Day 12 – Wednesday

When we woke up we saw what the City of Rocks looked like. It looked like a city made of volcanic rocks. The rocks were skinny tall pillars that looked like buildings and the spaces between them looked like narrow roads. These rocks were white, silver and gray and they had holes from the size of a spec to the size of a baseball all over them. Joshua Tree’s rocks were different in that they were orange and they did not have holes in them. My whole family went and played on the rocks. We were climbing around and pretending they were our houses. My brother Steen found one he called his Robot spaceship.

A little bit after that we went to the visitor’s center and looked at and touched a hands on display of stuff that you can find in City of Rocks. One of them was two coyote gourds, some snake skin, and barrel cactus spines. My mom tricked us into touching petrified animal scat. I like to touch hands on displays. Then we watched a ten minute movie about the area. It said that a volcano erupted 35 million years ago and formed these volcanic rocks. The eruption was 1,000 times bigger than the one at Mount Saint Helen’s and it lasted from months to years. There are only six other places in the world with rocks like these. I wish I could go back to City of Rocks.

We then drove a couple of hours to White Sands, New Mexico. We started off at the visitor’s center where looked at some rocks, bought some books, and watched a seventeen minute movie about White Sands. White Sands looks like Tatoine from Star Wars except the sand is all white. It looks like it just snowed a lot. Everything is white except for a few plants on the edges. Most of the animals are white to camouflage themselves. It is miles and miles of white sand dunes. It didn’t look like the desert since it was all snow colored. It looked like huge piles of snow.

My family went and played all over the dunes. Another family gave us a sledding saucer to use on the dunes. We rode down the hills with the saucer until we had to go. You could slide standing up or sitting down. White Sands was my favorite place other than Disneyland. If you come to southern New Mexico you should come to White Sands National Monument.

Day 11 – Tuesday

On Tuesday we woke up and had breakfast in the hotel. I had fruit loops, which I usually have at hotel breakfasts. Then we went to the PIMA Air & Space Museum and we saw lots of airplanes. There were a couple thousand of them and I liked the fighter planes best. At the gift store I bought a toy airplane and astronaut ice cream sandwiches like the ones taken into space. I liked them a lot but they didn’t taste like normal ice cream sandwiches.

Then we drove to New Mexico and we finished listening to Fudge-o-Mania in the car. We tried to go a place called Rock Hound State Park but it was full, so we had to stay at a different camp spot called City of Rocks. We got there pretty late and we just went to bed.

Day 10-Monday

On Monday I woke up at 6:00 to play a computer game called Runescape with my friend Noah and then we had breakfast which was French toast. Then we went out and played on his trampoline. He has an amazing trampoline that has a net so that you can’t fall off. After that we played a game where Noah’s little brother chased me with a light saber and if he touched me I would die. At lunch we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant and I had a bean burrito and lots of chips.

Then we drove down to Tucson where we stayed in a hotel after the campsite we went to was full.

Day 9 – Sunday

On the ninth day it was Easter Sunday and my family got up and had an Easter egg hunt and there were only three eggs to find and everyone only got one egg. When we went in my great grandma’s house we found our Easter baskets and Chloe, Steen, and I almost got the same stuff got the same stuff. We all got two eggs and Chloe got Black Beauty Steen got a bucket with toys to play in sand and I got two card games. We also got a big egg with stuff in it.

Then we ate cinnamon rolls and got ready to go to church. A little bit later we got in my great Grandma’s car and we went to church and there were only ancient people. We stayed for an hour and we left and we drove to Phoenix to visit our friend’s house. It was Noah my best friend from California. We were going to meet them camping except they couldn’t come. Instead we went over to their house. All of the house in Phoenix were light gray and looked almost exactly the same. I liked the city and I liked seeing my friend again.

Day 8

On the eighth day we woke up to a windy morning. We ate delicious pancakes for breakfast. After that Steen and Chloe were pretending to ride horses all around the desert rocks. The horses names were Yellowy and Blacky, the names came from Junie B. Jones I think. My crazy siblings went hiking with my mom and they kept pretending to tie up their horses and then in the middle of rock climbing they would have to go back and get them so they could ride them again. While Chloe, Steen and my mom were hiking I and my dad went on a simple bike ride around the valleys of Joshua Tree. The wind was chilly and the landscape was bumpy, grey and sandy. After I got back my dad and I played catch with our baseball. When the pretend horse riders got back we had lunch. We ate sandwiches and chips. Then I met a new boy from California. We tried to catch a couple of rainbow colored lizards but they were too fast for us. There are lots of lizards in the desert. We were rock climbing when my sister found us and chased us all around the big rocks. We jumped, ran and climbed away from her. For an hour we played this chasing game and Chloe never caught us. Then we went to my friend’s campsite and dug shallow holes with a camp shovel and buried toys. I don’t know why we did that. Then my family packed up and left Joshua Tree to go to Quartsite Arizona. We went there to visit my great grandmother. She is 79 years old. She lives in Arizona in the winter and Idaho in the summer. She is my dad’s ancient grandma.

Day 7 – Friday

On the seventh day my family got up and played a game called Skip Bo and it was really entertaining. We played it six times and I won two times and my sister won two times and my dad won zero times and my mom won two times. After that Chloe, Steen, and I went on a hike for two hours and we came back and had macaroni and cheese for lunch.

Then we drove down to the cottonwood visitor center and we bought some books on the Joshua Tree and we drove for a little bit and we stopped to look at some plants. One plant was called ocotillo and all along the trunks were razor sharp spikes and tiny dark green leaves. The other plant was called Cholla and another name for it is teddy bear cactus.

It grows to be chest high and the bottom of it is black and the top of it is green and it has lots of little white spikes. Then we got back to our car and we drove to our camp spot and made stew and we ate it and we went to sleep after listening to a chapter or two of "The Thief Lord".

Joshua Tree

On the sixth day my family had to drive to Joshua Tree. Joshua Tree is a National park where lots of rock climbers come because there are lots of big and small rocks for people to climb on. I went there when I was little boy a lot. I would meet my cousin Theo there and we would climb rocks and have a fun time. It is the best place to rock climb I’ve ever been to. It looks like a very rocky place. There are lots of weird flowers one type looks like a mace. It is an unusual place because there are Joshua trees and other deserts don’t have these trees. A Joshua tree has some spikes on it and they don’t have lots of branches and the leaves are spiky.

Disneyland Day

On the fifth day we woke up and got food and then we went to Disneyland. First we did this boring train ride. Then we walked a little bit and we got to the Peter Pan ride and we had to wait for ten minutes before we got on the ride, and it was sort of boring. Then we went to the Matterhorn and there were about 700 people in line but we only had to wait 45 minutes and then we did the ride and it was fun. It was a very fun ride. After that ride we did this ride where you had to go in this plastic car and you had to control it by your self if you were 8 or older so I controlled the car. It made my hands and my back hurt a lot. When we were done with that ride me and my mom went on Thunder Mountain twice and it was really fun. When we were done it rained a lot and we had to walk to our van because the trolley did not come to pick us up. Then we went to our van and got dry clothes on and we found a hotel and we went to sleep. It was a really fun day. I wish I could go back soon.

Day 4

On the fourth day my family drove for another six hours and we listened to The Thief Lord and it was very interesting. Then we watched The Princess and the Pauper which Chloe picked and I did not want to watch it but I had to. We went to visit my dad’s uncle. When we got to the hotel it was late and we went to sleep.

Day 3

On the third day we didn’t have to drive. We had a relaxing day and we didn’t have to do anything. In the morning we went to our old church and I saw some old friends. We hung out the rest of the day. I was sad because some of my friends moved away from San Jose and I couldn’t see them.

Day 2

On the second day we drove to our friends house in San Jose and I wrestled with Jacob who is one of the kids who lives in the house. After that I went on the top of the bunk bed in Jacobs room and I threw stuffed animals at Jacob, Marie his sister, and my sister Chloe. After that we went to Fresh Choice and had dinner and went over to Olivia’s house and played with lots of friends for one hour and we went back to Jacobs’s house and we went to bed.

First Day

On the first day my family went to Tree of Heaven. It took us nine hours just to get to Tree of Heaven. My dad brought his laptop so we can watch movies when we are driving to places. We watched The Incredibles and we still had four hours left. We listened to a Ramona book because my sister picked the book. After that my sister lost her tooth. In the night she got two dollars from the tooth fairy.

Going Live March 18th