4 Wheels 4 Girls

After Marin Headlands, we drove along the most twisty and turny road ever to get to Muir Woods. I was reading my ” What Your Fifth Grader Needs To Know” book, and I had read the whole Language and Literature section and the Geography and History section and I was just getting to the Visual Arts section ( which I was really looking forward to ) when we pulled over in a big pull-off at the side of the road. I was disappointed when I had to stop reading, but when I heard we were having dinner, I tossed my book into my schoolwork bucket, and then sat back down on the seat. We were going to have Indian food for dinner! I love Indian food! And naan, too! Naan is a really good kind of bread. It’s delicious! Whenever Jean says we’re having naan with the Indian food, everyone says, ” Yes!” So, yeah, naan is marvelous.

When we had naan that night, I pretended it was a tree. A giant sequoia tree. I told the story of my tree. ” This is my tree. Its name is General Naan. At the very beginning of its life,” I pointed to the center. ” It was very healthy. For about five hundred years, it stayed healthy. Then one day, there was a small drought. He survived well, and continued his life. Then, about eight hundred years later, there were lots of bugs. The bugs destroyed part of the bark.” I pointed to where it was slightly brown. ” Then, as it got old, very, very old, like, three thousand years old, there was a forest fire. General Naan got burned, but still didn’t die.” I put my finger on a couple burnt spots around the edges. ” Then he lived for a thousand more years, and he was four thousand years old, and he was the oldest tree that ever lived. Eventually, he got so big that he toppled. It is sad, but he lived a very long, wonderful life.”

We went to bed after dinner, and Dad came back to our room to read ” To Kill A Mockingbird”. I really like that book. It is funny, and creepy, like when the main character, Scout, her brother, Jem, and their friend, Dill, go out to explore the Radley House, which is the haunted house, and Jem gets his pants stuck on the fence and he lost them. And when Dill is taken away, and then he sneaks back and hides under Scout’s bed.

So Dad came back and read, and when he finished reading a chapter, he shut the light off and hugged us goodnight. Then Jean came in, and hugged us too, and then they told us to get some sleep. So I did.

About two and a half hours later, there was a knock on the door. I was half asleep, but I could hear about half of what was said. I don’t know if it was Jean or Dad that opened the door, but I heard it open and suddenly a man was talking. He was a very nice ranger. He very politely told us that we must move. And that our sewage was leaking.

Dad fixed the leaky sewage, and then we moved along and found a place to sleep. We didn’t get to go to Muir Woods the next day because we had moved down the road away from it.

I slept really well. And when I woke up, we were at a playground. That I didn’t get to go to.