, a couple of boys were out hunting for arrowheads and found bones instead! They told the university that was close by and they helped keep the bones safe for learning and exploring. I got to see where the only mammoth nursery is known to have been found. That means a lot of babies and mamas. The mammoths here were not wooly ones because this area wasn’t cold. The mammoths were about 14 feet tall and weighed 20,000 pounds!!! They lived here thousands of years ago. I learned a lot and became a Junior Ranger again. 

This is a town of cattle ranchers and now, also ART! Some art is small but also some is very big, like an entire small store.

The weather was nice so I ate dinner outside. I saw some neon signs in the distance and used my binoculars to read the signs but they were difficult to read since they were in cursive.

I went out for coffee and met a photographer who was here visiting so he could take his art out of the gallery it had been in and take it back home. I ordered a soy hot cocoa and then I ate a breakfast burrito at a place that is actually a woman’s home. She has decided to make burritos from scratch and sell them there. Everything was so very fresh and tasty. 

White Sands National Monument is a huge area made up of gypsum sand. I have already earned my Junior Ranger badge from here.

The sand, or actually, gypsum crystals, does not stick to your body, which is pretty nice. Mama joked about filling up the trunk with it to fill up our sandbox at home. This place, with all the gypsum sand dunes, is the largest one like this on the entire earth. I was there early in the morning and I started to feel very hot. I wore sunblock but it was definitely time to leave and not be there in the middle of the day. Evening is a nice time to be at White Sands but that didn’t work out this time. 

I went to the Rattlesnake Museum. I saw tons of snakes. My favorite one was the one that looked D-E-A-D. I also saw a fake looking tortoise. I thought “well, okay…” but then a small head poked out. I was surprised! 

A difficult thing that happened here was that my sister was walking to the stepping stool– it is there for not-so-tall children to stand on and see the snakes. Well, a man did not think to look back before he took big steps back and he knocked my sister down, flat on her back. This seemed strange to me because there were tortoises wandering around the room and you don’t want to step on those either. Then he stumbled backwards and his feet step stomped all over while he tried to get balanced again and not step on my sister’s body. She was very upset and so was Mama.

She was ok.

I ate at a Native restaurant and ordered Kool-Aid fried pickles, blue corn coated onion rings, cinnamon sweet potato fries, salad with pumpkin seeds and green chili dressing and red chili dressing and also two types of Navajo tacos. Everything was delicious. The blue corn coated onion rings were the best type of onion ring I have ever eaten. The pickles were so tart and so salty and my sister loved them. 

I read about Petroglyphs in a book Mama got from the library before I went on a short hike to find petroglyphs.

I saw many and used my book to identity the meaning of several of them.

I also read about a plant called Snake Weed that can help with a lot of problems your body might have. Mama and I are going to try to find some Snake Weed tea to make T home. 

I also became a Jr. Ranger at this National Monument.

I found a wide pile of tiny rocks and looked at it for a while and found a hole where a few ants were crawling out. I blew mouth air into the hole and hundreds swarmed out!

This is when I remembered (and told my family) that ant colonies can be three feet wide and Fire Ants can work together to kill chickens and even calves (baby cows!) This was definitely a large ant colony. I have been bitten by Fire Ants that got into my leggings when I was little and so I tried to keep my sister away from them.

I love to explore a new place.

This place looked like it was another planet. There were big and small rocks and some were very lightweight and some felt like they were maybe petrified wood, which I have touched before.

I saw black clouds headed our way and eventually we had lots of wind and hail!

We ended our hike because Daddy said lightning was possible and we were taller points on such a flat area. It is not good to be out when there is lightning because it is bad for your body or could kill you if it strikes your body.

When we were driving away we found some dogs that we think were maybe dumped because someone didn’t want them anymore. They were very hungry and cold and small and cute. They seemed like they had been outside for a long time, either in this area or maybe they only lived outside when they lived with people. Mama tried to get them. She gave them food so they would trust her and they sniffed her hands and one licked her. But when she tried to get them to jump into the car for food they would NOT go. So she tried to grab them but they did NOT like that and it seemed like they would bite. She cleared out a spot in the back and put on her water proof jacket because she thought if they bit her, the jacket would protect her arms and she put her hands into the jacket too. They wouldn’t let her pick them up. She worked on this for an hour or so and finally she contacted the animal control when we were where the phone would work again. We left them a lot of food to eat (we had quinoa and lentils and beans and this sort of looked like wet dog food). The pictures Mama took went online on a local ‘Lost and Found Pets’ website and a lot of people said they would go try and get the dogs themselves. Some said that they would never have left like we did, but it just wasn’t possible to get them into our car.

This felt very, very, very sad. We all would have liked to keep them.

I ordered fry bread with cinnamon sugar and also a no meat, no dairy Navajo taco.
Both were so very tasty to me.

I learned that fry bread has been around for a long time but it is NOT an original, Native food that is centuries old. I understand that Natives started to make fry bread when they were given the ingredients by the US government about 175 years ago. A whole group of Natives were being forced to move and were given sugar, flour, and lard (this is fat from animals’ bodies).

So, the taste is good but the story is also very sad. 

You can’t be two places at once! We were! I was happy in Utah and Arizona & my sister was crying in New Mexico and Colorado.

I learned that people have been coming to this spot for over one hundred years to take photos of themselves in four states at once.

I also learned that this area is where two Nations— Navajo and Ute border each other. There were Native men and women selling jewelry and t shirts here along the sides of the monument. 

I have been to this National Park before but I didn’t earn my Junior Ranger badge. This time, I did!

There are rock formations called arches. Arches form when erosion leads to a tall, thin rock wall. Over time, the wind makes a hole in the rock wall and this eventually becomes an arch! It takes a long time. Arches are like people and have a life cycle. They can reach old, old age before they end, but they also might have an inside crack or weakness and that can end the life cycle earlier.

Mama and I took a hike that was just a few miles and then we took a very short family hike and played in the cool, red sand. We found one interesting bug.

Daddy and I did 100 trust falls in a row and at the end I asked him to throw me. 

These land formations were caused by wind erosion. This is a very windy place. It is very fun to hike here and leap from high points.

My sister enjoyed touching the sand but she kept wanting to toss handfuls away from her. The problem was that she could not understand that when she threw it, the wind caused it to fly back into her mouth and the rest of her face. When this would happen, she complained about it in a long sentence that ended with a question mark but none of us knew quite what she was saying.

I worked on a learning booklet and earned my Junior Ranger badge here also.

An archeologist or a paleontologist might use little brushes to dust away sand and dirt to expose what she is looking for.

I got to try using some brushes to look for dinosaur bones. The bones were not real, but that was fine because I still really enjoyed this activity for a very, very long time.  

This was interesting to me because I have learned a lot about the esophagus and trachea parts in humans and this is definitely different than how human systems are set up!

The borax museum taught me that you have to really dig for it and even though everywhere I looked there were signs like “no harm” and the movie talked about being responsible I still know that digging big holes and having a huge factory is not always good for the land. I would like to learn more about that part. I learned about how Borax is cleaned up to go into products and I also learned it is in everything, practically! I learned a little about this mineral a few years ago at Death Valley National Park Borax display. Mules would pull carts of it and it was 200 tons! And a ton doesn’t mean “a lot” but actually is a measurement of 2,000 pounds!!!

I saw a bottle tree ranch in the desert. It was like a forest but of rusted metal instead of bark trunk and branches & old glass bottles instead of leaves. A man who is about grandpa age has had the bottles in his family for a while. His dad collected them and then his dad started to give them all away at some point. But, this man stopped his dad from giving them all away and made this project. It’s pretty nice looking and we got here when it was sunny outside but starting to become evening. Some of the glass bottles had dirt inside from windy days. I really loved looking at the sun shining through the glass. It was beautiful.

I am now eight. I still find ants.

I saw a large, outdoor art project called an art installation. It was big, brightly colored boulders in the middle of the desert.

The artist was from Switzerland. He wanted to show the art as a combination, in the middle of the natural world of the mountains & desert and the not-natural world of the Las Vegas hotels, casinos, and bright lights.

I would like to make a small version of this with Mama at home.

I went to a beach that has tumbled glass from when glass used to be dumped into the ocean. I learned about how this was first just sort of trash about one hundred years ago but now we know it actually is good for the sea life nearby. I went to the museum about sea glass and learned how important the glass is. Lots of people take the glass and look at it at home or make jewelry out of it. It is not illegal to take it but if everyone takes some it will all be gone. At National Parks I NEVER take anything so it felt unusual to take some glass home with me. So, like I said, I took some home, but I also threw some ‘seed glass’ into the ocean that wasn’t very sharp but was small and will tumble and make new smooth glass eventually. I bought this glass at the museum. I took less than I gave back. It is very fun just to look at and touch the glass! My baby sister, ChaCha, tried to put a lot of sea glass into her mouth! I also hiked down a steep hill and it might be tough for some people to get down a hill with a baby but my Daddy said he is “sure-footed” (like a goat!)

I always explore when I go places and mostly you can find a lot of interesting things when you crouch down and look under bushes and today this included a lot of snails. I love to pick up snails. They feel so nice when they move across my skin. These snails were different though because they did not leave a slimy trail. One shell was empty so I brought it with me. I wanted to take the shells with snails in them too but Mama said it would be too confusing to them and I think that is probably true.

I learned that a man named Simon Rodia moved from Italy to the United States. He lived in Oakland and Martinez in California and he had a wife and three kids. Then he and his wife were not getting along anymore and decided to get divorced. Simon Rodia moved to a place called Watts in Los Angeles, California. He never talked to his kids or wife again! I wonder if his children ever visited Watts Towers. Simon Rodia made a big project and he worked on it all the time!

He used metal to make rings and as he crawled upwards he made the rings more and more narrow until the tops were high and pointed. He used cement and a lot of broken pottery pieces, shells, glass, and tiles. I learned that he used 11,000 slices of broken pottery pieces, 10,000 seashells, 6,000 pieces of colored broken and unbroken glass, and 15,000 pieces of glazed tiles! He added these decorations when the cement was drying.

Simon sold his property to someone who didn’t really care all that much about it. Then some other people tried to buy it and keep it from being torn down and it almost was going to get destroyed at one point but then it did not. The Towers has to pass a test and 10,000 pounds of pressure were pressed on them to see if they would fall down and they did not so they got to stay. Now they are a place to come and visit!

Mama and I are going to work on making small Watts Towers sculptures.

I went to a flower farm to see where they grow many, many flowers. It was very sunny and I know that is why it is a good place to grow them. I noticed all the workers wore hats. I got pretty hot. I learned that this farm used to be very small and then got larger and larger and now it is just huge! Some of the flowers smelled like pepper. If you fly in an airplane over this flower farm then you can see the different sections of flower colors. It is beautiful here.

I went to a place where California Poppies grow all over the place. Usually there is more rain by this time of year so there weren’t quite as many of them as there can be at this time of year. It was still pretty to see. I read all of the signs, looked at the diorama and read a booklet about California Poppies. I learned that the petals are very attractive to bugs. Poppies are the state flower for the state of California. I filled out a Junior Ranger booklet and I did it myself and learned a lot. My daddy got a little bit frustrated with me when I was working on my crossword puzzle because I was taking so long and doing things like starting in the middle, and not being logical in looking for my answers. Eventually I finished up.

When we hiked on the poppy trail I noticed there were very few poppies and that was a little disappointing but I did see three lizards. It was so windy here that Mama thought ChaCha’s stroller was going to fly up like a kite! That didn’t happen but ChaCha sure loved the wind. She laughed so hard! I loved it too and it made me feel so wild and free!

Merle Haggard was a singer from this same place as my Gigi. I got to go inside his house from when he was a child. It was a train boxcar that was turned into a house. That was a good idea and not very expensive of a project for making a house. The last time I toured this museum, his house was not here yet.

You can listen to Merle Haggard’s music but you can’t go see him play in a concert anymore because he is no longer alive. Mama and Daddy saw him play music and then he died a little later on. I did not go to that concert even though I go to lots of them.

Merle Haggard’s birthday was April 6, 1937.

My sister ChaCha is on her first road trip.

I’ve been on long plane rides with her but not any long car rides. Now that has changed!

ChaCha needed a lot of my attention in the backseat with me. She started moaning with a sad sound until I looked at her, then she smiled at me and laughed and looked away. She did this lots of times. I told Mama and Daddy that was what a “nuisance” is and they disagreed.

I was very helpful because when ChaCha gets way too tired, she cries hard and throws up a lot. This only has happened a few times and it did *not* happen on her first day of her first road trip because I helped her feel loved and happy.

I toured a cider mill. A cider mill is where apple cider is made. 

I also liked watching a donut machine make apple cider donuts. A worker pours sticky dough into a bowl that mixes the dough more and then squeezes it out into donut shapes but the donut shapes go directly into hot oil. The donuts cook by the hot oil as they move through the trough of oil. When they are done cooking they dump out of the oil into a pile!

They use a secret recipe to make the donuts. I learned that during the busy season over 800 dozen donuts are made and sold! This sounds like a lot. Mama used her calculator to show exactly how many that is. It is 800 groups of 12 and that is 9,600! That is a LOT of donuts! 

I toured an ice cream factory. This ice cream factory makes ice cream that has big chunks of sweet things in it like chocolate or cookies. Sometimes they stop making a flavor and that is called discontinued. There was a cemetery of the discontinued flavors that I looked at. I liked coming here because I like to see factories and I also like ice cream. If you work here you get to take three pints home with you each day! Mostly this factory gives tours so people will buy more ice cream. It is pretty much just like advertising so you give your money to them, but I still liked learning about all the steps and how very cold the room is for storing the ice cream. This company has 6 factories in different spots in the world but this is the original one.

I visited a Jersey Cow Farm. Jersey cows are these brown ones. I learned that they have the most butterfat in their milk so their milk is used a lot in making cheese.

I got to brush the hair of the cows with a brush. The cows outside in the pasture were young and curious. They ran over to me and got very close to my face and then rubbed their faces on my boots! It was like they were grooming me. 

These cows can pee enough each day to fill an entire bathtub and poop 65 pounds of poop each day.  That is more poop than my entire body weighs. 

 I learned how chocolate used to be made over 200 years ago. They would roll a rolling pin (but it’s more like a block of wood) over the chocolate beans and other ingredients. Chocolate used to be made without sugar. I think that is because sugar was scarce. Scarce means not a lot is available. Now chocolate has sugar in it. 

This state I went to is called Vermont. 
When I go to different states there are sometimes different animals that cross the road for cars to watch out for, different foods, different animals that can be found on hikes, different trees, different accents in the people speaking, different bugs, and probably other differences I can’t think of but are true.

I went on a tiny hike and saw this sign when I started:

This Caution part about the cows made Mama and Daddy laugh so hard. I think they laughed because the sign said the cows are harmless but may be friendly or timid and that is not usually what a sign says after “but” when it is about animals. 

I also am going to find out what a Fisher Cat is. 

I learned all about how maple syrup is made and how much work it takes to make it. Right now it is not maple syrup season but I still was able to see all the equipment and taste four types of it. I liked all of it but especially the darker syrups. 

So far I have tried maple syrup candy and it was VERY sweet. My car seat has a little cup holder on my left and right side. In the left side I have a V8 that I haven’t had yet and on the right side I stored my piece of maple syrup candy. It was about half of an inch sized and I took mouse-sized nibbles and made it last a VERY long time. I also tried Maple Seltzer Water. It was not very sweet and it was bubbly and dizzy and just a little bit sweet, but not sweet like a soda. 

The most unusual thing to learn was that it takes 40 gallons of maple tree sap to make just one gallon of maple syrup.

These are alpacas. They are very soft. Their hair can grow to be anywhere from 8 inches long all the way to 24 inches long. A regular ruler is 12 inches long so that would be like two rulers and that is pretty long for animal hair.  To get the alpaca’s hair, people shave them with clippers like is done with sheep. I hope that the people who do this are gentle. I think that alpacas are related to llamas, like cousins. 

This one got close to my face and mama said to not kiss the alpaca. She thought it might touch me with its teeth. It did get pretty close to my mouth… but I think this was because I had been eating popcorn!

When one alpaca thinks you might have food, all the alpacas come toward you. I think alpacas look a little bit like poodles.

I am in a new state. It is called New Hampshire. I saw a “Welcome to New Hampshire” sign when I got inside this state. It said “Live Free or Die!” Daddy and I talked about what that meant.  I also saw a sign for “Moose Crossing” and I have seen a lot of signs about animals crossing while driving through the United States but this is maybe the first time I’ve seen it for this animal.

The leaves in the trees are all beautiful oranges, reds, and browns in New Hampshire. 

I am a big sister now. My sister was supposed to be born on one of the best days of the year… HALLOWEEN! But she had to be born early because she has a piece of her esophagus missing. She is getting her throat fixed in the hospital by having surgeries. She has been here for three weeks and since she was born she has had three surgeries and will have another surgery again next week.  The area she is in the hospital is called the NICU and it’s all small babies. I love the nurses here, they are all very smart and kind. I also really like my sister’s doctor. He talks to me too, not just my parents and he is funny.  He is helping my sister a lot and he is called a surgeon. I know that he drives a motorcycle because once I saw him outside, leaving the hospital and he had a helmet and rainy motorcycle clothes.  Before one of her surgeries he talked to us and I noticed he didn’t have a lid on his coffee.  Mama said this is because he is confident in himself. 

I went to an improv class. Improv is where you are on stage and you don’t decide what you are going to until you’re right on the stage. Improv can be funny and usually the improv I see is funny but I know that if you have an instrument you also can do improv and improv is a short way of saying improvisation.  It just means you decide as you go along. Improv is a good way to learn to not be shy and to try new things really fast! My dad does the funny kind of improv and he likes it a lot. 

I went to a theater performance and brought my Peppa Pig stuffed animal. I had treated her with some gauze, bandages, and IV tubes that I got from a real NICU. A lot of people looked at my Peppa Pig, probably because this is not usually how Peppa Pig looks. I liked this show a lot. One thing that was not so great was that I noticed a lot of kids talked during the performance. I know that’s not really polite to do. The girl who sat in front of me did not actually sit in her seat. She actually stood on her seat. 

Right when I was working on my school work with Mama, we got a phone call asking if we wanted free tickets to go to a hockey game! If we wanted to go, we needed to leave right away to get the tickets and then ride the train. We said YES!
So I went to my first hockey game. It was in a big building called an arena. Hockey can be played on grass or on ice. If hockey is on ice then the players wear ice skates. This game was on ice. 

I ate clam chowder while I watched two teams play ice hockey.

 I asked Daddy a lot of questions so I could learn about the game. 

The players tried to get the little black circle, I think it is called a pock, into the other team’s net and that is called a goal. A player guards each net so not too many goals happen. The players use hockey sticks to push the pock. If someone does not follow the rules or fights, they get in trouble and I think it is called a pintel.

I liked watching hockey. I learned how to cheer and do special clapping and stomping. It was noisy and it felt exciting to be there. 

My dessert making teacher, Mr. D., gave me a gift of an apron and chef hat! I am really making lots of desserts with him and now I am in a new habit of waking up and making my parents breakfast. I make eggs, toast, and also cut up fruit. I have had my own kitchen knives for a long time. I was three when I got my own knives but I had to be watched.  They are plastic but still very sharp. When I got bigger, my school garden teacher at school taught me the right ways to hold the foods while cutting.I like to make tea also. I do all of this by myself without help and sometimes when my parents are still sleeping!  One thing I don’t like about making breakfast is when the toast pops out of the toaster to surprise me. So, when I make toast, I go into the other room until it is all done toasting. I have learned that you NEVER put anything into the toaster besides toast. I also learned that nothing metal can go in the microwave and if you put something in a microwave for too long, it might get so hot that a little fire might happen. 

I went to a radio station because a woman who is good at gymnastics came to visit and I got to ask her questions on the radio. She has been in the Olympics. Her shoes were shiny! I asked her what toppings she liked on her pizza. I had to speak into the microphone. I spoke into the microphone at a radio station before when I won school writing contest. I was invited to read my story on the radio and I did it. I was not nervous about doing this but I did feel a little bit shy at the beginning but I still used a loud voice. 

I went to a puppet show. This man makes all of these puppets himself and he has been doing this all of his life. It is his favorite thing to do and so he made it into his job when he was a teenager and now he is an adult. I loved watching the small and big puppets and would like come back here for another show. 

I took a tour of the special place in the baby hospital where newborn babies go to stay if they are born earlier than they are supposed to be. I will be a big sister soon and my little sister will be born early, so that is why I learned about this place today. I already knew some things but today I learned more. 
The hospital woman who showed me around also gave me some medical supplies for very small babies. I learned more about tubes that go in the baby’s nose or mouth, how medicine goes into the baby’s veins through a very tiny straw, and how my baby sister will have her food go in through a special hole in her side that they make so she can be fed. 

I am using my real medical supplies to take care of Peppa Pig. I used an IV and special skin tape on Peppa. I pretended she had ear surgery and that I was helping her. My baby sister will need surgery as soon as she is born. 
When the hospital helper talked to me, I listened to her and took notes on the important things she said. 

I felt good after I left the hospital today. I had felt kind of scared about seeing babies in the hospital but now I don’t feel that way. If I feel like that again I can talk about it and ask questions. It is ok to feel scared sometimes because it is just another feeling. 

I have climbed up a lot of steep things when I go to new places.

The hardest one I did was when I climbed out of a crater in Death Valley.  I did not take the path out of the crater! I climbed out in the gravely rocks.  I have learned that if I stay low to the ground then I probably won’t fall down. 

This was very steep, so I slithered up like a snake. I saw snakes in the water in Texas.  They did not climb. 

Daddy and I got to the dessert making place early and so I waited where I could see the door and that way I would know the exact second Mr. D got inside the building and I could start helping him right away!

I made dessert with Mr. D again!  The class has been moved to Tuesdays now. I think it was always on Tuesdays but my first week it had to be on a Thursday maybe because Mr. D went somewhere for vacation or something. 

We made Snickerdoodles which is a type of cookie. My favorite part of making them is rolling the dough into cinnamon and sugar before cooking them.  I was the only person helping Mr. D but lots of people ate some cookies after he and I worked on them. 
Mr. D and I talk while we make desserts and he makes some jokes. I think next week we will make some sort of bars with ingredients like butterscotch and shredded coconut and I have never made them before.  When I am at home, I like to do this with my Poppa. He and I make food together too but mostly breakfast foods like eggs or toast. He also taught me how to make coffee. My favorite thing to make with Poppa is fruitcake. We made fruitcake for Mama’s birthday. It is so tasty and it is very special because the recipe is old in my family. 

If something is not very dangerous then it is a good idea to try something new or to try something out in a different way than you tried it before. 

That’s what I think. 

I visited some penguins. There were two types of penguins and they were both pretty small. I brought my binoculars in my purse so that I could look at everything really closely. I learned that penguins have different types of ways of talking with their bodies. It’s called body language and it is how they send you a message of Go away! or Look at me! Or another message. 

My dog has body language too. He shows his teeth when he is excited or happy. A lot of people get mixed up about his body langauge because mostly when animals show their teeth it means the animal is warning you and that they might bite. But not my dog. For him, this means I love you! Or it might mean I am so happy to see you! or he might show his teeth to say that Yes! I do want my dinner!! He is a very happy dog so he shows his teeth to us all the time. We call it his smile. People have body language too. Sometimes I can tell how someone feels by looking at their body and how the person is standing or sitting. But, you can’t always tell…

He is not smiling here. His body language is serious because Mama told him SIT. 

I like to keep 4 or 5 library books with me all the time when I go places because sometimes I have to wait. Today I took a train to get to where I needed to go and I had library books with me and so I read the whole time while I waited. 

My Dad does this too. He usually has a book he carries around and reads when he has time, like maybe when he is on a bus.

The only bad thing is that my purse can’t hold library books but I always keep my wallet in my purse and most of the time also a bug catcher and sometimes binoculars too.  

This was a great tree to try and climb even though it did not have branches I could reach. I found this tree on a crowded street and I think about 100 people walked by this tree while I worked on climbing it. I climbed as high as I could, just on the trunk. It had little hand and foot holds. 

Tonight I learned how to make a dessert called cream puffs in a dessert-making class. My dessert making teacher is named Mr. D. I liked that he is called that because D is for desserts and also the D is his name too! The cream puffs are full of chocolate pudding and then we put little hats on top. 

Mr. D asked what I would like to make next time and I told him Snickerdoodles, which is a type of cookie with cinnamon and he asked what my Plan B was and I said white cake. He and I decided together that we would dye white frosting and make it pink! I cannot wait!

I have allowance that I can use for buying things that I want. I also do chores at home but I do not get paid for them. I do chores because everyone in our family has things they have to do so our house does not get too messy. Nobody gets paid for that. You just have to do it because it is right. I have had a chore list since I was 3.  It was a small chore list and the list was in pictures. Now I read and so my list is in words and has more chores on it. I even pick up dog poop! That is one of my jobs!!!

If I see something I like somewhere, Mama and Daddy do not buy it for me. 

They say 

Do you have enough money? 

And 

Decide if that is what you want to spend your money on. 

And sometimes I think to myself 
No, I do NOT want to use my money on this!! 

But sometimes I think,

Yes, definitely I will spend my money on this!

Some of my money goes into my wallet for spending. Some of it goes into my cash box in an envelope for saving. I am still saving for a very nice sewing machine. I got money for two birthdays so I am pretty close to having the right amount. When I am back home I will probably be able to buy it!! Then I will also have a few sewing lessons with my friend’s mom too. 
Then some of my money goes into my cash box into an envelope for charity. I have not decided which charity I will donate the money to yet. I like dogs a lot and a lot of dogs need help. I know this because we have had dogs who didn’t have homes before they came to live with us.  But I also know about what cancer is because I know special people to me with cancer. I would like to help people who have that sickness of cancer too. 

Well, sometimes use my wallet money to get treats and today I was about to order and the employee just GAVE me a treat! This was extra nice. If I worked in a coffee shop, I would like to give out treats to people too. I am writing a long thank you note and making a little drawing too! 

I went to a beautiful museum with art and gardens to enjoy. I stayed here from the opening time to the closing time! 

The type of art that looks like beautiful rugs hanging on a wall are called tapestries. That was a new word I learned today. 
This was one of my favorite paintings at the museum. I bought a postcard of it. It is called El Faleo. It is very old, older than 100 years. 

This is called stained glass. Daddy and I looked at it for a while. It is usually better to not just look at art really fast. Each room at this museum had a lot to look at so it was important to not rush or go crazy. 

Some paintings were stolen from this museum and they have never been found! I found the empty frames. 

I created my own design on a little scarf using dyes from nature. I picked blue and the blue color came from indigo. The yellow was from tumeric. Tumeric is a spice I have eaten at home and it can make a stain too.

I also painted a still life. Still life is when you paint or draw something that is staying still, like this vase of flowers. I know that the case was not blue, it was clear. But the tablecloth was blue so I made a small change. 

The outside gardens were beautiful. I accidentally dropped a pencil from the second level to the first level but it did not hit anyone.

The museum had a nice cafe. Daddy and I shared some things that I had not tried before. We shared fries that were made with chickpeas and those had a dipping sauce called sriracha aioli. We also had olive tapenade with little crackers called Crostini. The last food we ate were pickled farm vegetables and they were tasty too! I liked trying these foods with Daddy. 

Today in the rain I watched a soccer team from a far away placed called Haiti. Their fans had loud cheers and some of their cheers were in another language… French! I like hearing talking and songs in another language. 

Haiti is pretty far away from me. 

This is where Haiti is. I have been to the little islands at the bottom of Florida but I have not been to Haiti. I took a Lyft ride with a man from Haiti a few days ago and I liked his voice. He is going to save his money and move back to Haiti and open up an ice factory. I would like to see an ice factory.

Mama and I are going to look on the Internet at the types of bugs that live in this area so we can know the names of the types we find.

I love to ride in trains. I took this purple train to get to a stadium to watch a football game. We were given free tickets to watch the football game. Daddy and I got on and rode for about an hour to get to the football stadium. This was my very first football game!

I know that everywhere else in the world, football is what soccer is and that people only play this type of football in the United States. Daddy told me this. 

The field was bright green and there were players in blue tops and players in white tops. I asked Daddy a lot of questions and he answered them so I understood why they pull each other down to the ground a lot. Daddy said this is called a tackle. I noticed that one player had long hair coming out of the back of their helmet and I thought maybe some girls were on these teams but Daddy said only men were on these two teams and I asked him why only men. 

I ate a lot of foods that you eat at sport games. I had fries, a cheese sandwich, and Daddy and I shared a vanilla and strawberry ice cream with chocolate sauce. Tomorrow night we will eat salad!

I went to a concert at the library. The singer was very good. She sang for about an hour. We sat on cement. 

After I watched the concert, I returned my 20 library books and checked out 41. My receipt was almost as long as my body. 

The library has a very nice cafe with very nice food, not just chips and things like that.    I saw a boy eating a very pretty cupcake and his mom had a glass of champagne! This is different than my library near my house.
I picked out what I wanted and since I love quiche, I ordered a sweet pea and marscapone (this is a hard word to say!!) quiche in the shape of a flower or a star with a lot of points. It came with salad and I ate every last bite! 

Today I am doing my learning at a coffee shop while my Mama and Daddy also work too. I ordered myself a chocolate chip cookie. 

If I want to order something in a restaurant, I have to order it myself and that has been true for me since I was about three and a half. Now I can even be in line by myself and use my own money without an adult standing next to me. 

Today I ordered a chocolate chip cookie. When I got it, I realized it was not warm. When the coffee shop worker had asked me if I wanted the cookie warmed up, I had said “yes please” so I went back over there and said nicely that I would please like it warmed up. I am glad I asked for what I wanted because cookies are good pretty much no matter what, but they are DELICIOUS when they are warm and melty!!

I am looking closely at this bug because it is interesting. I ALWAYS find bugs on trips. I have learned that different places with different plants and weather end up having  different bugs. This is a locust but it isn’t alive and it was only the hard outside of the locust. Daddy explained that this is an exoskeleton. That means the skeleton or hard parts are on the outside instead of the inside, like bones are.
I also saw artwork on the same telephone pole. Mama does artwork that looks a little bit like this. 

I have not been on a lot of airplane rides because I usually take trips on the road, not in the sky!

I have been to 41 states now. 39 of the states have been in a car. Two states have been by airplane. All of them have been the states that touch together, except for Hawaii. Hawaii is a state made of islands, so you can’t drive your car there!!! The other state that doesn’t touch other states is Alaska. That one might be tough to get to. Mama and Daddy already visited that state before I was born. 
Plane trips and car trips both mean you have to pack what you need and you can get a treat to eat at the airport or the gas station. 

For this plane ride, I bought a pack of M&Ms to eat. I also ordered a cheese plate. It came with grapes, apples, and crackers. I drank water, but not a lot. The bathrooms are very small on an airplane. We don’t have bathrooms in our car. I do not have a television at my house but planes sometimes have tvs or movies for people to watch. 

If you want to go to concerts you have to behave certain ways. I have been seeing sort of a lot of concerts lately! 
I usually get a treat and make it last for the whole show. I say to myself “I am going to savor this.” And then I do. I never eat treats fast. I always can savor them. 

A concert is a time to get especially dressed up!

I know you can’t complain about lines or walking far or waiting for the music to start. 

You can read a book while you are waiting but not during the music because that is rude.
You should clap when an exciting part of a song happens and at the end of the song too. 


If the people behind you are sitting, it might not be right to stand up but if everyone is standing up then you won’t be able to see if you stay in a seat.

I do not know how many concerts I have been to now. It might be about ten. My first one was when Mama was pregnant but I don’t remember that, of course. 

I learned how to fit all of the parts together and follow the instructions for underneath-the-sink-pipes. I am glad that I did it and tried it even when some parts were a little bit hard, but I probably will not try it again. 

I went to a museum and watched a video about a man who heard a story about a frog jumping contest and then he turned it into a book.  The book made him famous and he is a writer everyone knows. His name is Mark Twain. That is his writing name, not his real name. Everybody got excited about the book and started to actually have a frog jumping contest every May! People come to this place from everywhere and bring their frogs in unusual containers. The people slap the ground to make their frog jump far. I know they don’t hurt the frogs but I still wonder how much the frogs like it or if they jump because they feel scared!

The winning frog gets a special award in the sidewalk and there is a statue of a frog near where the contest happens. I was a little bit disappointed because I thought that the frog statue would be very big.  

I might like to come back to watch these frogs jump but I am not really sure about it. 

I have had oysters before and I like them a lot. I usually like them with garlic sauce and garlic juice or I like them hot from the BBQ with brownish-reddish sauce. These oysters had a tart red sauce called cocktail sauce and lemon juice and now I know I like other sauces more than cocktail sauce. 

The other seafood I ate was fish tacos and those were very good, of course!

The last seafood I tried was called lobster bisque. It was a little bit like clam chowder, except made with lobster. I love lobster and I do not get to order it very often because I don’t think I see it on a lot of restaurant menus. This was delicious and I would order it again!

These are wires I have seen in a museum. They are hanging from the ceiling and they are called sculptures. They were made by a lady named Ruth Asawa. I can’t remember her name unless Mama reminds me, but I have seen them more than one time.

I went to an airport and saw these on the ceiling. I do not know if they were made by the same artist but I know that they are a little bit similar. But these were not made of wires and looked like they were made of basketball net strings but not white like most basketball net strings are. 

I liked being at the airport. I mostly have been traveling a lot by car and not planes. Planes are nice because you can get somewhere very fast. But cars are nice because you can stop when you see something interesting.  At the airport there was lots of good food to try, special toys and pens in the gift shops, a place to get your nails painted, and lots of places to read and be comfortable. I used some of my own money to buy some little chocolates and read some of my own books I brought with me while I waited to get on my plane.

I flew all night in a plane and ended up somewhere I had never been before. Now this is my 41st state and I only have 9 more to go to get to all 50 states in the country. When I got to this new state, I went to a museum and climbed into this sculpture for kids. It also looks like a sculpture by the same artist but it is not. 

I took a class where I learned how to paint rocks using dots. Then I painted a clear liquid on the rock called sealant. This makes water not get to the painted part. Later on, I hid some of the rocks I painted so people could find them as treasure. I like to think about people finding my treasures! 

I learned that starfish can have more than five legs. I always have known that they are not fish. They can grow new legs if they get one taken away in an accident. I know this is called a limb difference in people and animals. I have a book about this, so when I see someone with a limb difference, I already know about it. Also, starfish do not have blood inside of them. 

I went to see the Sound Suits again. The artist named Nick Cave made them. Mama and I looked at every single page in a big book full of his sound suits and there were so many in the book, more than in the museum display. I wish I could have seen them all in person but it was still interesting to see them in a big book. After I looked around the museum for a while, I went to a quiet room and colored a design for my own sound suit.

I learned a new craft today in an art class. 

Anyone can do it at home. First, you need a CD. Scratch it a little and then wrap your hand in tape with the sticky part not touching your hand. Then you use that sticky tape to press onto the cd and it lifts away the writing on the cd and makes the cd see-through. After that, the teacher gave me a cotton ball with liquid on it (rubbing alcohol) and I cleaned off the rest of the color, which was blue.  Next, I used beautiful pens called paintbrush permanent markers to make designs. The teacher drilled a few holes in the CD so I could hang it with a string and some beads. The sun can shine through it and it is beautiful. 

I think this is a good idea if you have old CDs that don’t work anymore and you like colorful decorations. 

I visited a farm sanctuary. A sanctuary is a safe place where there is no danger. This sanctuary has mostly boy goats. The reason there are mostly boy goats at the sanctuary is because only girl goats can have babies and then make milk. So this means that farmers don’t want boy goats and they kill them and that is the danger they had before.  Instead of being killed, they live on this farm. Some goats live on this farm because they were not pretty enough to be show (on a stage) goats because their teeth were not so straight or because an older student raised the goat for a project and then later on didn’t want to have the goat sold to just be eaten.  The baby goats nibbled my dress a little bit and the edge of Mama’s purse too but their bites were so little and so gentle. 
There were also some pigs at this sanctuary. The one I petted had a really cute face and likes his belly to be rubbed. His hair was very thick and rough. Mama told me this is called coarse hair. A lot of people don’t eat goats but do eat pigs. Sometimes people meet these pigs and like how smart the pigs are and decide to stop eating pigs. That’s how these pigs got here. A man bought them so he could eat them but then his heart told him not to do that and he sent the pigs to this place to live. He visits the pigs every couple of months. I wonder if he eats any pigs at all now or if he all the way stopped.  My mom and dad and I do not eat pigs or goats but I do eat bugs. 

At another farm I also got to meet some sheep that had 4 horns and 5 horns and they were unusual looking. Usually sheep have just 2 horns. 

This farm had mushrooms and so I bought a mushroom block.  It kind of looks like a big dirt clod but it is not.  I’ll water it and keep it in a dark spot and fresh mushrooms will grow very soon.

I decided to try something new. I had had mealworms, ants, and crickets before. I like the sour cream and onion crickets and the nacho cheese mealworms and the chocolate ants I’ve had. I also liked another lollipop with a cricket inside. So I decided I would buy myself a strawberry lollipop with a real scorpion inside. It was great! I will buy one again another time if I see one for sale. 

I took a tour outside and inside The Alamo. This is a place where fighting for land happened a very long time ago. The fighting was for the land in Texas. Lots of people died. 

There were signs everywhere like this, telling people to watch out for snakes. 
I went to an outside deck and looked down into a swamp. There were big bullfrogs, turtles, and snakes! The turtles were very busy moving all around.
I learned that mostly these are just water snakes but that there is also a poisonous snake that looks just like a water snake. That venomous snake is called a Water Moccasin. Daddy thought he saw one but we are not sure.   

I went to a place called The Everglades. This is where alligators live. I took a two hour train ride and saw all sorts of interesting birds, turtles, adult crocodiles and even some baby crocodiles. Baby ones look cute but they can bite your finger OFF. I would never touch them. I learned that the babies make a “meep” sound to tell their mamas that someone is bothering them and then if a mama crocodile is after you, you are in big danger!
I held some type of plant that grows on the ground here. It looks like poop but it is not poop. It is like a sponge because it holds water for later for plants and animals and it holds all the bad germs and pollution inside of it and keeps plants and animals from dying if they get all those chemicals inside of them. I also saw a baby turtle on top of another turtle.
I learned that some people have had Burmese Pythons as pets and when those snakes get too big for the person to handle, they dumped them in the Everglades. Eventually there were hundreds of thousands of Burmese Pythons in the Everglades and they are NOT supposed to be here! They can eat anything that is not as long as they are! They have eaten most of the mammals here and that is bad for animals who are supposed to be here. I learned that those snakes are almost extinct in the place where they are supposed to live, but not in the Everglades! They are almost extinct in their country because the people who live there think that Burmese Pythons have medicine inside of them! Mama said she will find out what medicine that is so she can tell me because I want to know.

Mama and I were surprised how close alligators were to the hiking trail and how close people were getting to them to take pictures. It seemed like a bad idea. I know that alligators can look like statues and then move FAST!

I went to a place to watch mermaids swim. 

I watched them swim. I looked at them carefully.  They had knees. Mermaids would not have knees, just fins, so I knew they were not real. These are just ladies swimming around with mermaid swimsuits. 

Afterwards, I swam in a mermaid spring and did fancy mermaid moves in the water. I felt very beautiful. 

I hiked where some special rocks were. It is called limestone and there are seashell and coral fossils in it. I learned about a tree called Poisonwood and it is stronger than Poison Ivy or Poison Oak. If you stand under it when it is raining, you will get poison on you! I forgot this and picked up some leaves to touch and I did not know if they were poisonwood leaves or not. I got very worried. 

Later on, my hands started to itch but it turned out to just be eczema. I have eczema but it’s not poisonous or contagious. No one can get it from me. It’s how my body is. 

I drove over some very long bridges that were over the ocean. This place has so many islands, all connected by a long, skinny freeway. I stopped and looked at shells. Mama liked how the big pieces of coral looked but she did not buy any. She said she did not know if it had been taken from the ocean in a way that hurts the ocean so she would not buy it.  The Keys have a small type of limes called Key Limes. They are stronger tasting and better than regular limes. I sampled key lime cookies, key lime candy, key lime coconut chocolate, key lime fudge, key lime ice cream, and frozen key lime pie on a stick. I did not eat a whole one of each of these, just samples. They were all quite tasty!  Small deer live here too. They are about the size of medium dogs. They are endangered. There are only about 700 of them. They had a problem called Screw Worm. When they got a cut, worms would move into the cut and it made them so sick they would die. Sometimes people drive too fast and bump the deer so adults have to drive slowly in the key deer places. The man in the visitor center says vets and animals helpers are working hard to help get rid of screw worm so hopefully no more key deer will die. I went to the most far point down in the connected parts of the United States. The sign looked like a ketchup bottle.

This place has a lot of foods you can eat from the ocean. I saw lots of lobster and crab traps. I wanted to eat some food at a seafood restaurant next to the blue water. 
These are mangos. They are a fruit and I like them a lot. I ordered a mango frozen drink. 
This is a conch. I have a conch shell at my house. I ate this too. This was my first time eating conch. 
These are oysters. I ordered for myself. I asked the waiter “May I please have Parmesan garlic oysters?” These oysters were cooked ones. Oysters may also be raw or with other toppings. This was not my first time eating oysters. 
The waiter asked me if I would like a dozen or a half dozen. I asked for a half dozen but then Mama and I talked a lot about a dozen and what a half dozen are. This is a little hard for me to work on, but I eventually got it. The waiter told me that I have really good manners. I think he said that because I order in a loud and clear voice and say please and thank you. I am sometimes shy when I speak to new people but I am never shy when ordering at restaurants! 

I bought a bucket of fish. I touched them all over to see what they felt like. I liked touching the eyes, they felt unusual. I bought these dead fish to them to feed to big, alive fish.

Unfortunately, big fish are not the only animals that like to eat little, dead fish. Big pelicans like to eat them too and they will bite people to get the fish. They wait and watch people who have fish buckets.One got close to me and opened her beak and Mama stood between me and the big bird and she said “No way, I don’t think so.” But the bird did not move! So I walked down the dock to lie on my belly and hold out small, dead fish for the big fish to eat. I did not want to put my hand too far down and I felt pretty nervous because these fish are very large and they move very fast toward your hand that holds the fish. 

I am glad that I did this. Next time I will try to be braver even sooner. This was a little tricky for me!

I saw the area where Rosa Parks said NO to give up her bus seat for a white person. She was polite and firm. The bus driver said he would have her arrested and that is what happened. I got to see the whole thing happen but for pretend because it was like a movie playing in the windows of a real bus inside the Rosa Parks Museum. I learned that this is called a reenactment but I probably won’t remember that word later.  I also learned that when Rosa Parks did this, a lot of other people started to do this too and that is called a boycott. The city lost a lot of money every day because of all the people boycotting the bus.  I learned about boycotting when I went to The Cesar Chavez Museum but I am still trying to remember that word.  Boycott. 

I visited the church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was first a pastor. I got to stand at the wooden talking stand where he stood and say, “How long? Not long!” I also looked inside his office and saw his books. I learned that 18 people who were part of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s church back then are still alive and go to that same church. The lady who gave the tour was very nice and she showed me the basement and the upstairs too. No pictures in the basement but upstairs in the church is ok to do. I am not sure why. I should have asked her! I learned a lot from her though, and I stood in the front and sang and clapped along with her and two other children.  I also learned that this is the place where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many other people like Rosa Parks, planned to not take the bus anymore. 

I went to two recording studios today. A recording studio is where musicians record their music to be played on the radio, CD, or on a computer or phone. I also know that this is how records get made too. I did not learn about records today. I already knew about them. These were not my first and second recording studio visits either. I have been to three other ones. I don’t remember the list unless someone tells me. (Norman Petty Studios, Stax Records, and Sun Studios). 
I got to see where musicians made music and how they get into a little tiny room so no other noises bother them. I saw old pictures and videos of music being made and I sat on couches where a lot of musicians also got to sit. Those couches were very worn out. Both of these old places still have musicians who come in to make music. I had to wait for my tour because a lady was making a new record  right before my turn to go inside. Some of the music I heard today is music I listen to in the car and some of it was new to me. I really like hearing music and singing. 

Another thing that was special about today is that I got to go to 4 states in one day and one of them was brand new for me! I went to Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama today! Alabama was the new one.

I toured a guitar factory and I had to wear safety glasses the whole time. Everyone in the factory wears safety glasses in case something flies toward your eyes.
I was not allowed to take any pictures in the factory because the workers don’t want any of their tricks for guitar-making being copied. I learned that it takes 3 weeks for a guitar to be all the way made. I have been to some factories and things are made with robots. This factory did not use robots. Everything was made with people’s hands, even the painting. The painting is different for each guitar and a man named Tony does it. After the guitars are all done, one worker is in charge of playing the guitar to make sure it sounds good!
I got to touch the wood and smell the sawdust. It was noisy inside of the factory and the smells of the wood and paint were strong. 
Inside the factory lobby there were pretend guitars that different artists had decorated.

This is a bathroom in a park. It looks like it is made of mirrors from the outside. I could see my reflection and I couldn’t see inside of it. When I went inside of it, I could see everyone outside. It felt like they were looking at me but I know they could not. It was very unusual. 

Today I went to a library and museum from one United States President.
I learned that when a president of the United States is finished being the president, they have a library and museum all about them. This museum showed a lot of the gifts that this president and his wife were given by the people in charge of other places in the world. Most of the gifts were very fancy. 
I was not alive when George W. Bush was president but I learned about him today. His wife was a teacher and a librarian so there was a section with lots of children’s books and I sat to read them. 
I found out that when George W. Bush was all done being the president and it was Barack Obama’s turn, he learned to paint pictures of people. I saw a lot of his artwork. He painted pictures of men and women who were hurt in war that happened when he was in charge. They are soldiers. In some of the paintings I could see that the soldier had a limb difference and a prosthetic arm or leg. I know about those words already because I have had a book about limb differences since I was very little. Some other paintings showed scars and some I could not see any injury. Mama explained that sometimes the injury is in the soldier’s head. Not like they made it up, but like their hurts are inside their minds from the sad things they felt and saw. 
One interesting thing I noticed was that this library smelled like ketchup. I think that is because there was a cafe in the museum where people were eating lunch. They probably were having french fries and ketchup. 

I learned that the Barack Obama Library will be in Illinois and it is not yet open. Daddy told me this. I have been to Illinois before. I would really like to go to that library someday. 

I hiked down into cave. The cave is colder inside than the air outside so I wore my coat. Once I started hiking, I took my coat off.

When I first got inside the cave I could smell bat scat. I already know that animal poop in the wild out in nature is is called scat. But for bats, it is called guano. The bat guano had a very strong smell. It really bothered Mama. She didn’t tell me but I heard her say it so I told her my advice. This was my advice:
Breathe through your nose only.
Pretend you are smelling an ice cream cone.
Pretend you are sniffing lavender. 

This hike was long and it was downwards the whole way. I saw stalactites and I know those come down from the ceiling. I saw stalagmites and those come up from the ground. I have known about both of those for a long time because I have been in more than one cave. Stalactites hang tight from the ceiling and stalagmites might trip you. Those are some tricks that you can use for remembering the difference. For this hike I did not have to wear a helmet. I worked on my Junior Ranger booklets inside and outside of the cave. I earned a badge for this park and then another one for being a Cave Scientist. 

I whispered in this cave because the Ranger told me my voice would echo. He said that a regular voice can travel 1/2 a mile inside the cave and that is annoying. Mostly all the other hikers whispered. Some did not and their voices were very loud to me! 

When I earned my badges, this Ranger asked me a lot of questions and took his time. Most of the Rangers are like that. 

I went to the White Sand Dunes. This sand is from a rock called gypsum. I listened to the Ranger movie and it is as soft as my fingernail. The wind breaks the gypsum down into little bits and then it gets smaller like cornflakes and then smaller like rice  then it sort of feels like soft powder. I closed my eyes and touched it and I was pretending I was petting a kitten! 

I saw what gypsum looks like. I touched sand that was dry. When I dug down a little bit, the sand was a little bit stuck together and so I know it rained here not too long ago.  I was surprised to find out that gypsum is in foods and drinks and toothpaste. I read a sign that said people eat 28 pounds of gypsum in our whole life in our foods! 28 pounds is a lot. My dog does not weigh 28 pounds and 28 pounds is more than half of how much I weigh. 

I learned that living creatures in these White Sand Dunes have adapted to living here by turning sand colored over a long time. I already know from a long time ago that adapted means changing a tiny bit at a time over a long time. So, these lizards used to be dark but them slowly over time babies and then the next babies and then the next babies were lighter and lighter. I did not get to see these animals or insects in the sand dunes but I did see pictures of them. 

I climbed up the sand hills and ran down, rolled down, disced down, and I wrestled with Mama and then Daddy. I liked it when one of them would push me away or yank on my legs and I would tumble down the hill. 

I earned a Junior Ranger badge but I have to mail in my work because I did not leave until after the Ranger was done with her work. She will mail my badge to me. I had to do that one other time when the Ranger ran out of badges. That was in South Dakota, I think, but I get it confused with North Dakota so I am not sure. 

I visited a pistachio farm. I sampled pistachio ice cream and it had almonds inside instead of pistachios and I thought that was unusual. I saw where the pistachios grow. They grow in a big group of trees. A big group of trees is called an orchard.

I went to a place where a lot of trees used to be, it was a forest. The trees look like fallen down trees in a regular forest but these are actually fossils! They are very old, 225 MILLION years old. Some of the petrified fossil trees looked a little sparkly. By the time I was done with my hike, it was dark outside. 
I also saw with my regular eyes and then also with a free telescope, petroglyphs. Peteoglyphs are drawings on rocks from Native Americans. 

I worked on my booklet and earned a Junior Ranger badge and even a patch.

I saw an old, crumbling Pueblo that Native Americans lived in a very long time ago– 800 years. It had been fixed up a little bit by the rangers and it was ok to go inside as long as I didn’t touch the walls.

Then I went to another area with a bigger Pueblo and that one is not ok for people to go inside of.  I learned that Native Americans played games that used balls, like people do now. The Ranger told me that something shaped like a hockey stick was found from a long time ago. 

I also looked down into a square hole in the ground and it led to an underground hallway but we are not allowed to go down in there but I wish I could have. This was called a blowhole. But part of this is a mystery because no one knows why it was built!! Lots of cold wind was coming up out of it and my hair blew up!

This is the Grand Canyon. This is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It was so big. When I am bigger, I would like to hike down to the bottom. You can raft in the river at the bottom and mules bring supplies down too, like water for drinking, food, and even toilet paper!  I leaned that the Colorado river helped to make this Canyon and also it happened because the ground moved and tilted a long time ago. I also learned that it used to be covered with sea water and there are even seashell fossils here and so that is proof.  I hiked around all day long, climbed a lot of trees, and worked on my Junior Ranger badge. I found some poop and talked to the Ranger about it and he told me it sounded like I was describing poop from Elk. Now I know that looking at what type of poop is found, tells Rangers and scientists what animals have been around the area. Even if you don’t see the animal, you can know it was there because it left poop!
Daddy and I read a sign about how it is important to be prepared and how it is not a good idea to hike down and back up in the same day. But I know that one of Daddy’s brothers did exactly that! 
I have a pack of markers that has 100 colors so before the sunset, I found a spot that was good for coloring. It was a beautiful spot for art! I have colored outside before and it is called En Plein Air. 

I climbed up the stairs of the Desert Watchtower and could see the Colorado River very well. I could see it even better when I used a telescope. Outside of the Watch Tower was a wall of rocks and I climbed them. 

I have finished two chapter books so far. 

I went to a place in the desert where groups of wild burros live. This was my first time seeing burros. In this area it seems like everyone feeds these burros but I am a Junior Ranger and I have learned that you do NOT get close to wild animals and you don’t feed them either!! 
Mama and Daddy said it was okay to try and I didn’t want to at first because I was worried of them biting me. But I did it! I fed the burros and they were gentle. 
I think this is because they are used to people feeding them. Daddy and Mama and I talked about this afterwards. We wondered if people feeding the burros makes them come out to the road too much. If they do that, they could get hit by a car! Do these burros still know how to get their own food? Or does getting food from people make them forget how to do that? I liked feeding these burros but I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. 

There was a man named Cesar Chavez who helped farm workers get paid more money and get bathrooms, water, and shade when they had to work hard on farms. He did this because he wanted to help people and farm workers were NOT being treated the right way. Cesar Chavez had two dogs- Huelga and Boycott. Huelga means Strike in Spanish. A strike is when people don’t work and it’s because they want something to be better at their work. Sometimes when people have a strike, they make signs about it. Then a boycott is when you don’t buy something because you want something about that thing to buy to change. Like, if I don’t buy lettuce because I want farm workers who pick lettuce to be treated better, that is called a boycott. If I am a farm worker and I want to be treated better, I don’t do my job and that’s a strike. 

Cesar Chavez is not alive now. He died before I got born. He is buried here and I saw his grave. His wife died last year and she is buried next to him. 

I earned my Junior Ranger Badge here. 

I went to a special outside market. For sale were a lot of foods and drinks, flowers and gifts. Lots of people come here to shop and it was very busy. These shrimp were very large. I liked the taste and I ate 3 of them but not all at once. Mama took this picture of me and I know it looks like I don’t like the taste but I sure do. 

Near this special market is a place where you can chew up gum and then put it up on the wall. I learned that all of the gum was taken down and the walls were cleaned but then people just started putting it back up again. I think maybe there are a lot of germs in this place!

I went on a long hike to see some very pretty water. 
We saw a sign that told us to be careful and watch out because bears live here. Mama wanted a can of spray that bears don’t like and if they come close, you squirt it toward them. It doesn’t hurt them but they do not like it. Daddy said he didn’t think we would need that sort of spray so we just hiked. 

Right away on my hike I saw that there were some very big, smooth rocks. They got that way because of the water moving over them really fast and hard for a very long time. It was pretty. I couldn’t get too close because if I fell in then the water would take me far away and bump me into rocks. 
On the way I got to climb up logs and jump off and so I did that a bunch of times. Mama and Daddy don’t pick me up when I want to climb something and it is usually okay for me to try and climb things that are high up. Sometimes I like to hold someone’s hand if I jump off of something tall.

We were surprised to see bears on this hike! We only saw Black Bears and those are not as dangerous as Grizzly Bears. But I learned that Grizzly Bears do live in this area! We even saw a tree that a bear had scratched with her claws!

If we did a hike again where bears are, we would probably bring Bear Spray next time.

There was a man who used to do really big tricks on his motorcycle. 

He would ride on the ground and then get his motorcycle very high up in the air and then land again on the ground. Sometimes he got hurt doing this.  Everybody liked to watch him ride in the air.

He is not alive anymore but not because he got hurt on his motorcycle. He died because he had a sickness in his lungs. 

I went to a ranger class to learn about rock hounding and ever since then I have wanted to go do it!

You can not rock hound in a National Park because you have to keep all of those natural things in the National Park for everyone to enjoy. 

I went to an opal mine. Opals can look really pretty once they have been cut into a shape and shined up. But they do not look like this automatically. 

I have my own hammer now and I use it when I rock hound. I am allowed to use it because I know how to be careful. 
Rock hounding is fun. I put water on the rocks to find out their true colors. 
I love  rock hounding. 

When Daddy woke up in the morning he heard a pack of wolves howling and was surprised how close they sounded. Then later on he realized that the reason was that there was a wolf and bear rescue place really close to us. 
We went to visit the bears and wolves. They live here because they got injured or their mamas did. They It is not a zoo where the animals are treated badly or made to learn tricks. It is a learning place and the people who work there don’t even touch the animals so they are having a more natural life. 

The best thing about these bears is that they are all grown up bears but they act like baby cub bears because they don’t have to be as responsible at the center as they would have to be in the wild. All of their food is here and their lives are pretty easy so they play and roll around and act silly.  One bear was trying to rip down a small tree and was tossing branches in the air. Another one was rolling around on his back, touching his feet like a baby human does. 

The wolves moved around the same way that dogs do. Wolves are smarter than dogs, even if you have a very smart dog.

I hiked 10 miles today.

The thing I like about road trips is when we see something fun or interesting, we usually stop and try it out! 

I saw this river and asked if we could stop and swim and we did!

The water was warm because some of that hot water from the geysers gets into this water. So it does not feel like melted snow. 

This is a place where people catch fish with fishing poles but I did not find any fish. I looked around a lot. I rolled around in some plants that looked like seaweed and reminded me of a mermaid bed. Then I made a necklace out of plants but I did not bring it with me because a junior ranger leaves those things behind, everyone should.

I sat in a shallow spot and ate my cheese sandwich in the river too. 

Hot lava is called lava when it gets out of the Earth. When it is still inside and under the ground it is called magma. 

Magma heats up the water and earthquakes help the ground crack and the hot water or hot mud get out. 
Sometimes the hot water just bubbles and sometimes it squirts water out very high. Other cracks or holes in the rocks let just steam out. 

Bacteria (germs) and minerals (kind of like vitamins) can make the hot water turn different colors. Some are so beautiful. I wanted to touch them but I know that is not allowed. It could make a problem in the colors or maybe be hot enough to burn me.

 


The Park Ranger talked about how when fires happen in Yellowstone and trees burn or fall, they don’t take them away and clean up because the trees make vitamins for the soil. They do not replant new trees either. Everything has to be as natural as possible.

I also learned that if an animal in Yellowstone is sick or feeling bad or about to maybe even die, they just let it do what it would do in nature, either live or die. The only time the Rangers get involved with helping an animal with a sickness or maybe a broken leg or something, is if people caused the problem. People make problems in a lot of ways and one way is by bumping an animal with their car.

I saw new colors of little plants that grow on rocks. Daddy told me they are called lichen and you say that word “like en” and I thought that was funny so I said “I’m really likin lichen” a whole bunch of times. 

And Daddy just picked me up for a silly picture. I hiked on my own boots, not being carried. 

I hiked to see the sunset from a high up spot. Mama and Daddy and I sat on a big sandstone rock and saw the sky. It was pink and orange. Sunset is a good time to hike because if the day is too hot then at sunset the weather is usually not so hot. 

I saw bison far away and then I saw them very close from the car. I learned that bison weigh about 2,000 pounds. I weigh 47 pounds and 2,000 is a lot more. 

Sometimes people think that because bison move slowly when they are just walking around, that they are like cows. They are not! They can run very fast toward you and that is called charging. I also learned that they can be something called aggressive. Aggressive means the opposite of gentle and it is kind of like an attack. They only act that way if they feel like you are too close or bothering them. These are wild animals and they are big. 

Bison eat grass and they eat a lot of it. The whole time I watched them they were eating. I was close enough (in the car) to hear their mouths ripping up the grass. Then later they all started to scratch themselves on fence posts.

Because these bison are wild, that means they can roam around and do what they want to do inside the National Park. This National Park is not very crowded so there were only some people. I saw more bison than people.

Bison are big and their poop is big too. Poop is called scat. If you are a ranger, you call it scat and not poop.

I have seen wild horses very far away before but these were very close. The grown up horses looked at me but did not really care very much because they just looked away but I noticed that the baby horses (I know they are called colts) looked at me for a long time. I stood and watched them for so long. It felt special to see them so close up. I know you can get closer to horses that people buy but these ones are wild animal horses. You can’t ride them. 

I already know that ants can carry very heavy loads and that it’s pretty much like adults carrying around a small car. But it still was very interesting to me to see a whole bunch of ants carrying tiny rocks. The rocks were sure tiny but still lots bigger than the ant bodies. Then when I explored more, I found out why they were carrying them. The rocks were for their habitat. 

If a place has a window then I always take a look. 

The grasslands are where lots of animals live and they are all very cute to me. I have a lot of them as stuffed (pretend) animals. I really like the Black Footed Ferrets. They live in the Prairie Dog tunnels and they actually eat the Prairie Dogs too so I do not really like that very much but they do need to do that to live. Small owls called Burrowing Owls live in there too. 

I took a class on rock hounding and I learned how to do that and where it is okay to rock hound and where it is not. I would really like to go rock hounding soon. It would be fun to gather rocks and then polish them in a rock tumbler. My Gigi told me about rock tumblers and I would like one but I have to save my money and I am already saving my dollars for a sewing machine. 

The Badlands used to not look like it does now. It used to be covered with sea water so there are no dinosaur bones here. 
I loved watching the national park rangers put on lab coats and goggles and masks and work on removing the sediment from the fossils. They used drills when I was watching them but later when they get very close to the bones they use more delicate tools. There were tubes to suck away the dust and they wore the face masks so they wouldn’t breathe the dust. One ranger was inside a clear box with the fossil and another ranger had just his hands in the clear box working. 

I went on a short hike here because it is so hot. The hills have little tiny balls of dried clay and it is easy to slip. Mama slipped and fell down and her legs went straight up in the air and that made me laugh so hard because it looked so silly to me. Mama laughed too so I was not being mean. It is not okay to laugh at someone if they are hurt or sad.

I worked on my Junior Ranger badge here. I still feel very proud each time I earn one. I am covering my Ranger vest! I would like to get a green ranger hat too. 

Today I learned about how countries have missiles for protection from other countries. Missles are very big and they seem a little dangerous. I understand about them a little bit but not a lot.

School kids used to have to practice getting under their desks in case of a missle. I would not like that at all. This Junior Ranger badge took less time than most of the parks with lots of nature. 

This is a big building where you can see live music and each year the outside of the building is covered in dry corn to make a big picture. It costs over $100,000 to do this each year. I wanted to try corn with butter from their snack bar but they did not have that. I also got to touch powdered corn and it was so soft.  Mama bought a necklace for me and it is made of corn. I think it would be nice to wear for a very special occasion. 

I went to the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve to see what it used to look like here.

This is an ice house. Back before freezers and refrigerators people would cut a huge hunk of ice from a frozen pond or lake and put it in the ice house with things they needed to keep cold. Because the ice was so big, it would take months before it melted all the way. This is different than small ice cubes which can melt faster.

This wasa tool sharpener. A long time ago you could sit on the seat, pump your legs and make the stone circle go around and around and then put the tool to touch the stone and it would make the metal tool sharper. I would have liked to sit and pump my legs on this but it is too old for that. 

These are all the plants in this area. It was not just one type of grass and that it! There were a lot!

This is an old fashioned carriage for horses to pull and people to ride in.
This is a way people would plant rows of plants. The seeds go in the can and the pointy part at the bottom makes a row in the dirt and the seeds drop inside the dug out row.

The weather was very hot today so I kept our hike short, just about 2 miles. Mama carried a big container of water for us to drink. It was a hot hike but I did not complain.  On this hike I saw silk worms moving all around when I got close to them. I also saw cows eating. The cows were from Texas and they were here to eat and eat and eat so that they could be big for them to be eaten. I do not eat cows so I did not really like this. I also saw a very unusual bug. It was unusual because Dadsy tried to shoo it away from the path but it would not leave the trail, it kept moving forward and landing on the trail again and again and again like it was leading us. It made me laugh but we did not know if it were a biting or stinging bug. It was fuzzy but just because a bug is fuzzy does not mean it is a bug that won’t sting or bite! I asked the ranger but she did not even know what this bug was!

I earned my Junior Ranger badge and patch here too. 

A long time ago students with dark skin had to go to a different school than students with light skin. 
I learned that this was called separate but equal but it was not equal because equal is when something is fair. This was not fair. It was wrong. 
This school is where that rule stopped happening. It is called Monroe School. I learned a new word called segregation and that means separated but in a sort of unfair way. I earned another Junior Ranger badge here. 

I went to a special place called The Arch. I learned that it is modern. Modern is sort of the same thing as new but The Arch is not exactly new. Other ways to think of a building as being modern is that it might be shiny or simple. It does not mean old-fashioned or fancy. 

I find bugs wherever I go. I even found some in this city when I walked to The Arch.  

To get to the top of The Arch I got into a round elevator that is kind of like a bubble with 5 seats inside. The ride up to the top is 4 minutes, the ride down is only 3.

I worked on two new badges while I was here and Mama bought a special Junior Ranger vest for me and now I have put my badges on the vest. 
The Arch is 630 feet tall. 

I went to a place that has a mine. A mine is an underground place where something is dug out of the ground for money. A miner is a job where you dig the thing out from the ground. Miners can dig for gold or other things. This mine was for lead. Lead is what used to be in pencils but not anymore. 

This mine was used for over one hundred years and then scientists figured out that lead was unhealthy for people’s bodies and this mine was closed. When it closed, water started coming in and now it’s full of water and people go diving. Mama doesn’t have her diving papers but is a good swimmer and asked if she could just rent a wetsuit and swim there but the answe was no. She asked a few people but they each said nope.

I walked through the mine and then eventually took a boat. The water was very clear and I could see things in the water that the miners had used. 

I saw one fish. There is only one fish there and it’s there because the owner of the mine put it in there. She gets fed so she stays close to the edge. The workers have to feed her because nothing is in the flooded mine for her to eat. I thought she might be lonely and I found out from my guide that they had put two fish in there and either the lady fish ate the man fish or he is very shy and staying under the dock but the workers hasn’t seen the man fish in months. I also learned that her colors have faded on her skin because she is in the dark all the time. 

The boat ride was like a dream come true. Being in the boat was so much fun, it was so very beautiful in this flooded mine. 

I saw a lot of outdoor art and then a whole bunch of toys that a man collected. He said he had a whole bunch more not showing and he told us a lot of stories. Some of them I didn’t understand and he talked very fast but Mama and Daddy understood the stories and laughed and said “oh wow” a lot of times. It felt like we were there for a long time and so I asked and Daddy said it had been almost 4 hours. 

I petted a dog named Honey Bear and I heard that this man had a pet squirrel but the squirrel was not available. I saw a black pig and some ducks and chickens walking around too.

I liked this place and the toy area gave me ideas for setting up my train table in a different way. I’d like to make the train go up and over the houses on my train table and try out a remote controlled train too. 

I went to a museum that had everything in it that was all about the singer Johnny Cash. He was a singer and he also played the guitar. He was a very good singer and I do like his songs. Two that I like I Walk The Line and Ring of Fire. I saw some Sesame Street and Johnny Cash was on that show singing a song, Don’t Take Your Ones to Town and it was about Big Bird and the number 1.
I learned that a lot of people like Johnny Cash’s songs and have done something with his songs called covering. If you cover someone else’s song it means that you sang their song but didn’t steal the song from them. It’s like being a copycat but it’s nice, not mean. I listened to 15 different singers sing I Walk The Line and about 10 who sang Ring of Fire. Mama read a sign to me that said over 150 singers covered that song. People were waiting to get to one of the three spots where you can listen with the headphones but I’d had to wait my turn so Mama said it was okay to just listen until I had heard all of what I wanted to hear. Most people only listened for a little bit before they walked on to the next thing anyway.

I saw Johnny Cash’s guitars, clothes, papers, records, and photographs.

 I also got to see a movie about him singing for the people who were in the prison. He sang for the prisoners in Folsom Prison and San Quentin Prison and I have never been to those prisons but I have been in the towns where the prisons are. 

The people who work in this museum say “you can get your picture made” instead of saying “you can get your picture taken” and that is different to me. 
When I had my picture made, the man called me a fellow. I am not a fellow because a fellow means a man or a boy.  I wore a pants and a tank top today and they both have fringe on them and I know boys probably might like fringe too because it moves all around if you run or hop or dance. If I wore a dress he probably would not have called me fellow but anyone can wear anything they want to wear and it does not matter if you are a boy or a girl. But I didn’t learn that today. I already knew that for a long time.  

I went to a museum where I saw all sorts of special memory things from a singer named George Jones. I learned that he didn’t show up for his concerts sometimes because he did not treat his body very well

His nickname was possum and I think that is pretty funny. It is not funny that he died because he treated his body badly. The George Jones museum had a nice restaurant with singers singing and playing guitar too and I ate dinner there. I ordered blackened fish tacos and milk. It was delicious.  
At the end of our meal our waiter told me that he has been waiting tables for a lot of years and that I was in the top five of well-spoken and well-behaved kids he had ever seen in a restaurant. This was nice to hear because I got very shy and quiet when I had lunch with some people who are related to my Daddy a few days ago. 

Mama and Daddy were frustrated with me because when someone asks me questions, I should be able to answer and have a conversation but yesterday I did not do a good job of doing that even with Mama reminding me and trying to help me answer. I don’t really know why it was hard for me but it was. We all had a long talk about it and I got better at it again today. Sometimes things go right and sometimes things go wrong. 

This tour smelled great! I liked that the whole tour smelled like bread. No bread was being made here but some bread ingredients were being used. 

This factory is where some drink is made that is not for kids. Adults can drink it as a treat but not all adults like to. Kids can go on this tour though, and see how everything is made. I liked seeing how the barrels are made out of wood pieces and metal circles. 

This is a place where a very special horse race happens each year. It is called the Kentucky Derby. Horses have to be exactly three years old to do the race and the person who rides the horse has to be very light and small so that the horse does not have to work hard to run with the jockey on their back. 

I took a tour and got to see the paddock. The paddock is where the horses wait in stalls. I also saw where people pay extra for a special ticket to see the race up close. The track is a big oval shape and it is mostly sand. The horse that wins gets to wear a cape made of red roses.

When people watch this race they wear dress up clothes and very fancy or silly hats. 

Mama and Daddy got married around this time a long time ago but it was in the middle of July so they celebrate their anniversary each July. 

This year to celebrate, my Grandma Jojo bought us all tickets to see a singer we really like and who we listen to in the car when we drive around to far away places. His name is James McMurtry. I recognized all of the songs he played and he played my favorite and I think it’s called North Texas but maybe it is called something else but he says North Texas in the song I really like. I could feel the music in my belly because it boomed. 

I had to wear my special ear muffs to block out some of the loud songs. I sat up against the wall on a drinks ledge and ate chocolate covered raisins while I watched the band play. This place said it was ok for me to come in even though I am not an adult but I was the only person at the show who was not an adult. 

I hiked down some steep rocks and into this area where this waterfall was. This was a beautiful waterfall and it was not too strong like other waterfalls can be. I felt really brave and strong doing this. 

Later in my hike I saw an animal I had never seen before. It was a muskrat. It was so cute. I would like to have one. 

I read this sign all by myself and sounded out all the letters.

Snapping turtles and big fish were in the water near the beaver dam. I would have liked to see the Beavers but they rest up during the day and start their work when the sun is starting to get ready to set. 

I also earned two new Junior Ranger badges here. I earned a protector badge and a badge for this National Park. Since I am 5, I usually have to do 5 activities but this time I had to do more. 

George Washington was the first president of the United States of America and this is what he wore!

Sometimes a museum shows you a model or a replica. I know that those words usually mean please don’t touch, just look to learn. And that a replica always means that the thing is not the real one but it is a new one that got made to look just like the real thing so people can learn.

But this is not a replica. George Washington wore these actual clothes! 


I saw a painting of him wearing the same outfit too. The clothes are made of wool and wool comes from sheep. I think that this outfit is probably itchy. 

Before Mama and Daddy were born but when all of my grandparents were born, there were rules that people with dark skin were not allowed to do all the things that people with light skin could do. I know that this was very wrong. 

I learned that there were four students (but older students, not little kids like me) who went to sit at a lunch counter table that they were not supposed to use because of the bad and mean rules about skin color. Doing this started to help the ending of those bad rules. 

I learned how to have a lemonade stand business of my own when I went to classes to learn about it at the library. I have really been wanting to sell lemonade for a while and I finally got to try it.

I got a loan from the Kiwanis Club after I made my list of what I would need. I paid for the supplies with that loan. If you get a loan that means you have to pay it back. It means borrow and you can’t just keep that money.

Mama and I made strawberry lemonade and I sold it at a Farmers’ Market. I made enough money to pay back my loan and then extra money after that. That part is called my profit. Profit is the money you make after you pay the loan back. 

I used tally marks to keep track of the number of cups of strawberry lemonade that I sold.

It was a very hot day outside and so people really liked having lemonade and lots of cold ice in it. I will do this again!

Abraham Lincoln was a president of The United States of America. He was the 16th one and was the tallest one ever. 

Abraham Lincoln wore this type of hat a lot and this is the actual one that he wore. It looks very old and it is. 

I was very excited to get to touch a moon rock. I thought I was going to be able to hold it in my hands. I thought it would be light, not heavy, like pumice. I have held pumice a lot of times already. I thought there would be bumps and holes. 

This was not what I expected and it was disappointing. The rock was cut into a skinny triangle shape and it was only for touching, not holding. It was smooth and there were no bumps or holes. It was dark and I had thought it would be light because when I see the moon it is light colored. 

The tall monument is called the Washington Monument and it is for remembering the first President. His name was George Washington. The next time I come to Washington DC I will go into the Washington Monument and go to the top. Since I could not go to the top for this visit, I decided to enjoy the bottom of the monument! It looked so much bigger this way.

My favorite monument was the World War II Monument because I think it is so beautiful with the fountains and the lights. Some parents were letting their kids get in the water and my Daddy told me that was wrong because this place is for remembering and it is not for swimming. 

I climbed all the steps to the Lincoln Monument. Abraham Lincoln was a president of the United States too. I walked around to the back of the big statue and saw lights shining up. 

From the Lincoln Monument I could see the Washington Monument really far away. 

My last monument of the night Wednesday Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. monument. This one was my favorite, I think. When I was 4, I went to a special museum and learned all about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  I also saw the place where a man hurt him with a little piece of metal that got into his body and made him not be alive anymore. That place is not very close to the Monument but I remember being there. 

My Daddy’s watch tells him how far he has walked in a day. I walked everywhere that Daddy walked and so I walked TEN WHOLE MILES TODAY and I did not complain. This is the most miles I have walked but in Death Valley one day I hiked about 6 1/2 miles or maybe even 7.

I went inside the Library of Congress and saw a lot of very old books. The old books were boxed in by glass so that means I could not touch them. Some of them were from Thomas Jefferson who restarted the library when he sold them to the law makers. The books the law makers had before all got ruined because of a fire. The fire was set on purpose because of a big fight called The War of 1812. That was a long time ago, I know, because the year now is 2016 and 2016-1812 = 204 years ago! 

Today I went here. This is called the Capitol building. At first, I kept forgetting it is called that and I called it The Main Place, or The House. Now I know it is the Capitol of The United States of America.

On the tour I wore headphones to hear the tour guide. Her name was Little Jessica. I think maybe there might be another tour guide who is named Jessica and is bigger than this Jessica. There were a lot of people taking tours with different guides but they were all listening to their own tour guide through their headphones.

This is a chandelier I saw on the tour.

The big roundish top part of the building is called the dome. This is what it looks like on the inside right now because some workers are making repairs. There were metal ladders and poles everywhere and those are called scaffolding. I learned that new word too. Little Jessica says the scaffolding has been there for two years already and that all of the work will be all done by the time a new president has been voted on to be our next president. When the new president takes the oath, the building will look very nice and fresh! An oath is a promise and I know what an oath is because I have taken a couple of oaths now to be a National Park Junior Ranger.  The president we have right now is President Barack Obama but I did not see him. 

The Capitol building is where men and women talk about and agree or disagree on ideas that become laws or do not become laws. A law is a rule and all people are supposed to follow the laws. If someone does not go by the laws it is called breaking the law.

I love Mister Rogers. 

Sometimes I get to watch his shows. I like that he is helpful and has good ideas for solving problems. He is never mean. He explains learning things well. I have some books he wrote about hard things and one of those things is about if your pet dies. It is a very good book. 

I wish I could meet him but I know he is not alive anymore. I got to see his puppets, sweaters and shoes and I liked that a lot. 

My Mama and another mama taught my class  about this artist. There was art here from another artist too but mostly the one man named Andy Warhol. 

I like his art that is bright and colorful. He did other types too but I really like the colorful face paintings he did.

Today I learned how to sew. I decided on my own fabric and decided I wanted to make a blanket. 

I learned how to measure the thread. It’s my wingspan long. That means the same as both my arms, spread out like wings. I learned how to get the thread into the needle hole. That is called threading the needle. 

I stayed in the sewing workshop until they closed it. If they had not closed it then I would probably have just stayed in there, sewing. 

I have read in books about fireflies or lightening bugs but today I got to see them and catch them. To catch them you have to close your hands in a cup shape instead of like when you are clapping. If you clap then you will hurt them. 

They are very pretty when they light up. I put them in a bug container and then I let them back out so they would be free.

I learned that they eat smaller insects and snails and slugs. Some of them eat plant parts. 

I read two books to some dogs at the library. The dogs were named Luther and Gus. I sounded out all the words. The dogs were soft. 
I had to stay longer at the library than I planned because the weather outside was very rainy and stormy and there was supposed to be a tornado! A tornado is a dark cloud of wind that can pick up heavy things. 
If a tornado is coming, don’t go outside. Stay inside and go into a basement and get away from the glass windows!

I had to go to the doctor for an x-ray today. The x-Ray showed my bones and the shape of my heart and where some air was in my lungs and also an air bubble in my belly. Wherever there was air was where I saw black on the x-Ray.  I talked with the X-ray worker about the parts of the X-ray and I asked the doctor if Mama could take a picture of the x Ray too. There is a Curious George book I like and in that book he gets a belly X-ray because he ate a puzzle piece!

I am all ok and healthy. The doctor was nice and she explained to me about my body and she also knew about horses so she told me about horses too. I might see her at the horse show. If I see her there, I will say hi to her.

At this doctor’s office, there is sometimes a dog there to greet patients. Today there was a nice old dog who was so soft. I petted him the whole time that I waited for my X-ray turn. 

I am learning about a new insect. This type is special because they only come out from underground every 17 years. So, last time it happened I was not even born. These are called cicadas and they made a very loud noise like a shaker. Just one by itself wouldn’t seem so loud but there are so many making the noises at the same time that I could hear them when my car drove on the freeway! They do not bite. They eat sap from trees. 



Mama and Daddy and I are each in different states! Mama is in Michigan, Daddy was in Ohio and I was in Indiana!

I am in three states at one time!

This was a great museum. Inside were all sorts of motor homes and trailers. Some were too old to go inside, like the one that were 100 years old, but a lot of them that were old and new you could look at and touch. Some were very big and some just small enough to sleep inside. For my birthday I was hoping I would get a chihuahua, but now I would like a motor home.

When I was in Death Valley I saw a lot of flowers but I have been in some new states today. Those states are Michigan and Indiana. I saw beautiful flowers in the middle of the freeway here and that was a surprise. 

I went to a town called Gary. That is so funny to me because one of my dogs is named Gary. When I looked out the window, I noticed that this place had a lot of buildings that were broken. 

I went to Michael Jackson’s house he lived in when he was a child. I learned he was married to Elvis’ daughter. I have also been to Elvis’ house. 

Michael Jackson played a lot of good music and I am listening to it in the car. He died because he took too much medicine for his body. That’s what Elvis did too.

My air conditioner broke at the beginning of our trip so we get wind from outside to cool us down. Some places I go to have a strong smell, usually the smell is cow poop. This time I smelled a delicious smell. A whole town smelled like bread or muffins. It was a factory that makes oatmeal!

This is the last place Buddy Holly played music before he died. I know all about Buddy Holly because I have been to his museum, one of his houses, his recording studio, where he was buried, and today, this place and the place where his plane crashed. Daddy and I saw a musical play about Buddy Holly’s life and I know about his music. I know that his wife is alive and I really would like to meet her. 

This was very interesting to me. This is the phone Buddy Holly used so he could call his wife before he got in the plane that had an accident. 

We put one of Daddy’s guitar pics here where Buddy Holly’s plane crashed. Planes do not usually crash.

I saw big fields of corn and got to jump through them. I learned that there is a saying about corn that people say called knee high by July and Daddy said that means that corn is knee high in the month of July. But this is for adults because this corn was already a little past my knees. 

I also saw swarms of tadpoles in some water but the water was not a pond. Some tires had made deep holes and there was water in there and so many tadpoles. I reached in and gently held some. I only held them for a quick bit because they need to be in the water to stay alive. 

Tadpoles are eggs before they are tadpoles and then they are kind of in-betweenish and then frogs. 

A long time ago mail was delivered by men on horses and it was very dangerous because they would get robbed a lot. If the horse got scared and threw the man off, the horse just kept on going to the next post office stop. This is the first one of those stops that was ever built. Now mail goes by airplanes and trucks. 

Mama and Daddy call this an Outdoor Flute because it is not for playing in the car. I bought it at the museum and now I get out and play it when I am at gas stations. 

Before people had washing machines they filled buckets from a river, boiled up the water, mixed up the clothes with a tool that looked like a toilet-unplugger, then rubbed the clothes on a bumpy metal board. I learned that this was a lot of work. 

One of my jobs at home is to fold all of the towels, washcloths, dish towels, and art room rags but I do not push the washing machine buttons yet. I do help make laundry soap though. 

I visited a real ranch with: horses, ostriches, chickens, peacocks, pigs, camels, llamas, and most exciting, BISON!!! 

I have wanted to see bison up close for a very long time and I really wanted to do that on my trip. Today I got to feed bison, lots of them. I learned their tongues are a foot and a half long and I felt how rough they were! Rougher than a cat, Mama says, but I never have touched a cat tongue yet. I have dogs, that is why. I also learned that bison don’t see very well but their ears work well for hearing.

I woke up during the early morning before the sun came up and asked Mama if she would like to watch the sun rise with me. 

She was not ready to stand up and watch it so I opened all the curtains so she could see it while she was lying down.

We are in a new state. I circled it on my states map. It’s my first time here.

One of the things on my trip list was to see bison. There are bison up on this hill.

I learned about the creatures who live in Wyoming. In this museum a lot of stuffed animals were in there. I don’t mean stuffed animal toys. I mean animals who are dead and have been stuffed so they stand in one position and everyone looks at them to see what they looked like. I also got to feel all sorts of samples of animal furs. I liked petting all of them but it was a little sad that they were not alive anymore.

This is a dandelion shadow. 

My car’s air conditioner broke and so that means only hot air will blow and since it is summer time, I never really cool down. 

This morning I woke up and I really wanted to throw up. Mama bought a container for me in case I needed to do it while we were driving and after a long time I finally did need it.

A little bit after that happened, one of my teeth fell out and I am wondering how the tooth fairy will get my tooth. Right now it is in the coins part of Mama’s wallet so it does not get lost. 

Sometimes being on a trip can be hard.

We took a small hike to see wild horses but none of them were out. 

Instead of seeing wild horses, we saw lots of crickets. Everywhere. Every step I took, crickets would jump away from my boots. 

I got down low to watch some ants. I saw one carrying some mouse poop that was bigger than the ant’s body. Then I saw another ant carrying a long piece of something sharp, maybe a plant. If you are patient, you can really see ants doing a lot. 

I did not see this sign until after I hiked for wild horses. I didn’t see any snakes or scorpions though. 

This is not a dust storm. It is 400 degree water steam coming out of the ground. 400 degrees is very hot and it is not something to get close to. Our oven can cook to 400 degrees. 

I went to an old cook house museum and saw all sorts of old things. It was very interesting. 

These are old kitchen tools for cooking.  They had an old stove and an old fridge too. 

I learned that old packages were usually made of thin metal. They had an old (empty) box of marshmallows. Now our made foods come in plastic instead. 

These are old medical tools. Over 100 years old.

These are old cameras. 

This is an old desk from a classroom. I learned about using an ink well and a quill pen. An ink well is a little glass jar of ink and you dipped your pen into it instead of the ink being in the pen already. 

There was a very nice lady working at this museum and she told me all sorts of things. I was a little shy with her but I did tell her about being a Junior Ranger.

This man made a big art project because he wanted to honor Native Americans. Today I learned what it means to honor and it is kind of hard for me to understand this word but it means when you think someone or something is very special and you maybe want to protect it or show other people how special it is. There used to be a place where people could stay and sleep here but someone set it on fire and you can’t sleep here anymore.



This was interesting to me. We are in a desert place but there is snow on a mountain that I can see. I drove here in the Spring and there was more snow then. It is probably colder at the top of that mountain so the snow doesn’t melt so fast. 

My dog is looking at the cirrus clouds while I travel.

Sometimes when I go places, I have to wait. Today and yesterday I had to do some waiting.

 Mama and I took turns drawing some sort of fast shape or scribble and then the other person had to fill in something else to finish the shape or scribble. 

This is like art improv. I know what improv is because my Daddy plays improv. Improv means you make parts of stories up and if someone else makes up something you don’t ever say “no” to them. You say “yes” and then you can add on your own ideas. I like improv because it is sometimes really silly. 

I thought I saw scorpions in the water but they were actually Crawfish. Some people call them Crayfish or Crawdads. They are like small brown lobsters that live in water that isn’t salty. Crawdads eat little water animals and plants. They pick up their food with their claws. 

I found five  of them but I bet there were more in the pond. I parked in a spot where we had to pay money instead of the free parking, so after a while I had to get going and stop counting Crawdads.

I went back to this museum so I could see the beautiful dresses again. 

These clothes are called daytime clothes. They have a little bit less sparkle than the night clothes, I noticed. These clothes still took a long time to make, like around 80 hours each. 

This book was heavier than most books I pick up. I looked through many of the pages and the pictures were interesting and of all the clothes Oscar de la Renta made.

This is my very favorite dress. I stared at it for a long time. The flowers are not real. 

All of these are a little too spicy but we opened every lid and I sniffed each one. I accidentally ate one of those jalapeño peppers once because I had thought they were bell peppers. Bell peppers are not spicy. Daddy uses some of these sauces but not me.

Chopsticks are a little tricky to use. I think I would like to practice at home. This week I will use chopsticks so I am good at picking up food again. Picking up sushi is pretty easy because sushi is big. Rice and slippery noodles are hard to work with. 

This food is the type of food from a place called Thailand. It is a different country and if I go there I will have to take a plane. If you know how to find the USA on this map and then look at the red part (Thailand) you can see that these countries are far apart from one another.

I had to get a special ticket to go in this part of the museum and it was so great!

I loved seeing so many beautiful dresses. A man named Oscar de la Renta made them. They are colorful, sparkley, fancy and I was so happy looking at them. 

I also liked the way the statues were sitting or standing while they wore the dresses. I sat like one of those statues and asked mama to take my picture. 

I wore my fanciest dress to go look at these dresses. My fanciest dress is a flamingo [Flamenco] dress I asked for when I had my birthday where I turned 4. I also put on my leopard and pink arm warmers. A lot of grown ups asked my Mama if she picked out my outfit but she did not. I picked out my outfit all by myself after Mama told me what we were going to see. I would like to go back and look at these dresses again. Maybe my Gigi would like to see these dresses, I think. 

I read about this painting and I learned something new. 

This girl is wearing red shoes like I do. But her shoes are different than mine. Mine are cowboy boots and one is supposed to go on my left foot and the other one is supposed to go on my right foot. A lot of the time I put them on the opposite feet and that feels pretty good to my feet so it is okay. 

But the girl in this painting is wearing some shoes that are called straights and straights are shoes that can go on either foot without it being wrong because they are straight shaped shoes.

I feel like this is a pretty nice painting.

These are murals in my old neighborhood. That means that these art art projects on walls or buildings. I like the colors in these murals and that they are big.

This is me with my first friend. He was born 5 months before me and just a few blocks away. We took a walk together and stopped to watch which way this liquid flowed. The sidewalks have little lines that are deep and the water traveled that way. Mama told us not to step in it and we did not. We did not know exactly what the liquid was but we watched it squirt out of a spout that was sticking out of a brick building. When you walk in a city you have to watch where you are walking. We also both saw a very big poop on the sidewalk and before anyone could tell us not to get near it, we both ran and leaped over it. 

I love to climb and so does my friend. Mama said to not put my purse on the sidewalk because of germs but also because someone can snatch it up if I am not holding it.

When we finally got to the restaurant where we were going to eat dinner, it was very crowded and there were not enough tables. So the woman said “do you want to sit at two tables outside?” And we decided yes. So I sat at a table with my two friends and we ordered our food on our own and colored and talked while we waited for our food to be ready. I ordered Brussels sprouts and they had maple syrup on them! I also shared churros with my friends for dessert. Churros are sticks of cooked dough and cinnamon and sugar are all over the place. They are messy but beignets are messier!

I hope I can go see my friends again soon.

These were my favorites of the art I saw today. I liked how scary these masks looked to my eyes.  Most all of them were from Africa, a place called The Congo. 

This is Africa. Africa is a continent. The red part is where the masks are from. The masks I saw were over 100 years old and that might sound very old because 100 is a pretty big number. But I saw art and furniture today that was 400 years old and that is a lot older. People cannot live to be 400 but some do keep living to be 100.

You cannot try on these masks but I sure wish I could!

I watched a lot of people ride bicycles. 

They rode very close together and very fast. Cars usually do not even go this fast on this road. 

The road was closed and only bicycles and the police were on the road. I clapped and cheered for both the bikers and the police. This was fun to see. 

When I ride my bike, I do not ride this fast but I always wear a helmet, just like all of these people did. Their outfits were colorful. 

I love music. 

I listen to a lot of music and I like to play the drums and I take piano lessons. My Daddy plays the guitar at home all the time and I sing on a microphone my Uncle and Aunt got for me for Christmas. 

I even like to make music with my teeth. I make a beat with my teeth by chomping them together and then I hum or sing a song.

Well, my tooth started to hurt and my dentist thinks that tooth music is how I cracked my tooth. I noticed that my tooth started bothering me before the 100th day of school and that was a while ago.

I got a little patch for my tooth a little while ago and then today my dentist made the big fix up. 

I got to breathe special air to help me when she fixed my tooth all up. When I left her office, I had to bite down on tubes of cotton because my mouth had some blood but my dentist said that is normal for what happened. I could not chew food but I could drink things. It hurt for a little bit but I do feel better now and I do not make music with my teeth anymore. Ever.

At this museum for children I pretended I was a veterinarian. Some kids get veterinarian and vegetarian all mixed up but I know the difference. I do not eat animals and so that means I am a vegetarian. A veterinarian takes care of animals and doctors rhem. 

I combed, cut hair, and looked inside the ears of a hamster and two kitties. There were cages and tools for me to do this with. A veterinarian would be an interesting job. 

Mostly we make our own food on trips and bring snacks like fruit and nuts and hummus and carrots and water. Sometimes we make bean burritos or peanut butter sandwiches with apples 

But sometimes on a road trip Daddy and I pick out some treats together. This is one of the nice surprises about long trips and gas stations.  Daddy and I decided together that chocolate mints, honey flavored peanuts, salty almonds, and a cheese stick would be nice to eat. Daddy also some bubbley green soda for just him. I do not drink it because it has caffeine and caffeine is not right for my body.

I saw a huge pair of red cowboy boots just like the ones I like to wear.

I noticed this train was slowly coming toward this town and so I waited for it to pass by. It was very nice to be so close to the train and see the whole train pass by. It was very long and so I got to watch the train for a long time.

When I first saw the tallest cowboy statue in the world, I saw it during the day. I really wished I could see it at night so I could see the lights. Well, I got to see it! This time I noticed that the cowboy was blowing a cigarette. Cigarettes are bad for people’s bodies but a long time ago people did not know this, not even doctors. Now if you are a person who blows cigarettes, your doctor would tell you to stop it. My doctor is very nice and funny too. I think my doctor would say it in a nice way. 

This is a place you can go where you can see so many dinosaur bones altogether in rock. The bones are still inside the rocks. This place is called a quarry. 

I learned that a femur is the bone in the top part of a leg. I have a femur. This is a dinosaur femur and it is taller than I am. This shows that some dinosaurs were very big.

I worked on answering questions so I could be a Junior Ranger at this National Park too.Some bones are missing but they are set up so I could see what a baby stegosaurus looked like. The scientists did not find any stegosaurus back plates (the parts that stick up like fins) so they have a smart guess that maybe they grew them once they got bigger. But they do not know for sure.

I took another oath! Then I worked on a 100th year Junior Ranger program. It took me over an hour to do the work. Now I have earned three badges!

I am learning about the dinosaurs that used to live here near this area in Utah.

Adults who work to find dinosaur bones as their job use brushes to gently move dirt but not hurt he bones.

Some of the bones they show are made of plaster but the exact same size as the real ones. 

The brown ones on the ground are real, actual dinosaur bones!

Extinct means that they are not alive anymore and never will be again.

I saw a whole wall of fossils of plants and small animals.

This is a tiny and delicate dinosaur that reminds me of my dogs.
This is a wooly mammoth statue. It is not real. It is the right size though. Birds like to steal the fur and use it for their nests. So the museum has to keep putting on more fur!

When they made the wooly mammoth statue they had to drive it to the museum. Mama and I laughed so hard imagining seeing that drive down the freeway!

This last dinosaur was a new one to me. They are vegetarians, like me! 

Today I learned a lot. Daddy read almost everything to me in the Mesa Verde Visitor Center museum. I went back to certain parts twice to learn again a little more.

I saw tools that Native Americans used. 

I looked through some special binoculars because some cliff dwelling homes are falling apart with boulders falling and so people may not go inside them.

I looked inside these action scenes called dioramas. I answered the questions in my booklet.

After I finished my Junior Ranger booklet I waited in line by myself and answered some learning questions to the Ranger by myself, no help.

After the Ranger checked my answers and talked with me, I took an oath. An oath is a promise. I promised to take great care of the National Parks. 
I have a Mesa Verde National Park Junior Ranger badge now. You may not buy them in the gift shop, you have to earn it.

Now I am not just a regular kid. I am a JUNIOR RANGER! 

I took a hike and I learned a new word. That word is strenuous. Strenuous means pretty much the same as challenging or pretty difficult but you can do it. 

This hike had tall ladders to climb up, more than 30 feet tall, and little tunnels to crawl through on your hands and knees. 

This is a place where Native Americans used to live. They built their homes up high in the cliffs. 

I learned that if you were a Native American living in this cliff dwelling, your life cycle was a lot shorter than nowadays. I learned that a kiva was used for ceremonies like special occasions. Other times the Native Americans went in there to stay warm.

When the Native Americans were alive here they ate pine nuts from the piñon trees, rabbit stew, and they grew corn, squash, and beans on top of the mesas above their cliff houses. The Native Americans used sandstone rocks to grind up the corn and then that means bits of sandstone mixed in. So when the Natives ate the corn and sand, it wore out their teeth and germs got into their bodies from their teeth having openings. 

I like beans, corn and squash and some nuts, but I would definitely not eat rabbits today. Maybe I would have had to if I had been a Native American a very long time ago. 



I saw a very fast creature run very in front of my car on a fast road.

It was a fast bird called a Roadrunner. Roadrunners eat bugs but they also can eat scorpions and even tarantulas! They can run so fast that they can even eat rattlesnakes. I think they eat a lot of dangerous bugs.

I learned that they can run almost 20 miles an hour which is fast. Roadrunners lean forward when they run. 

I saw this beautiful arch from the car and so I stopped and hiked uphill to get to the arch. The shape you see here is called an arch. It happens from wind or water shaping the rock a tiny bit but for a very long time. That is called erosion. I have seen a lot of erosion!

I waited for a while after my little hike because I saw that some rock climbers were about to come down from the top of the arch. When rock climbers do that it is called rappelling. The rock climbers had friends with big cameras and so I stayed to watch until they finished.

These are the Sand Dunes. They are a hike to get to and then you can look around or slide or run or roll down them. It is a lot of work to climb up each one because this place is really high up from the ocean. My sled is for snow, not sand, but I was still able to slide. 

I have been to The Great Sand Dunes National Park before. I was here last year on a road trip but I could not stay for sand boarding because the wind was making the sand blow sharp into my skin. This time there was not really any wind.

Last year this is where I learned all about Kangaroo Rats. 

I went to the UFO watchtower but I went during the day. It’s better to go at night. I learned that UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects.  Unidentified means we do not know what it is. I think that what people look for in the tower at night is spaceships that are not from Earth. 

I do not really know if there are creatures on other planets or places but this was an interesting place to visit. 

Some people believe there are energy swirls here, two of them. If you walk through that area then you leave something of yours there. I left two of my crayons, red and orange ones with good points on them.

Mama took a picture in between the energy swirl areas and her picture looked really different than the others she took.

When we left, we saw something in the sky! It was a piece of tumbleweed. It was stuck in the electrical wires.

  
Do you believe in aliens? 

  
I keep a real tape measure in my purse.  My purse has markers and paper and a comic book in it too. No one else was eating in this area so it was okay to wander around and measure different items. You have to be careful with a tape measure because they can snap back at you if you are not careful. I was very careful and measured Daddy’s nose.

   
    
   
I went on an uphill hike and saw real dinosaur bones. The bone belonged to some dinosaurs who lived a long time ago. All dinosaurs are extinct now. The bones I saw and touched belonged to dinosaurs called stegosaurus and apatosaurus dinosaurs. 

I thought dinosaur bones would be white but these were brown and inside the rocks. I touched them all.

   
Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches have no wings at all. They live on the floor of the forest underneath leaves. 

They eat bits of fruit that other animals have dropped. Cockroaches do a good job of keeping the forest floor clean. 

I have petted one of this type before when I was 4 and in New Orleans, Louisiana, but this time I did not but pet any and that’s because they weren’t able to be petted, and not because I didn’t want to. 

I am on the other side of some glass but it looks like they are crawling all over me but they are not. 😀

I toured a tea factory. When I got there, I had to wait a little bit for the tour and during that time I drank tea samples and looked at the artwork and teapot collection.
    
 I did not like the teas very much but I kept trying them out.  I finally found out that the tea I like is called Thai Chai with milk and honey added in. That is tasty. 

This factory is where the workers make dry bags of tea to sell to stores. Everyone has to wear a hair net. If you have hair all over your face then you wear a beard net too. I counted three people with beard nets. All of them were men. Nobody wants hair in their tea. 

On the tour the guide opens this red garage door and all of the visitors get to step inside. They keep it closed because this is where they dry out the mint plant and put it into bags for peppermint teas. The mint is so strong that if they didn’t have this big door, the mint smell would get into all of their other teas and all of them would be taken over by mint!! 

Some people needed to step out of this room while we were on the tour. Mama and I stayed in! Mama liked it but I did not.  My eyes drooled and my nose started to hurt. 

This dress is made of bags of tea. It also had a pair of matching high heels and a purse too!

I saw a lot of butterflies in a special building that was warm and a little bit wet so the butterflies could feel comfortable. Sometimes the butterflies land on the ground so I was careful to look where I put my feet.

Butterflies use their tongues to drink nectar from flowers. You can look closely at the butterflies and see their long curled up tongue. That is how they get into the flowers. 

    
    
 
Mama bought a butterfly guide and I checked off all of the ones I saw. I like to do this. Daddy and I did this in Death Valley when we looked at all the wild flowers there for the Super Bloom. One problem was that I found a very beautiful butterfly and it was not in the guide.  

I have spent a lot of time in a special part of this hotel while Daddy worked.  This is a place where you can eat and relax and color or talk. I worked on some math and journaling here too.

We ate our breakfasts here, came back for help-yourself snacks and drinks, and we have dinner here too. Tonight we even stayed for dessert!! The foods I ate for breakfast were salmon and cream cheese on English Muffin. The snacks I ate were from big jars that I scooped into a tiny paper bag. The choices are goldfish crackers, almonds, peanuts, tiny chocolate candies, and banana chips. The dinner is actually something called hors d’ oeuvres (you say it like or-dervz) and it was nice cheeses, crackers, shrimp soup, vegetables with dip-dip, hummus and olives. Each night there are some different choices and it all is so yummy. 

I really like the man who is in charge here. He talks just like my friend’s grandma. He has a British accident just like her and his name is Adrian. I followed him around and told him things about me and what I did during the day. I showed him my ant candy and he asked me questions and did not think it was “eww.” That made me feel good.

He took away our plates and brought us drinks and told us what was for dinner and what was for dessert too. He was so very nice to us and I think he is very good at his job. 

Adrian picked out a stuffed Colorado bear for me as a gift to remember my trip by. Mama and Daddy told me that he said I was very well-behaved. I am well-behaved. I can go places because I know when it is ok to act all wild and when it is time to be calm. I am already taking good care of my bear and I know my bear will come alive at night. I will have a memory of this. I hope I get to visit here again. 

   
 
This is some candy with ants inside. I do not eat animals but I am brave enough to try insects sometimes.

Some people say “eww” when I tell them what I like. Sometimes that hurts my feelings a tiny bit but not everyone will like the same things. 

    
 
These are Fiddler Crabs. The males have one BIG claw and one regular sized one. They use their big claw to wave at the ladies so they might like to have babies with them. 

I watched this crab wave over and over. He already had two ladies standing next to him. 

   
 
   
 
I held a tarantula today. I liked that so much that I asked to hold her again. 

I got a sticker saying that I held Rosie but actually there are 170 Rosies!! The tarantulas should not be held for more than 2 hours every 7 days. Plus some tarantulas get to go visit schools or nursing homes. Some other ones are losing their skin and some are being badly behaved and are not visiting people at all.

Tarantulas eat insects. 

The tarantula felt so soft and it was a little bit like velvet. I know what velvet feels like because I was wearing a velvet dress today. 

When we are in buildings with elevators, I am in charge of pushing the elevator buttons. 

In a building with 3 floors it is not hard to find the right floor. When I am in a hotel or other type of building and there are lots of floors, it can be hard to find the number mixed in with all of the other numbers. 

The building I have been in has a lot of buttons for a lot of floors and it has been taking me a while to find the right one. 

I saw this man waiting for his elevator too.  He used to play basketball and everyone knows who he is. He is very tall. VERY. Taller than Mama or Daddy.

   
    
  
    
   
Today I used tools. These tools were not little ones for kids, they were real ones that adults use. I used a sharp saw, vise, nails, hammer, screwdriver, screws, and it was so fun. I wore safety goggles to protect my eyes. That’s the rule when sawing wood or working with tools at this workbench. 

I was proud of myself when my real saw finally cut the wood. I worked at sawing for quite a long time before I finished. 

I like to get down low to smell the wildflowers. Usually they smell good but this one smelled like cheese marshmallows. Not terrible, but not like a flower.
    

I explored caves that were just my size.
    
 

Wind and water can change the shape of rocks. That is what happened in this place. It takes a very long time, it is not fast at all. These rocks are very smooth and sandy. Actually, they are made of a rock called sandstone!

    
 
These rocks are called Hoodoos but everyone calls them Goblins! I think that is pretty funny. 

   
We drove into a snowstorm.

 
But then we had to stop because some big trucks spun out of control and the road was closed:

   
All the trees look like Christmas trees.

   
I caught some snow in my hands and ate it.

We are driving into these clouds that have snow coming out of them instead of rain. It’s cold outside so that is why there is snow and not rain.   
We might have to put something called chains on our tires. 

Chains are kind of like pokey necklaces you wrap around your car tires and then when you drive up hill roads the have snow on them, you don’t slide down. 

Mama packed chains for the tires just in case but it probably will not be fun to put the chains on, but it will be interesting, I think. 

  
    
 
We stopped when the sunset was happening and hiked up a hill to some real train tracks. I wanted to wait until a train came by but Mama and Daddy explained that the wait could be hours so we would not be able to do that.

On the way up the hill I found some rocks and they are called igneous rocks. They look a little like glass. They come from lava. Sometimes the lava rocks have little holes in them and are not shiny at all. My favorite example of that type is called pumice. I find pumice all the time now because I recognize it very fast! Some other interesting things I found were rocks called sedimentary rocks and you can sometimes break those apart because they are pretty much just dirt. I smashed some and I also found some plates of dirt to pick up.

We parked our car next to a model of some tracks and we took a silly picture. I know that I should not ever lie down on train tracks because trains can come very quickly and bump you. These train tracks were pretend. 

This is one of my favorite places. It is called The Salt Flats. 

When I visit this place I always see interesting things. A lot of people come here to take pictures that will be in magazines or record videos for shows. Today I saw a dance video being filmed and a man dressed in a coyote costume. Also, I saw people driving their cars and trucks on the salt! That is allowed and probably is fun to do. 

Last year when I visited this place, I told Mama and Daddy that I would like to have my birthday party here. 

Today the weather was very windy and underneath the salt was watery mud. I ran very far and played chase. 

The salt is here because this spot used to be a big salty lake a long time ago. 

  
This is tallest cowboy in the world. He is 63 feet tall and glows at night. The glow tubes are called neon and this statue has over 1,000 feet of neon glowing tubes. I would have liked to see the glowing neon at night. Mama is going to show me a picture and I can compare the day and night. 

Snow is not always soft and powdery. Snow is always cold because snow is water that has frozen.

I ran on this snow and I fell down.  Falling on this snow felt like falling on sharp and cold rocks. 

This was very late at night and usually I am in bed at this time, not running in the snow!

   
   
This is a ship that is not a very old ship but it looks like an old ship because the builders built it in the olden days way. 

I think it looks like a pirate ship. This boat is from Hawaii but it is usually in Washington unless the ship is sailing to other places. 

I looked inside the rooms where people can sleep and inside the kitchen. A kitchen on a ship is called a galley. 

I wore new boots today. 

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.

 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.