California

California

March 5th, I arrived in Los Angelos. My aunt picked me up at the airport. We walked along the beach for a ways and looked at the beach front shops. Then drove up to Malibu and looked around. I saw MacGuyver in person, but I didn't talk to him. I ate the best pulled pork sandwich I have ever tasted in my life! It had shredded cabbage in it! We decided to leave and drive to Temecula where my aunt and uncle live. We wanted to miss the rush hour traffic... We somehow ended up getting lost in LA, so with traffic (which we didn't miss) and getting lost, the one and half hour trip ended up being 4 hours.

The next day while my cousins were in school, my aunt and I ran errands around town, did some window shopping, stopped at a nursery and looked at pretty flowers. That evening we went out to a pottery shop and painted pottery. In the morning of the third day, my uncle took me on a 3 hour motorcycle ride. That was alot of fun. Obviously I couldn't ride in PA in the winter time, so it was great to ride on a bike again. That afternoon we tried to go to an amusement park but by the time we got there they were only open for another 2 hours and then closed to private parties after 6 pm. So we ended up going to a Dinner Theater instead, which was really cool. Saturday we went out to the desert to ride quads. We were driving along and had been in the desert for a good 30+ min already when my Uncle said we had another 20 miles to go!!! We got to where we were going to ride and got all set up and my Aunt, Jennifer, and I set off on the quads. My Uncle doesn't ride. We rode all morning. We could ride for hours and not cross the same path twice. The desert is huge! We rode over sand dunes and marked paths. It was so much fun. I just don't know how to explain it. We went to a place called the Playground. It has really tall and steep sand dunes. Here you can just ride wherever. I posted some pictures but the pictures don't really show how steep it is. People ride 4-wheelers, motorbikes, dune buggies, and even their own personal vehicles out here. We watched some guys jump their pick up truck. Sunday was a relaxing day. Early Monday morning, my Uncle took me to the airport. Left CA at 9 am, got to PA at 10:30 PM. I lost the whole day! But I really enjoyed my vacation. But as much fun as I had, I was nice to be home again.

Montana

Montana

March 1st I left PA after 2 hours of sleep and headed to Montana. My friend Michi picked me up from the airport and went out to dinner at a really good pizza place called MacKenzie River. Best restaurant in all of Montana. The landscape in Montana is so different than Pennsylvania with the Rocky Mountains and just the rock formations and rocky landscape around Billings. It was really neat to see, even though it was all brown in color due to winter. I would love to see it in the summer when there is color on the mountains. Even with my lack of sleep we still stayed up late. The next day we met up with a friend of hers, Nizhoni, and the three of us headed off to see Yellowstone National Park. After 3 hours of driving we entered Yellowstone. It was really neat to see the buffalo (I guess they call them bison, so forgive me if I say buffalo) It was so strange to have these massive creatures walking next to your car (larger than your car) We saw one running towards us and that was scary; we couldn't drive away because we were on ice and the tires were spinning. Luckily he kept on running right by us. They are sometimes inconsiderate because they will walk in the road and hog it and no cars can get around. We sat still and turned the car off for literally 10 min at least because the bison were in the road and we couldnt get around. Other times we would drive next to them as the walked and were no farther away from them then 3-4 feet. They just minded their own business. They were kinda cute. It was a neat experience. There was elk and wolves also. I posted pictures of them. We stayed the night in a hotel there. The next day, scoped out more of Yellowstone, but there was not much to see. There was only one road open through the north part of the Park. The rest of the roads and park was closed for the winter. We were bummed that we couldn't see Old Faithful. We'll have to go back sometime. We did get to see the hot springs though. We left Yellowstone and drove to Bozeman, MT; did some window shopping, played dress up in the stores. :) Found a cool restaurant called the Naked Noodle. Interesting place. It's not just a one culture place, they have food from all kinds of cuisines. It is all pasta though. We could make our own pasta dish. I got the 4 cheese macaroni and cheese, and added 2 more cheeses on top so it was overall 6 cheese macaroni and cheese. We then drove back to Billings. The three of us hung out and relaxed the next day and I left on Wednesday. On to California....