Revolution!

    Yesterday, we went to the Washington DC temple for a couple hours. We drove to Gettysburg. Then we drove to Hershey, Pennsylvania and went to Chocolate World! We all got a little something and went on a small ride that showed how chocolate is made.  We drove through some Amish areas and saw their buggies.

    Today, we toured Philadelphia.  We saw the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.  We also saw where Benjamin Franklin was buried.  We learned about how the United States was first formed.  Then we drove to Reading Terminal Market.  We had Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches.  They were yummy.  We also got ice cream from the Amish market.  From there we drove to Garrison, New York.  On the way we drove past New York City.  We are staying at Clay's cousin Scott's house.  It is a really cool home.

Today's Highlight: Seeing the Liberty Bell.  It really has an amazing history and represents liberty to more than just America.

More to see in D.C.

    Yesterday, we went to church at 10. After,we drove to the Holocaust Museum. From there we walked to the Washington Monument, World War II Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, then the Lincoln Memorial.  After a couple pics at each of those, we went to Korean War Memorial, then the FDR Memorial.

    Today we went to the Arlington Cemetery in the rain and watched them change the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown. Then we went to the Iwo Jima Memorial and took some pictures. Then we drove to the National Archives and saw the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. After, we parked and walked to the Capital and had a tour. Then we ate and went home.

    Today's Highlight:  Watching the changing of the guard ceremony and the wreath laying ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown.

From first in flight to house of white.

    On Wednesday, we went to the Wright Brother's National Memorial. We spent a couple hours there. After we went to the Centennial of Flight Monument. Then we went to the beach for the rest of the day.

    Thursday we drove to the bottom of the island and took a ferry ride to Okracoke Island. On the ferry ride we saw some dolphins, that was way cool. Okracoke Island is where Blackbeard hid his treasure supposedly! We visited a white lighthouse and went to the beach. After a ferry ride back to the island we were staying on, we stopped and saw two more lighthouses. The stripes on the lighthouses tell ships about the sandbars. One of the lighthouses we saw had diagonal stripes, and the other had horizontal stripes. At one of the lighthouses we learned about sea turtles. Sea turtles are laying their eggs right now. The rangers have to find nests, rope them off, and then continue to check them daily to make sure no crabs have eaten all the eggs. Due to a rain storm, we weren't able to go to the beach any more, and we spent the rest of the night packing up and getting ready to go in the morning. 

On Friday we picked up CLAY!! There were some delays with the flights, so instead of getting in at 9:00 a.m., he got in around 12:30.The extra time we had Friday morning we spent sleeping, and at the beach in the FREEZING cold water. After we picked Clay up from the Norfolk airport we went to colonial Williamsburg. We walked through most of the town hopping from shady spot to shady spot; it was hot. We learned an old game, "close the box", watched the British soldiers march through town, wrote with a quill, tried on old clothing, and got amazing chocolate. We then left and drove to Springfield where we are staying the night. There was terrible traffic and rain so it took a while. 

Saturday (Today) we went to see Washington D.C. We started our day with a metro ride. This was a first for most of us. We spent most of the morning walking through the amazing museum of Natural History. It was incredible how much stuff was in there! The dinosaurs, ocean exhibit, and gems were a huge hit with us. After the museum we grabbed lunch and headed over to the White House. Kayden got in trouble by a police officer for not being on the sidewalk... fool.We then walked to Fords Theater. This was pretty cool. The building had been burned down, rebuilt, abandoned, torn down, made into office buildings, then in 1950's the government bought it, and rebuilt it as the theater it had been when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. We learned a lot about Lincoln and Booth. Afterwards we walked to the Spy Museum and spent pretty wisely in the gift shop, picking up a switchblade comb, and a couple sets of mini walkie-talkies. Then we proceeded to the National Archives, but it was closed. We walked through a really cool sculpture park and let our feet soak in the huge water feature. Much more to see and do here in DC!

Today's Highlight:  Seeing all the incredible animals and things at the Museum of Natural History.

Mississippi to the Atlantic

    After we left Port Allen we wen t to Oak Alley Plantation. It was really pretty.The house was gorgeous! The oak trees provided a lot of shade and made a pretty canopy.

    After the plantation, we went to New Orleans, Louisiana. We saw Jackson Square, and ate Beignets at Cafe Du Monde. They were so good! They were like miniature scones totally covered in powdered sugar. Then we put our feet in the Mississippi River, and saw a steam boat, the only one on the Mississippi called The Nachez.

     We also saw some beautiful "rainbow homes" in Charleston, South Carolina. We walked along the Atlantic Ocean.

     

    Later we went swimming on Isle of Palms in South Carolina.

    Today we drove about 7 hours to the outer banks, North Carolina to a beach house where we are staying for a couple of days. If you look up the The Wright Brother's National Memorial, and then look at the street directly south of it, that's where we are staying till Friday morning when we pick up Clay.  We went swimming tonight for around an hour. Bed Time!

    Today's Highlight: Swimming!

From Houston to Port Allen

    Today was a slow day. We slept in till around 8:30. We ate breakfast then left on our way to Louisiana from Houston, Texas. Before we were that far on our way, we stopped at the Water Wall in Houston. It was a giant wall 64 ft. tall! There was a lot of water everywhere! After we drove by a small sculpture park. Everything was metal. After that, we were finally on our way to Louisiana, at least for a couple hours. About a little more than halfway there we stopped at a giant star on the side of the rode. Of course we had to take some pics. Then, we saw a Sasquatch sculpture right out side of Louisiana. we took some pics. Than we were in Louisiana! It was swamp everywhere! Now we are staying in a town called Port Allen, west of Baton Rouge and the Mississippi River.

Water Wall

Sculpture Museum 

    Today's Highlight: going to the Water Wall with my fam.

Brave Bahn

  We spent our second day at Schlitterbahn today.  It was so much fun.  We were able to enter early because we stayed at the resort.  So we started at the most popular ride, the Master Blaster.  This was way fun, like a roller coaster but on a water slide.  I was pretty nervous, but actually was really glad I did it. Then we went to the top of the Blastenhoff again and rode the Wolf Pack.  This is like a family tube ride, and it was pretty fun.  After that we jumped in and rode the Torrent, a tidal wave river, around and around.  This ended up being our favorite things to do at the park and we loved catching the waves and sliding or skiing our feet across the bottom as the water pushed us along.  We also rode The Falls, which is the world's longest waterpark ride. This was a fun river tube ride.  When we got down to Surfenburg, we jumped out of The Falls, and tried our luck on Boogie Bahn.  It was so cool because all of us tried it.  None of us were very successful though.  Backsplash was a super fun body slide in to their Kristal River.  This River was super fun with the large floating alligators.  We also rode the Dragon's Revenge which was a like the Master Blaster and a river slide combined.  Way fun!!  We also rode the tram back to the original Schlitterbahn and did a couple more rides that we didn't do yesterday.  Whitewater was
 fun, and one of our favorites.  And we also loved racing on the Downhill Racer.

That's Kayden and I in the bottom left corner.

After we left the park, we drove to Houston.  We are spending the night here, and then onto Louisianna tomorrow.

Today's highlight: Today I tried a bunch of rides that at first I was scared to do.  They were all fun and I'm glad I did.

    Today was a good day. Our car was fixed in the morning and we headed out. We had an hour long drive to San Antonio where we went to the Alamo. After the Alamo we went on a river walk. It was a very hot day. After that we went to a town out of San Antonio where the water park Schlitterbahn is. We had a fun afternoon there. We went to the older part of Schlitterbahn but there is a newer part that we are going to tomorrow.

ALAMO

RIVER WALK

Today's Highlight: everything was fun. :)

    Today we went to Carlsbad Caverns. It was so much fun! We were there for about two hours. The cave was huge! We didn't even go through it all! There were so many stalagmites and stalactites. There were things called cave pearls forming down where we were. We were 750 feet under ground!

    From there we drove to a town in Texas an hour from San Antonio called Kerrville.  We stopped for gas, but when we went to start the car up again, something was wrong.  So we are spending the night in Kerrville and hoping the car will be repaired tomorrow.  The car got towed to a technician.

Today's Highlight: Seeing the giant formations of stalactites and stalagmites. So much fun!

Today was our first day! It took seven hours to get to Four Corners, from there it took another seven hours to get to our hotel in Roswell, New Mexico, the alien town. We woke up at around  4:05 and left around 4:10 A.M. Four Corners wasn't actually that big of a deal, we were there for about five whole minutes. I slept for at least half of the time. There wasn't much to see on the road.

Today's highlight was standing in four states at once.

Yeah... we have leg room.

Today we finally got the cross bars and mom and I were able to put the luggage carrier on the car. She can't park her car in the garage though.

Almost there! Did last minute shopping this week. Mom is making us all pack light.  She says we can only bring four outfits, our swimsuits, jamas, church cothes, a towel, and unders.  

Aunt Carolyn sent mom a link to a website where we can download audio books to our devices.  http://pioneerutah.lib.overdrive.com/ 

Eva and Jenna have put a few on their tablet, and mom put some on her ipad.  Hopefully, we will have plenty  to listen to.  

Pre trip planning

Countdown to trip.... six days! Still no luggage carrier. Only reservations for four nights, the first four.  Ready for Adventure!! Yeah!