Best Vacation Ever

by MJB
We bought a Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck and a 5th wheel camper for our vacation around the country. My Grandparents bought a class B RV for the trip. My family and my grandparents and my brother’s best friend started packing and last minute planning.
The first stop was at Letchworth state park in New York. That was disappointing. Then we went through the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, then to Ohio to a place called Lehman’s. They had a stove that looked old but was new on the inside and updated. There were a lot of Amish people in Ohio, and barns and horses.
Then we went to Michigan and we went to Lake Michigan. We went to the Studebaker museum in Indiana. They had President Lincoln’s carriage. We went to Illinois where we went to Chicago and we went to a museum of science and industry where we saw U505 which is a WW2 German type-ix submarine, which was captured on June 4, 1944.
In Wisconsin, we went to a place called Castle Rock. It was a cool rock area Then we went to visit my cousins in Madison. They are Graphic Design artists, and they taught me how to make linoleum prints. Then we went to Minnesota to the Mall of America. We went to the Science Museum of Minnesota which had a barge simulator. My brother kept crashing, he can’t drive.
Then we went to South Dakota. We went to the Badlands and we saw a mocking bird there. We camped at Pierre which is the capitol of South Dakota. While we were there we went to South Dakota State Historical society.
Then we drove to North Dakota, and visited Minot Air Force Base which is the home of the B52 bomber. Then we went to Montana to the town of Baker. We stayed for five days then we went back to North Dakota to the city of Minot. The friend of the family who had been traveling with us flew back to New York. But the trip did not end yet. We stayed there for three more days, then we went back to Montana. I don’t remember much about Montana other than it’s flat for miles and miles and not much to do. My grandparents had had enough of the trip around the country.
Then we went through Lolo Pass in Idaho where I had a chance to use a short wave radio to talk to Germany. After that, off to Tacoma, Washington to visit my aunt for one week. We went to a lot of places in Washington. It was fun to go to Mount St. Helens, which is still an active volcano. There were these little frogs there, and if you stepped on one you would be fined $500. Don’t forget the Banana slugs- which are these huge yellow and black slugs. They are common in Washington State.
Then we traveled down the West coast to Oregon to a place called Fort Stevens which has 10 inch disappearing rifles, which is part of the west battery. The west battery was built between 1898 and 1900 and it was named after Col. Leveret Walker, Commanding Officer of Fort Stevens in 1906 to 1907. It is a cool fort. My family, except my mom, got to ride a deuce-n-half, some people might know it as a six by six truck.
Then we went to a lighthouse in Yaquina Bay. Then to Astoria which was the westernmost camp of Lewis and Clark’s trip. We also went to Haystack Rock. We met my uncle and aunt in Oakland California. We went all over that area of California and we got to use electric cars in San Francisco. We liked the electric cars but the batteries died way too fast. My aunt and uncle took my family to Alcatraz and we went to a cool restaurant, Chevy’s, it served Mexican food.
After my aunt and uncle left, we went back to San Francisco. We got to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. This time, we didn’t rent the electric car we used our Ram 2500 to go down Lombard Street. Then we went to Northern California and we went to the Redwoods forest and Sequoia, they are different types of big trees. Many are over 250 feet tall and some are big enough to drive a small car through.
We got to go to Yosemite National Park which is 1,189 square miles of the Sierra Nevada Mountains” according to the postcard. In Yosemite, we saw a coyote walking through Yosemite Village just a stone’s throw away from my family. They told everybody not to leave food in their cars because the bears would peel your car like a banana to get to the food. They aren’t that scared of humans because they have been around them so much. On Tioga Road, we saw a family with a baby. They sat her on a rock and let go…if she had fallen she’d have fallen a very long way.
That was the first half of the best vacation I ever had. It was a lot of fun, but the second half was more exciting. This paper ends with “to be continued.”