Zion was very beautiful! On the drive into the canyon, we drove through a tunnel. In that tunnel, there were viewpoints where a hole had been blasted through the side of the tunnel so that cars could get views of the canyon. It was pretty awesome! We got our campsite, and we met a couple from Maine! My mom kept thinking that she recognized the man, and when she talked to him, it turns out that he worked at Maine Medical Center where she works! Is that weird or what? After she talked with them, we decided to go to the visitor center and take the shuttle up the canyon. We went to weeping rock, and we learned that the water coming out of the rock was up to 4,000 years old! That night we went to a ranger program at the other campground that was about light pollution. The next morning we went to a nature walk up the canyon with a ranger. We learned all sorts of things about the environment in Zion canyon. After that we packed up our campsite and headed out on the road again. We were going towards the Grand Canyon, and we decided to make a stop at the Glen Canyon Dam. It was a short stop, and all we did really is fill out the junior ranger book. It was really easy and all we wanted was the badges. We took a look at the dam (it was huge!) and kept on driving. We were really sick of sleeping in the camper and not being able to take showers, so my parents promised us they'd get us a hotel room... with a pool!(very important!) All we could find anywhere near the Grand Canyon, was a smoking room, and it didn't have a pool anyway, so we decided we'd go to Flagstaff, an hour south. By the time we decided on Flagstaff, the car was falling apart! Well, kind of. The trailer lights weren't working, and we lost a lug nut. In the morning, we couldn't find a repair place that had the right lug nut, or was able to fix the trailer lights, so we had to go to Phoenix, the nearest place that would work on our car, since it's such a rare vehicle. We were going to my uncle's house in Scottsdale later that day anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal, only that later on we weren't able to go to the Grand Canyon! We had a great time with my uncle and cousins. We got to see him do his irrigation that night. Since they live in the desert of Arizona, they're limited on the water that they are allowed. Every two weeks, in the middle of the night, they flood their lawn. There are canals that bring the water from the mountains, and those canals have been there since the Indians built them. The next day, we went to the Phoenix zoo. We saw all sorts of native Arizona plants and animals. When we got home, we had to decide where we were going to go the next day. Since we had to miss the Grand Canyon on the way to my uncle's, we thought we should put it back in the schedule, but then we'd have to cut something else out. Since nobody wanted to do that, we decided to skip the Grand Canyon, and believe me, that was not an easy decision! So the next day, we headed out to Southern California where the Reagan museum is, which was our original destination after my uncle Joel's. There were THOUSANDS of wind mills in southern California! On the way there, we decided that it might be a good idea to stay in a hotel room that night, so that we could leave early the next morning, and not have to pack up the pop-up camper. My dad assigned me and Wes to the task of looking up a cheap hotel room near Simi Valley on the internet. I found the best one on Hotwire, so we booked it (it was funny that we booked it only a couple hours before we actually got there!). The Reagan museum was in Simi Valley, and the hotel room was in Thousand Oaks. It was close to the ocean, so we drove to Malibu and dipped our feet in the Pacific! We had made it from coast to coast! The next day we went to the Reagan museum. I was writing a paper on him, so it really helped me out. At the end of the museum, we saw Reagan's Air Force One and we got to go in it. It was cool, but I didn't think it was really all that special. Then we drove up towards Sequoia National Park. My mom was dying to go to a Hot Spring, and it turned out that California Hot Springs (we randomly found it on the map) was near the park. So we decided to go there, and it come to find out they were renovating the place, and they weren't open, so we went straight from there to the park and got a campsite. The next day, we went to the General Sherman Tree (the biggest tree in the world), saw tons of Giant Sequoias, and drove through the tunnel log. It was a Sequoia that fell over, and it was so big that they carved it out and you can drive through it (the side, not down the middle). The next day we drove to Yosemite, and we were extremely lucky to get a camping spot! It was so crowded, and the place was really unorganized, yet amazingly beautiful! Waterfalls everywhere, and the most beautiful canyon anyone has ever seen! The following day we drove up to Glacier point, where we could see a view of the whole canyon, and we then went to Bridalveil Falls and stood under the mist. It was amazingly awesomely super-dooper cool! We were kind of in a hurry to get to San Francisco so we left after that. We stayed at my mom's best friend Susan from high school for five days, at her house in Marin County. On the first day, we went and visited my Uncle Frank, who is a scholar at UC Berkeley. He gave us a nice update on his research in the Galapagos, and took us out to lunch. It was a nice visit, but I felt like it was a little too short. After visiting him, we went and visited my dad's friend from college, who also lives in Berkeley. The next day, we decided to stay at Susan's house and work on homework, since we were a little behind. That evening, we went and had dinner with my dad's friend from Exeter. Since we hadn't yet, we drove home through the city. We drove over the Bay bridge, and it was all lit up and beautiful, and then went over the Golden Gate!
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