~Zahniac

About a week ago, my family and I went out west (which basically means we drove from Louisiana to Arizona and back...Yeah that's right...We DROVE about 2000 miles to Arizona and then 2000 miles BACK!!!) I wonder how some of them are even able to grow GRASS in that area of the country! Not that I'm bashing anyone who lives out west. It was actually a beautiful place really.

Scrunched near the side door of the car, my grandfather would tell me the life story of EVERY landmark and EVERY city and EVERY mountain that had a story behind it. We visited places like Carlsbad Caverns, which to tell the truth, is NOT WORTH going in through the natural cave entrance. Your knees will be screaming bloody murder after the walk (or hike) down. It's best to just take the elevators down to the Big Room as they call it (which IS worth seeing). Sadly, I wasn't able to see the King's Palace (I think that's what they call it). I heard it was very nice. According to my mom, my older brother (when he was 5 or 6 at the time) said "Woah baby!" when they went into the cavern.

Also, the Caverns' water that basically flooded the whole place has evaporated over the years cause the idiots that run the place left the doors to the elevators open >_< !

Besides a few downsides, the Caverns were beautiful! The next attraction we came to was White Sands, New Mexico. I tell yah, what a queer place. Don't get me wrong, the place was AWESOME; it's just...After seeing SO MUCH RED, I didn't expect to see SO MUCH WHITE! After that and after having my iPod earphones murdered by the sand, we went to another site, Tombstone. The town has been well preserved over the years and there wer a TON of gift shops. We saw a "reinactment" of the Gunfight at the O.K. Coral, which was pretty nice. After leaving the town, I watched the movie "Tombstone" on our way to our next site, Sedona.

The whole place seemed to be a ginormous art scene, except for the major rode construction going on. Other than that, there were the mountains that shone pure red (no, not like that brownish red you mostly see in the desert). After that, we went to our second to last destination, the Grand Canyon. Of course, the site was beautiful, but we couldn't do much besides look and take pictures because my grandmother had back problems. I got really mad when some old hick-lady just randomely blurted out, "I don't see what's so good about it; it's just the same damn thing everywhere you look! I'm going back to the bus."

...

This is the GRAND F*&%$*@ CANYON!
Get a sense of artistic appreciation or get lost!!!

Anywho, now that I have that out of the way, we traveled to our final destinations: the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. The area looked pretty nice, though I felt bad that so much harm has come to the Petrified "Forest". The Painted desert was barely anything. I believe a few rock slides occured and caused the main attractions to be covered up; you could tell. It also seemed that after "it was painted" some idiot took a stick of charcoal and scraped it along the bottom. There were a ton of petroglyphs on one stone (forgot what the name of it was). My dad and I were messing around. We would say things like:

"What do you think it means?"

"Hey!"

"Bye!"

"What else?"

"It sucks out here"

"Don't take the petrified wood"

"Who called THIS the Painted Desert?!"

Just humorous things like this kept us going. After staying in about 14 hotels, we finally made it home and it was RAINING! (thank God) I almost forgot what the word meant. All in all, I had a great trip with my family but I'm gonna have to go to a summer camp in a few days and when I get back I'll have to go to another one in a few more weeks following my return.

P.S. : To anyone who lives in "desert" areas, I didn't mean to make fun of it. It's actually quite a beautiful place once you get used to it. I mean, I'm just used to trees and buttloads of grass everywhere. Heck, I live in Louisiana!

Louisiana = swamp + humidity + rain

I have to drive a freaking airboat to and from school!!! There are NO SUCH THINS AS "CARS" HERE!!! (sarcasm)