Journal Entries

I got about 3 hours of sleep last night, but I actually feel quite good. I'm a bit tired, but not bad. I have kind of turned this blog into an online journal, maybe because just about everything in my life is crazy right now, so it doesn't matter what I write about! My arms are achy. I need to go find my big study bible so I can get back into doing my bible study. I also need to get working on my prayer journal, especially since that's my summer homework for sunday school. I need to make sure I get a wheel for my degu cage at work today. I should probably order some superworms too. Ooooooh! I have a good idea for this blog! I'll post my journal entries from vacation! That should make for some interesting reading. I was having too much fun writing it, so my grammar was really bad.

9/1/06

9:06 AM
We’ve driving on Pingree, right near Rakow. We’re running really late, like 2 hours late, ha! Mom’s still attempting to get to the Trek Bike tour, but it ain’t happening. My guess is that we’ll just go right to the Wilkosz house. Jill and Josie don’t feel very well, and my nose is kind of running because of the xlear that I used. I’m running on the cars power right now through a DC to AC adapter. Dad and I bought it together because he wants to use it for Mom’s hotplate, and I want to use it for my laptop.

7:10 PM
We did end up getting a tour at Trek. Weird. It was very interesting. They showed a bunch of the stages of making the bike frame. I liked the part where they showed all the paint jobs that had been done on the frames. They had a very cool bright pink one. We had a lot of fun at the Wilkosz house. A lot of laughs too! They have a dog that is about the size of a Jack Russell Terrier, and all the little kids were scared of it. It was so funny, because the dog is so small, and the little kids are standing up on they’re chairs so that it can’t get at them! Oh man! I remember Stephanie and Sarah being a lot taller, but Josh, Emily, and David have all grown. We shot off a few roman candles and some bottle rockets at their house. That was awesome! I held the roman candle in my hand and shot the fireballs up in the air. I also shot one right across their driveway towards the street. Alright, we’re supposed to be passing through some really “pretty” sights right now, so I’m going to look at the sights and type at the same time. Whoa, that was cool! A very, uh, pretty cliff. WE’RE IN MINNESOTA! WHAAAAAAAAAAA! O.K. I’m listening to Third Day right now. Awesome band. Minnesota has some cool cliffs. And like, trees grow on the rocks. Whoa, cool, a veteran’s home. And a cemetery where they bury the dead veterans. Some of the plants are starting to turn bright colors. There’s a house on the side of a hill. Cool. They have some funky guardrails here! They’re like three bands of really thick wire. I really like cliffs. Ooohhh, smoke! Somebody’s burning something. Alright, we’re nice and far from the bright lights of the city. Alright, I switched to Grits, Back it up, Back it up, Oh Yeah, Back it Up, Back it up, Oh Yeah! Sorry. I haven’t had a piece of candy for like 40 minutes. (Pats on the back.) The moon is rising, the sun is setting. AHHH! AHHH! NOOOOO! F.O.N.C.R.N. Syndrome is setting in! (Fit of needing candy right now.) I’m keeping myself from being bored. It’s a lotta fun. Ha! I just saw fire in a barrel. Cool. I need water. I need water NOW! WHAAAA! Very cool wispy clouds! They look awesome the way the sun is hitting them right now. Wow! I think I’m going to watch a DVD after this Grits song. I keep putting stick keys on. Ha! It’s so much fun! Yeah! Whaaaa! Too much sugar! I’m gonna freak out. My fingers are going way too fast for my brain to bring up words to put on the page oh this is getting really weird. O.K. it’s over. Whew. It’s getting DARK! Perfect DVD time. Corn fields, corn fields, corn fields, lovely corn fields. Aww, Hillsong! I ain’t in the mood for Hillsong. Switch to KJ-52. I keep listening to that song, “Revenge of The Nerds.” Cool song. WEIRD song! Mike said that he wants to wait awhile to watch a DVD. Whoaa! How long is awhile? Who cares, I’ll just make up my own car breakdancing! Whaaaaa!

9/3/06
11:59 A.M.
I missed a day of writing because I had a bad cold, and didn’t feel like writing. We’re about 15 minutes from Mt. Rushmore, and there are mountains all around us. The scenery is amazing! The valleys are really fun to look at. Yesterday we went to two of the homes of Laura Ingalls Wilder. That was interesting. That’s basically the only thing we did yesterday. We took a tour around a bunch of the city. We saw the store where they used to shop at, the graves of some of the family members, the schoolhouse where Laura taught at, and a whole lot more. Alright, signing off.

4:17 P.M.WHAAA! I’m in my crazy mood! We saw Mt. Rushmore, and walked on the trail that’s there. Fun, but FREEZING COLD! I was wearing flip-flops and short sleeves. (Dufas). After we went to Mt. Rushmore, we went to the city that’s like 1 mile from there. It’s called Keystone. We had Dairy Queen, and then the fun began! We took the money from our potential pool pass, and went to a really cool alpine slide! This thing starts at the top of a mountain, and then curves all the way down. You get to the top through a chairlift, which was awesome! Then you get on this little flat thing with wheels and a control stick. Then, WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! You go flying down the mountain on a little track! There were tons of curves and dips. There was this one spot where it said to slow down for a dip, but I sped up really fast instead, and the whole front of my cart lifted up! It was so much fun! I have no idea where in the world we’re going right now. We’re back in Rapid City, which is where we stayed last night. G2G!

9/5/06
1:11 P.M.
Wow, it’s nice and hot up here! I didn’t write yesterday caus

8:45 P.M.
e I didn’t get that much time to write. Today we went to a city called Cour d’ Alene. It’s a resort town with ton’s of great recreational spots. We went on a fantastic hike up a mountain. It was awesome! I took like 120 pictures with Mike’s digital camera. The trail that we walked was nothing like Moraine Hills. It was very similar to the tracks that Mike and I ran on in Stearn’s Woods. They are only about 1 ½ feet wide. The path up the mountain was fairly rugged. After our hike we went to the city beach in Cour d’ Alene. That was a lot of fun, because we swam in a lake that was very clear. You could see right to the bottom. It was a lot of fun to swim underwater, because it was so clear and there was no chlorine. (Duh.) You could see the mountains all around the lake. We saw a seaplane take off and land, which was fun to watch. The water was a little cold, but it was tons of fun. My legs got numb, but hey. We’re in Wenatchee right now, in fact, Taco Bell is on my right. We’re on our way to our hotel. We just finished watching Father Murphy. Alright, we’ve spotted our hotel. The Red Lion Hotel. Cool. As long as they’ve got wireless, it’s good with me!

9/10/06
8:49 A.M.

I haven’t written the whole time we have been with Grandma and Grandpa. We haven’t done a whole lot, because Grandpa’s eye is messed up. He had surgery done on it, which would have been fine, but they scratched his cornia in the process. The first day we went to Taco Bell, and then sat around and watched T.V. Then we went to our hotel and swam in the pool. They have a very nice outdoor pool. It’s 5 feet on one end, and 3 feet on the other. It has hardly any chlorine at all, which is great on the eyes. The second day dad took Grandpa to the doctor at 9:45. We cleaned up our room while dad was gone, and then were preparing to go swimming, but then dad came back. So we had to change out of our swimsuits, and go to Taco Bell.

9/10/06
6:09 P.M.

Oops! Hey, rock on. We’re actually sitting at McDonalds in Leavenworth. Jill had to go the bathroom, and she made a HUGE, DRAMATIC, issue over it. Whatever. My hands are sweaty. My fingers are slippin’ all over the keys. O.K. Jills back. We basically did hardly anything at Grandma and Grandpa’s, because of Grandpa’s eye. It was still fun though. They have cable TV, so we got to watch Columbo, Little House on the Prairie, Bonanza, and Matlock. That was a lotta fun. We also got to see this show that I’ve never seen before called “Walker Texas Ranger.” And “Trick My Truck.” I really liked Texas Ranger. Grandpa calls it “Kickin’ Punchin.’” Trick My Truck was pretty good too. They gave semi-trucks a complete makeover. They did a great job. On the first day we went to the pool in the afternoon. Grandpa and Grandma didn’t feel like going with us that day. The second day was pretty much the same thing. We just went to the pool a little later in the day. The third day we went to Taco Bell, just like every other day, but we went to the Columbia River in the afternoon. I didn’t really like swimming there this time, because there was too much seaweed when you got out around 4 feet deep. But I did swim all the way out to 6 foot or whatever the end of the floaters was. Kind of a personal challenge. I was freaked out by the seaweed. We’re driving through the mountains between Wenatchee and Seattle. They seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I’m listening to Billy Ray Cyrus right now. Well, at least I was. Achy Breaky Heart. Yep. We saw snow on one of the mountains a couple minutes ago. There are more trees on these mountains than the mountains in Wenatchee. The forests are very thick around us. There’s a train track on the left. I like driving through the mountains. It’s a lot of fun, because there’s so much to see and imagine about when you look at the mountains. On the fourth day all we did was go to Taco Bell. Then we sat around and talked and watched TV. I wouldn’t mind having cable in my dorm at college. I like watching all the old shows. One of the days, I think it was the third, we walked up to Shop Ko & Target, which are in the same area as Taco Bell. We is Dad, Mike, me, Drew, Brent, Josie, & Brandon. I think. Today, the fifth day we went to church at the same church that we went to last time. The one that used to be Grandpa and Grandma’s. Apparently they & 30 other people don’t go there anymore because they don’t like the pastor’s teaching anymore. Mom and Dad asked Grandpa about, and he just said that he keeps doing the same thing over and over again. They say that there’s no preaching. Their pastor just talks about a passage, and makes them memorize it. I couldn’t quite get a hold of what he was saying. To sum up, they don’t go to that church anymore. Unfortunately, they don’t go to any church anymore. I had a nice talk with one of the ladies in the “Cry Room” at church, because I had to take Eleesa out. God is really taking away my fear of people, ha! After church we loafed around at the house and took some pictures of us and Grandma and Grandpa.

10:13 P.M.

Yesterday Grandpa, Mike, and me discussed ideas for a bike trailer for our lawnmowers. We drew up some plans and brainstormed. It was fun. We went to Smallwood’s on our way out. I tasted some pickled olives. It was kind of nasty at first, but now I wouldn’t mind having some more! We also went to Leavenworth, but the store that

9/11/06
11:27 A.M.

I got the Snap & Pops from was closed. We are in Seattle right now. We stayed at the same Holiday Inn Express that we stayed at last time. We’re sitting at Arby’s right now. There are so many people with wireless right here. I think it’s because there is an apartment complex right on my left. We are going to the army surplus store next. I want to get a whole bunch of stuff. A hat, belt, shorts, knife, etc. I can’t see the mountains at all anymore. I don’t think that there are any mountains near here. I had a yogurt, two bowls of frosted flakes, a bowl of oatmeal, and two glasses of orange juice for breakfast. Yum! I can’t think of anything to write about. I need to remove one of the spyware programs I downloaded, because it wanted to charge me for removing all my problems. I guess you had to upgrade to the full version. Forget that. I have Spybot instead. Last night we kept driving around one of the city’s near Seattle

9/12/06
5:37 P.M.

We’re driving along the coast in Oregon right now. There are mountains all around us. It’s incredibly beautiful. This is one of my favorite places in the United States. Someday I’ll come back here and go hiking & herping all over. There is moss everywhere! It’s like a rainforest. I think it’s actually considered the northwest rainforest. There’s a lot of dairy farms around here. We went to Pike Place Market yesterday. The food they have there is incredible! We had fresh mini donuts, and hot dogs. Mom & Dad had crepes from Crepe de France. Those are fantastic! Pike Place isn’t one of those places that I’d like to spend hours at, (which we did), but it’s fun to go eat and walk around for awhile. We had a hard time finding the army surplus store, but we did find it! I bought a hat & a belt. My hat is woodland camo, and I’m wearing it right now! I really like it. I also bought a woodland camo belt. Mike got a urban camo belt, a desert camo hat, and a black vest with all kinds of pockets. I really like the vest, but I didn’t feel like paying $30. We just left Tillamook Creamery, where they make cheese and ice cream and stuff. We took the self guided tour. Pretty nice, we got to see huge blocks of cheese get sliced up and packaged into little store-sized packages. Cool. The scenery we’re driving through is really cool. There are a mixture of coniferous trees and uhh, the other trees. There are a lot of ferns too. I like ferns for some reason. We’re in some national forest now. Nice. We went to Lewis & Clark’s Fort Clatsop this morning. I just saw some kind of large mammal. Probably a couple of cows. There were a couple of them. At Fort Clatsop there was this ranger who had been hunting over the weekend or something. He went with five friends. They shot something like 4 deer, 5 elk, 5 bear, and bunch of little stuff that I can’t remember the name of. That was pretty cool. I overheard him talking to somebody else. They had a nice little museum at Fort Clatsop. They had a replica of the fort at the estimated site of the original. Apparently it’s very hard to pinpoint exactly where the original was, considering all the people traffic through the area since the 1800’s. Figures. I hate the city. At least compared to the rugged, wild, middle o’ nowhere. We’re driving behind a cement truck. Why? Mike & I got 2 posters for our room at Fort Clatsop. Both with the Lewis and Clark theme. I also got a “Mammals of the Pacific Northwest” field guide. Pretty nice for $5. I am so glad Mom taught made me do Mavis Beacon. I love being able to type. There’s a couple of surf shops around here. Something you don’t see in Illinois. Mmm, cherry bottle cap. WHAAAAAAAAAA! Sugar! Ha ha ha ha. Whatever. From far away, these mountains look kind of like what I remember of Pennslyvania. He he he! Would you like to turn StickyKeys on? No! Ha! I loaded 715 photos onto the iPod that I’m trying to sell for Andy. I didn’t even realize that I had that many photos on my hard drive. Wow, we’re like right along the coast. Like, if we drove off the road, we’d roll down a medium sized cliff, and then we’d be in the water. Cool. AHHH! There we go! Nahh, just kidding. I wonder if I’ll ever let anyone read this. Scary thought! Maybe I’d let my wife read it, or my favorite hedgehog. I wonder what I’m gonna do with my life. Whoa. We’re parked facing the ocean. The view is stunning! I like hotkeys. Control + S is save. I’m very limited on bottle caps. A few of us just got out of the van and started looking out towards the sea. I whacked my elbow on the van door, which hurt, and still does a little. A guy with a camera that had a lens the size of Texas walked up to us, and showed us where he had just seen a whale. We looked for a while, but no whale. Then he came back a second time, and he showed us where he had just seen one. Then, we watched and several odd looking puffs of water shot from the surface. Then, we saw the fluke of the whale! That was very cool. We saw it several times. That was a lot of fun.

9/14/06
1:20 P.M.
Idaho. This area is basically hills covered with sagebrush and dead grass. And some mountains. Then the farmers irrigate their pastureland. Then the nearby grass looks REALLY dead. We stayed at this Red Lion hotel last night. It was pretty junky. The bathroom door wouldn’t lock, there was no fan, the room was tiny, there was no fridge or microwave, etc. I had to go the bathroom really bad. And I went really bad. After that, the room was shot. I’ve been playing Empire Earth for the past couple days. Mike & I have been trading off every hour or so. We didn’t do anything yesterday, just drove. And I don’t think we’re doing anything today, just driving. Norm Ball called me again, and said that his lawn wasn’t done yet, and his wife is ticked off. I have no idea what in the world is going on with Andy. I know he was in the hospital with asthma, but his mom said that she and Abbi were going to do them. Whatever. I’m on vacation, I don’t feel like worrying about lawns. Now I have to call Andy, find out when he’s going to mow, and then call Norm back. And the only thing I feel like doing is listening to music & playing Empire Earth. I wonder how my animals are doing. I haven’t been able to check out the kingsnake forums lately, because I haven’t had good internet access at our hotels. I think my favorite surfing place on this trip was in Astoria, Oregon. It was a Red Lion hotel, I sat on the balcony that overlooked the Columbia river. We were right on the water. It was awesome! There were ships docked like 15 feet from the balcony.

8/15/06
8:34 P.M.

We’re driving through a thunderstorm in Nebraska right now. There’s a tornado watch for eastern Nebraska ‘til like 1 in the morning. Whatever. We’re not in east Nebraska yet, and even if we were, we haven’t blown away yet. What is this song? Dumb KJ. Alright, song switch completed. Alright, our car isn’t shaking from the wind anymore. Driving through the storm was kind of scary, but just scary enough to make it fun. Gets the adrenaline pumping. Yeah! WHAAAA! WHAAAA! YO! Hmm, we should be pretty near our hotel by now. We might have driven past it. We were going like 500 miles an hour with the windshield. Back it up, back it up, oh yeah, back it up, back it up, oh yeah!
We’ve got to be getting really close. There’s like 200,000,000,000 lights all around us. I am burnin’ in this car! I’m wearing pants! WHY? Ooh! There’s lighting! Hide! We didn’t get to our hotel last night ‘til 2 in the morning. That’s not our record though. Our record is 3ish in the morning, which was in Keystone, SD, I think. Let me check that. MOM! Nope, it Rapid City, SD. It all kind of becomes a muddle. We at the end of this song. Shut your mouth! We mean business! Sorry, I just had to start singing along with Grits. And there’s our exit. Well, I’m gonna get my stuff together. Bye. Still there? O.K. Bye. Still there? Bye. Whatever.

9/16/06
3:42

Two vacation pet peeves I need to overcome:
A runny nose from the air conditioning.
The seatbelt that keeps tightening.

We went to the Denver Mint yesterday. Pretty cool. Thing is, we didn’t get in ‘til 2 a.m. the night before, and then I got up at 5 a.m. to take a shower. I slept in the car for like 6 various hours the day before, so I didn’t feel that tired. We got to the Mint, and I still didn’t feel tired. I couldn’t think straight though. I almost left my belt & my pocket contents on the security belt. Then a coin street vendor asked me what year I was born, and I said Chicago. Then I said 1999. Hey, it’s all gravy. We’ll be home tomorrow night. We’re about 3 or 4 hours from the Lindbergers house. Mountain Dew! YEAH! “Do you got a mullet? Is it beautiful, big and long?” I’m listenin’ to KJ-52. Umm, Mullet Pride. Todd Cleasy sounds like a black guy. Either that or a white guy who grew up in the ghetto. I slept until 9 something this morning. I hate that. We went swimming today, and we made huge waves, and almost engulfed this fat lady. She just kept laughing though. She wasn’t that fat, but she wasn’t exactly a twig either. Whatever. We stopped at McDonalds a couple of minutes ago, and I spilled my popcorn kernels. Whoops. Everybody knows your name at Missouri State University. At least that’s what a billboard just indicated. It had a picture of a girl that said “I’m not just a number, everybody calls me Ashlee.” O.K., I’m goin’ there. Ya’ know, walkin’ down the halls, hearing everybody say Hey Kelly, Hi Kelly, What’s Up Kelly, Hey Dude I mean Kelly. Sup Kelly? We’re driving through Missouri right now. It’s about the same as Illinois, it’s just a little more hilly. I’m so proud of myself for doing this well with my journal! Last time I was so disappointed after we got back from our trip, because I had like two short pages of journal entries. My stomach feels a little weird. Like I just went to Taco Bell for the first time in months. And I had Wendy’s for lunch. I’ve felt like this for the past couple of days. Not a big deal at all. I’m thinking about getting eMusic in the near future. I can’t seem to find a legal mp3 download site that lets you do unlimited downloading. I downloaded Kutless’ new album, just to test it out. Too rocky for my present situation. I’ll get it when I go to college. Missouri seems a lot more remote than Illinois. A lot more open spaces. I like that fact, but I wouldn’t want to live here. It’s not wild enough, as far as ruggedness. I downloaded 600-some songs on this trip. I downloaded them with iMesh. It’s pretty cool, because I can download almost anything I want without paying anything. The catch is that you can’t play it anywhere except your computer. No burning or transferring to my iPod. I’m writing to keep myself from being bored. I never write without listening to music. I’m listening to David Crowder Band right now. No One Like You. And there is no one like you. No one like you God. I’m kinda anxious to get back home, but not like OH MAN, I CAN”T WAIT TO GET HOME! Nah, It’ll just be nice to get back, and be crazy. I really want to see my animals again. I’ve been on Kingsnake every chance I get. I’m trying to decide if I’ll ever polish this journal off with a nice spelling and grammar check when we get back. It kind of gives it character to have all the little red and green lines. There has been nothing for miles. I just realized how many times I say “like” in my sentences. Superchick’s O.K. It’s kinda girly music. It’s fun once in while. It exposes and shuns a lot of teenagers issues. I wonder when Jeremy Camp is going to put out a new rock album. I’d really like some more of his stuff. I’m really having fun with John Reuben’s Music. “This life is short, don’t waste it.” I wonder what God wants me to do with my life. Maybe I should ask him. Duh. He’s given me a lot of interest in animals and nature. I have a lot of fun taking pictures of nature. When we where at Fort Clatsop I chased this squirrel around with Mike and Jill. I kept taking pictures of it. It kept moving from tree to tree. That was a lot of fun. The squirrel was really loud! It kept making all kind of chirpity-clucky weird noises at us. Loudest squirrel I’ve ever seen. Hang on, I want to look up the name of the squirrel. Oh yeah, his name was John. Ha. It was a Chickaree Douglas Squirrel. It was incredibly active. I could sure go for that as a living, taking pictures of wildlife all around the world. Mmhmm. Well, I’m going to figure out something fun to do while Mike’s using the laptop.

9/17/06
6:25 P.M.
Yeah! WHAAA! We had a lot of fun at the Limburgers house. Greg’s a lot like Uncle Todd. He seems to be a little funnier than Uncle Todd has been. He’s fun to talk to. His wife’s kinda funny too. I got up at 7:30 this morning. I took my shower, and then went upstairs. The only people who were up was Josiah and Mrs. Limburger. I ate, and then they started trickling in. About 9:15 they gathered to get ready for Sunday school. At this point Drew and Brent were up already and changed. So me and them tagged along for Sunday school. Everybody else was sleeping. I had a lot of fun. The only other people in the class were Jessica and her friend Callie. She was fat. The teacher was this 60 year old lady who was really nice. She talked a lot. We went through a lesson sheet, and then we just kinda talked. Then came church. It was a nice service. They sing to a cd. That was kind of new for me. Greg did a good job preaching. Then we came back, and we ate. Lasagna. Then Mike, Jill, Jessica, Elizabeth, Josie, Catherine, theonethatsaboutjosiesagethatIdon’trememberhername, and me went on a bike ride. That was fun. We went around their whole town. It’s a town of like 600 people. Their highway has like literally 20 cars an hour go by. Maybe a few more, a few less, hey, whatever. Then Mike, Jessica, and I played knockout. That was ton’s of fun and laughs. Then we played football. Catch. I had so much fun, I didn’t want to leave! That doesn’t happen too often anymore. Whatever. We were up ‘til 11 last night. We’re back on the road again. We’re about 5 hours from home now. They only live 6 hours from us. The Sunday school teacher that taught the class I was in said that I should drive down sometime when I get a car. That would be fun. I wonder if mom and dad would ever let me do something like that. That would be awesome. 2 years! That’s all I got. Sometime in college I’d like to do a tour of the U.S., and just kind of feel around. Ya’ know, if I go through with the whole exotic pet store idea. It’ll be nice to get back home tonight. But in a way, it’s kinda sad. Well, I better give the laptop to Mike in a few. I want to start spending more time with my animals when I get back.