Vacation! Part One

My goodness.  I have not had time to write anything for a while.  My graduation was August 14 and 15, so my family thought it would be fun to make a vacation out of it.  Ryan, Michael, and I drove up to Four Corners to meet up with my mom, dad, Josh, and Karl (one of my best friends).  The only person we were missing was Christopher.  :(  We ran into three huge storms.  We saw a lot of hippies in Flagstaff, but the weather was very nice.  I didn't sweat when I got out of the car at the gas station.  Anyways, we drove to Four Corners, where Ryan had dreamed of playing the classic elementary school game of Four Square.  He pumped up our yellow playground ball just for the occasion.  The stupid thing is that it costs $3 per person in each car to go see the granite slab.  Ridiculous.  And I had to use a port-o-potty.  I hate them.  They smell and I always feel like it's going to tilt backwards and I will get poo all over me.  After Four Square, we packed up the ball and left for our hotel in Cortez, Colorado.  It was nice, except for the cloudy green pool filled with little children.  It was past dinner time, so we were all starving.  $40 worth of pizza later, satisfaction set in.  We all layed down and watched the Olympics (which should have its own section).  The next morning was Sunday, so we went to sacrament meeting at the local church there.  After church we went to Mesa Verde, a park showcasing cliff dwellings.  It was pretty cool and fun to be with family.  I just can't imagine laying on thin mats on rock floors and wearing loin cloths.  Ryan and Karl, however, agreed that loin cloths are the way to go.  We went on a tour of the largest cliff dwelling and the guide talked about balance and nature, and other hippie ideas.  The key word for this trip is "hippy" because there were a lot of them.  At the end of the tour, we had to climb up some homemade ladders.  On one of the tours there is a 30' ladder, but I told my dad I wouldn't climb it.  That's why we didn't go on that tour.  

The next day we made our way to our hotel in Moab.  There was a clean pool at that hotel, but our room did smell of stinky feet.  It was pretty disgusting.  Both days that we were at the hotel we swam in the pool.  Now, we determined that July and August must be the traveling months for Europeans.  They were everywhere, especially in Moab.  So when we went to swim, the pool area was filled with French people.  They were lounging in the chairs, and there were two people, I think, that swam a couple of lengths of the pool.  There were a lot of Speedos and bandeaux bikinis.  One Speedo man sat with his legs wide open.  Hello!  So when the loud Americans came in, we created quite a different scene.  We were doing cannon balls, hand stand contests, belly flop contests, races, and playing Marco Polo.   The amount of people slowly dwindled down until we were the last ones.  And surprisingly, after we got out of the pool, they all came back.  Hmmm.  Arches National Park was the next destination.  We hiked up big rocks and took lots of pictures.  I found a rock that I deemed "Face Rock," and tried to mimic it myself.  The next day we left for Provo.  Oh, and I failed to mention that I told my mom, before the trip, that she should tell my dad that he should buy walkie-talkies.  He did!  It was awesome.  We had lots of fun conversations...like how I don't like the word "breast."  I would rather say "boob."  But Ryan said you wouldn't go in to KFC and ask for a fried chicken boob.  Whatever.  Another intellectually stimulating question was when you are pregnant, can the baby go to the bathroom inside of you.  It's pretty gross, but can it happen?  Because there are lots of times when babies come out and pee on the doctor.  My brother did it.  My mom said she didn't know, but was sure that it could probably happen.  And then she proceeded to tell us that we were dumb.