The Deschutes River

About a week ago we left our RV park in Bend, Oregon. We went on this insane rafting trip where the rapids about threw us out of the boat. We had two really nice guides who showed us around. My favorite part was being Papa Smurf. All that blue stuff is splash gear so that we didn't get soaking wet going through the rapids. My favorite rapids was called Box Car. The waves were so huge I thought that I was going to die. Anyways, I had a lot of fun on that trip.

Fun things to do while in Boise, Idaho

We left our RV park in Boise, Idaho a few days ago having a cool perspective of it. It's a really fun city that my dad now loves. We spent the 3 days we had there with some of our friends. They took us to some really cool places like Jump Time, a place where you could jump around on there many trampolines and do tricks. We also went on a bike ride where there was this bmx park that we played around in for a little bit. We also went to a climbing gym that had a really hard over-hang that took me like, 5 tries to finish.

Also we watched Monsters VS. Aliens and Despicable Me in 3-D. Probably the coolest city we have been too with a bunch of places to visit.

Skiing in May!!

While we were in Salt Lake City, Utah, we found out that there was a ski area open. They had gotten 711 inches that year and still had about 180 inches left. So we decided to rent skis and go skiing, IN THE MIDDLE OF MAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was really fun. I'll have a video of it on here soon but I do have pictures.

Click on this word to see the video. HAHA

Arches

The last place that we went to was Arches National Park, a place where over a long period of time and through a very perfect process, arches where formed. Huge, freestanding, sandstone arches. They also had some other cool formations like Balanced Rock. A huge multi ton rock balanced on a precarious pillar of sandstone (no picture). Another one was the petroglyphs. Very old carvings in the rocks made by Indians long ago.

Also ham rock, a rock that looks very much like a ham.

The arch that they are most famous for is called Delicate Arch. To me it doesn't seem very delicate but it sure doesn't seem super strong.

There is an arch though, that I believe will fall over any day now. It's name is Landscape Arch, and it looks like if you threw a rock at it, it would collapse.

It was a really cool park that had so many places to visit. Also while we were there we went took a Hummer Tour on a road called Hell's Revenge. A series of extremely steep hills, short drop offs, and a road that I can't believe someone thought of.

That's the short drop off (top) and that black line in the picture below is the trail.

That place was definitely a highlight and I will return there some day.

Bryce and Zion.

The most recent places that we have visited are Bryce and Zion National Parks. Both places where amazing. At Zion we went on a hike up to a place called Angel's Landing. It is this extremely narrow ridge with thousand foot drops on either side. One wrong step and it would end your life. That high

point in the middle of the picture (left) is Angel's Landing and the ridge leading up to it is the path that you take. Not exactly the least scary hike there, people have died on that trail.
The other park we went to, Bryce, had very interesting rock spires called hoodoos. They formed when a fin like rock formation coming out of the canyon wall started to get vertical cracks and over time freezing and thawing would erode away parts of the rocks leaving behind the hoodoos. A very peaceful place that is amazing.

Las Vegas

A big city with too many lights and casino's. End of story. I found out that there were a lot of old people going broke and screwing up there retirement, making sure that they work at Mc' Donald's for the rest of their lives. We did go to the Hoover Dam there and that was pretty cool. Learned a lot at that place.

Death Valley.

Sorry about the delay between posting but there hasn't been anything good to post about except Death Valley. The whole park is huge, a vast area of over 5,700 square miles, and it was fairly hot. The coolest thing we did there was probably going to the salt flats. A long time ago Death Valley was under water. When the ocean dried up it left a whole lot of salt behind creating the salt flats. Down there was the lowest point in America, Badwater. 282 feet below sea level. We also went on two bike rides, one being extremely easy and fun and one being very hard and fun. On the first bike ride we drove to the top of a very large mountain gaining 5,000 feet of elevation in the process. Then we rode down traveling about thirty miles an hour on average. The second was a 12 mile loop where the first hill we went on gained 1,000 feet of elevation, I liked this one better. Besides the bike rides, Death Valley is one of the coolest places we have been to. Some of the rocks were literally purple and blue.

After Death Valley we drove to Las Vegas. We're still there too.