When we first arrived at Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA), I was super excited. If you have ever watched the movies, Dolphin Tail, both of them are based on a true story; Winter did lose her tail in a crab trap and Hope was found too young to have learned from her mom. When you first walk in the doors, you walk into the gift shop; you have to walk up the stairs in front of you to see Winter and Hope. Instead we went to the “Hospital Area”; the hospital area had the surgical site and lots of other things. Once we got to the “Winter Zone”, it took a few minutes to actually see Winter; I saw Hope first. I watched for a little bit, then went to see two river otters. The otters are so cute!! We also saw Ricky, who plays “Rufus” in both movies. We saw two nurse sharks, Thelma and Louise, both girls. When we went to the “Stingray Passage”, we got to pet stingrays! The stingrays felt like jello mixed with marshmallows but really, really soft. When we were 5 minutes away from leaving mom and dad let me and Lance look around in the gift shop. I bought a bracelet that had Hope on the far left, Winter on the far right and in-between has Winter’s tail. Overall I think CMA is awesome!
By Lily
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I saw 125 alligators. The babies were really small. They were about 6 inches big. The biggest we saw was probably a 12 footer. They only use their tails to swim. I thought that was weird. They are shy even though you think they are aggressive. We saw lots of great blue herons. We saw some little blue herons. We saw a few turkey vultures. We saw spoonbill ducks. They were very pink. Their bills were like two spoons that you flatten together. They are not that common to see. We saw like 2 million birds. We rode a tram. It was 2 hours and a half. We went to the tower. We walked up to the top and we saw a lot of alligators and fish. We looked over the valley from the top. Shark Valley is very big.
By Lance My favorite ride was the horse ride in Lego Friends. It spins and goes up and down. I felt scared because it went super high, like 50 feet. Even though I was scared, it was really fun. I rode it twice. I had more fun with my dad because he thought it was going to be boring. I was not scared the second time because I already did it once. We went on a Transformer ride. You started out going up a really big hill, really fast down, then up again, then it slightly goes down and goes really fast and when it turns you think you are going to fall off. When we got off, we did some other rides. We walked past it again and it was stuck. So, we went to a Ninjago ride. It was these big couch things that you sat on. There was air that goes up and you have to keep your hand about 8 inches above it and swipe your hand and it would shoot little balls. It was a 3D ride, so the balls were on the screen, not real balls. When we got off that ride, we went to the dinosaur ride. You sit there and then it starts going up a big hill, then it goes down super fast and goes up another big hill and then it goes down super fast and then up another big hill and down super fast and does some turns. You only see one dinosaur and it goes really fast. It’s only 2 minutes or so.
By Lance Savannah is a busy place. In Savannah, we got to go on a tour. The tour guide’s name was Daniel. I learned that Georgia was part of the Confederate states. It was one of the last Confederate states to leave the union. The tour was an hour and thirty minutes long. I also learned that one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnett, lived the shortest life of all the signers of the Declaration. I also learned that a Yamacraw tribe did not want to attack the Englishmen while the Creek tribe did. So the Creek tribe that did attack, got pushed back into the heart of the land. The Yamacraws became friends with the Englishmen. The Yamacraws had trading posts and would trade bracelets, sacks, pelts, and some beads and necklaces. They would get clothes, pots, and other stuff from the Englishmen. We went to Fort Pulaski. It is a pentagon shape. It started out as a Revolutionary fort then during the Civil War it started as a Confederate Fort then the Union took it over. They used rifled guns to get the fort and eventually they did. You can see a few of the bullets in the walls. To get to the fort, you would have to cross an 8 feet deep moat to get to a small triangular island filled with bumps and hills. To get to the main fort, you would have to go across the moat again and somehow get the drawbridge down. Inside the drawbridge there are two sets of doors. The first set of doors is right behind the drawbridge and there are metal nails in it so you would have to be hacking it for a long time while you were being shot at. If somehow they successfully did that, they would have to run up a granite slope and the soldiers had metal on the bottom of their shoes so it would be hard. To make it extra slippery for them, the people in the fort would put cooking oil down the slope. There was rifle ports that were really thin so the people trying to get in could not shoot the person shooting at them. The second set of doors also had metal nobs, so you would have to be hacking while people are shooting at you. If you get through that again, you would be facing a cannon that shoots millions of tiny bb sized metal balls. So, they would shoot at the people trying to get the fort. So that is why Fort Pulaski was impossible to take over. Savannah was really fun.
By: Lily I really liked the aircraft carrier at Patriots Point. It was called USS Yorktown. It was used World War 2 against the Japanese. They dropped a bomb on it and it went through the floor all the way to the 2nd floor. The ship was big. Planes go on it and when they leave they go on a launcher and go on full engine and it shoots the plane off. They have about 20 yards until they have to get off the ship. When they land, they have a hook on the back and the plane comes in and it hooks onto a wire across the ship. There was also a submarine. It was called USS Clamagore. It was used in the Cold War. The Cold War is when they didn’t actually go into war, they just got a lot of stuff. The Americans and Russians got all this stuff but never actually go in war. The Russians got bankrupt and the Americans didn’t so the Americans won for doing nothing. They are going to sink the submarine on the coast of Florida because there is damage that they can’t repair. The Vietnam part looked like what it was like to be in Vietnam. There were sounds like big booms, helicopters, explosions, gunshots, machine guns, and people talking. There were tanks and they could only shoot so many bullets. There was a flipped over car, burning buildings, and different helicopters. I also saw how the soldiers lived, where they ate, slept, and went to the bathroom.
By Lance I went to North Carolina for Christmas. It was awesome!!!! It was really warm. The Whipples and the Bhamanis were there. One of the Christmas presents I got was a robot kit:] We went to the Cape Fear Science Museum. I and my dad built a robot!! It was about 8 inches long and 3 inches wide. You could program the robot to dance and lots of other things. :] We went to the North Carolina Fort Fisher Aquarium. When we first walked in we saw a whole lot of fish. A little way up the path we saw 3 alligators and 1 albino alligator. On the second floor we got to touch some sting rays. In a smaller circle pool, we got to pet some small sharks [they were sleeping].
By Lily I liked the Herr’s Factory Tour. It’s was a potato chip factory but then they started making other kinds of chips. We got to see them make pretzels, popcorn, and potato chips. They make the bread for the pretzels. They have big globs of dough they drop into a machine. It goes on the belt and then they cut it into pretzel shapes. They went around the room so it could puff up (rise). When it is puffed up, it goes into a machine to cook them. They turn brown and shrink. They add the salt in the same machine when they are still warm. Then they fall into buckets and they put them down a little slide and it goes down the slide and people put them in jars. They slide them over and get packed into a box. Then they get shipped wherever. We got to go trick or treating with our Aunt and our friends in her neighborhood. We got lots of candy and got to eat it sitting around the fire. I dressed up as a storm trooper. My sister was Rey. Our friend was Kylo Ren. We were a big Star Wars group. Our other friends were Evie and Captain America.
Acadia was super pretty with the fall colors. I liked the red trees. I liked the tide pools because we saw a big crab. There was also baby crabs. There was a whole bunch of snails on the rocks. There was seaweed, limpets, and mussels. A mussel, if it is alive, is super hard to get open. Starfish really like to eat mussels. We did not see any starfish. The ranger told us that the starfish in Maine are a lot smaller than in Oregon. The Maine coast is warmer in the summer, she said. We went around the lake on a bike ride. We went on a carriage road. It is a road so you won’t see any cars. There are a lot of people riding their bikes and walking but we didn’t see a carriage. The carriage road was really fun. We went on a boat ride and saw harbor seals. We learned the lobster has to be more than 3 inches and less than 5 inches to keep them. If it is more than 4 inches, it is considered a jumbo lobster. Acadia is really beautiful.
By Lance Niagara Falls are so cool!! Niagara Falls are made up of three falls; American Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, and Horseshoe Falls. We went to Cave of the Winds. We went to the Hurricane Deck. Mom took pictures and it was so windy and so wet that I could barely see. On the Maid of the Mist boat ride, I had my hood on but Lance kept his hood off. It was like he had just took a bath. I should have worn sandals instead of tennis shoes. It was super windy during the boat ride. During the boat ride, I saw a stick that was standing straight up between the rocks. I was surprised it hadn’t broken or snapped away from the rocks. I am glad they gave us jackets for the boat ride or else all of our clothes would have been soaked. At Old Fort Niagara, it was so cool because there was towers and it was made by 3 different countries. The British stole Old Fort Niagara from the Americans but eventually they gave it back. The French first built Old Fort Niagara. They said they were going to build a house and the outside part looked like a house but inside it looked like a fort. There were sleeping quarters, cooking quarters, and a well when you first walked in. On display were a few animal furs. At the Power Plant, you got a little necklace thing you could scan to play games. One of the games, you had to make all the different layers to make Niagara Falls. Also there was one where it took a picture of you climbing up a mountain side. The first movie we saw was one about electricity. At first I thought something was going to shock me but nothing did. At first it was dark and then a flash of electricity zoomed across the room. The second movie was 4D. It was awesome. You were supposed to be an electrical current traveling from the water to someone’s house. It sprayed water at you and the seat moved. It did different things in the chair, like pushing you forward and rocking you. The 4D movie was so cool. I learned that electrical current get big and before they reach someone’s house they have to shrink again. It is called hydroelectric energy. At Whirlpool park, it is half the water that is going over Niagara Falls because the power plant uses half of the water. We took a hike from the top of Devil’s Hole all the way to the bottom. It was more steps than the Uncle Tom’s trail in Yellowstone. We went down 407 steps and a bunch more following the river.
By Lily Ford’s Theatre is where Lincoln died. The guy who killed him was John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln had a body guard but he wasn’t there. He was at the bar down the street. John Wilkes Booth put a piece of wood on the door so people couldn’t get in or out of the President’s box. So when he shot Lincoln, he knew the play very well because he watched it a lot. There was one part where this guy said a funny line and everybody laughs so no one would hear the gunshot. That’s when he went in and shot Lincoln. When he was done, he jumped onto the stage and broke his leg. He said something to the crowd and ran off.
They put Lincoln in the Peterson House across the street. They put him there because they didn’t want him to just die in the theatre. I thought we were going to see a real play, but it was just a ranger talking. By Lance Below: Lance is sworn in for his Jr. Ranger badge at Ford's Theatre. |
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Lily: I am looking forward to learning about US History and seeing Yellowstone and the Lincoln Memorial. I really want to meet new friends and family! Archives
May 2017
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