On a day that we had planned to hike at Needles, Canyonlands we woke up to howling winds. Since we had no internet connection, we listened to NPR for the weather forecast. When we heard that a cold front was coming with “extreme arctic temps”, we decided to drive south as fast as we could. After many hours of driving, we stopped for lunch at Four Corners, the only place in the country where four states come together in one spot. In the monument, we had fun running around Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. I bought a slide whistle and before  we left, we bought a piece of delicious fry bread. Then, we continued our driving frenzy.

During our time in Moab, we spent six days at Arches National Park. We stayed in three different campsites. The first had an awesome long ridge that I explored. In the second, way back there was a canyon with cliffs on the other side. Pa and I climbed way up the rocks on the other side, and explored the wash at the bottom. The third had super cool fins.

One of the first hikes we did was to broken and tapestry arches. It was very fun. We got inside both. In tapestry arch, I crawled up a narrow crack to the top of the arch. We also hiked to sand dune arch. We didn’t get very far inside because people had tracked sand up on the rocks, making it slippery. The next day, we did a short hike to double arch. It was literally a double arch. Ma and I climbed into the second one, and had amazing views of the valley. Then we hiked to the north and south windows. They were cool, but not my favorite in the park.

On the last day, we went on a seven mile hike called Devil’s Garden. There was lots of rock scrambling. We saw pine tree, tunnel, landscape, and double o arches.  We also had some great views.

After that, we filled up propane, spent a night a BLM campground, and headed to Canyonlands National Park.

Soon after our arrival in Moab, we headed into town to enjoy the “Pumpkin  Chuckin’ Festival.” First, we watched some pumpkin chucking. There were slingshots, catapults, and other pumpkin throwing machines. The best one shot a pumpkin four hundred feet!It was super cool.

Then we went to watch the wiener dog race. It was very funny to see those little dogs race down a track that was probably twenty  feet long. The winner was a dog with a jockey doll on its back. Afterwards, we went to the pie eating contest. I entered! I didn’t win, but it was fun to scarf down pumpkin pie without hands.

After playing ring toss many times and spinning the prize wheel, we went back home.

This week we were camped in Aurora, near Denver. On our first day in Denver, we took the train in. We had a good picnic in the park, and started walking around downtown.  As we were walking, Ma saw a sign for a trail that she knew went back to our campground and suggested we take it back. Because it was ONLY thirteen miles, we decided to walk back to the car at the train station.  On the way, Pa and I were getting blisters from our shoes, so we took them off and walked barefoot. After a long walk, we were very happy to arrive back at the car!

The next day, we toured the Denver Mint. It was awesome. We got to see the coins being made. We learned about the new National Park quarters and we decided to start collecting them. The coin making was awesome to watch. Tons of coins were pouring out of the coin printer. Did you know that 7.8 billion coins are made each year? Cool!

Later we went to the mile high mark on the Capitol building.

The next day was for chores. Our first Trader Joes in five months led to our stock up shopping trip. Because they have the best dark chocolate, we bought many pounds of it. The cashier actually said “wow you sure like this”!The other thing we stocked up on was marinara sauce. After months of sampling and surviving the brands we didn’t like, we bought almost ten jars of delicious Joes marinara.

After a chill day, we decided to head to Great Sand Dunes national park. We had only recently heard of it from the national park quarters.

Today, we went to Riverside Zoo in Scottsbluff,, Nebraska. First we saw the bobcat, a raccoon, giant swans, and some other animals,. Then we went to the petting zoo. Little Kid and I fed  leaves to the goats and we saw a Llama.

Afterwards we saw the longhorns and a lynx. We also went inside and saw meerkats, a python, mice, and fish. When we came back outside, we went to look at the lions and tigers. At the lions, one lion lifted its tail and shot a squirt of pee in our direction.   After recovering from the shock, we looked at some birds. We saw turkey vultures, and a red tailed hawk.

Then we went to the chimpanzees. They were making farting noises. One actually waggled its tongue at us! We were watching them when suddenly one threw a hunk of dirt in my face! It had surprisingly good aim. Later a keeper explained that Jack, the chimpanzee, did this to girls to get their reaction.  I reacted by screaming and laughing!

At the end, Ma joked that going to zoo was worth it to see the chimp throw dirt at me!