At Smith Rock in Oregon I climbed with my family. It was very hot, but at the end of the day when we went down to the river, it was too cold to get in. On one climb I found a frog. The rock was formed by volcanoes nearby. I have a couple of specimens I collected.
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| This was a really cool climb at Smith Rock. |
Then we went to City of Rocks in Idaho. It wasn’t as fun because there were fire ants that bit me and my sister, then it rained. But the cool thing was there were lots and lots of caves. There was one that was really stinky. It was also fun because it was nice and cool.
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| Climbing at City of Rocks |
In Jackson, Wyoming we saw a very funny chuckwagon show. We had ribs for dinner. The show was about cowboys singing in the old west. After Jackson, we went to Yellowstone.
Yellowstone was very fun because we got to see lots and lots of bison, elk and geysers. The first day we saw some fumaroles. Fumaroles are when pools of water go down to the center of the earth and are heated to 165 degrees. They changed all different colors. Geysers were even better because geysers are when water boils then shoots out of a volcano-looking thing. All of it smells like sulfur. The geysers we saw were Old Faithful, Daisy and Riverside. At the Riverside geyser we found a bison skeleton. The bison were so big. The elk were really tall. At the campground in Yellowstone, me and Anna met these two girls and we made a fort out of the snow that was still there.
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| Yellowstone fumaroles |
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| A mini volcano in Yellowstone |
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| Our snow fort at the campground |
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| Daisy, the geyser |
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| A mud volcano |
I kept asking my parents to go to Montana because there is something called the Dinosaur Trail there. So we went to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. We saw the largest collection of real dinosaur fossils in the United States. They also had a planetarium and an Indian exhibit.
After Bozeman we went to Cody, WY. We went horseback riding and we also went to a rodeo. I like the horseback riding because the animals were so big and they went exactly where you wanted them to go. They’re really easy to drive too. At the rodeo, we saw all sorts of different bronco and bull riding. The cowboys kept on getting thrown off. There was this one funny clown that kept throwing a plastic bat at the bull. He never hit him.
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| This was my horse, Tornado. |
The next day we went to a gun museum at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. They had a WWII section, a pistol section, WWI section and all different kind of war sections. They also had hunting guns. Then we drove to Thermopolis where there was the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. They had an awesome museum and we got to see a dig site. I bought a fake Allosaurus tooth that I thought was real. But it wasn’t because in itty bitty writing it said it was a replica of a tooth that was found out the dig site. So it was a rip off!
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| The dig site in Thermopolis |
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| A fossilized Allosaurus scratch in the dirt |
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| Fossilized Allosaurus footprint |
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| I loved this museum. |
Now we’re headed to South Dakota.
