4 Wheels 4 Girls

In the morning, we had a contest: How many flat tires?

The goathead thorns really messed up our bikes. When I pulled a giant thorn out of my bike’s back wheel the night before, I could hear the air poofing out. It was really scary and we weren’t too close to home; my tire was losing air fast.

My Poor Bike

So in the morning, we had the contest. How many flat tires were there really? I guessed seven. Someone, I’m not sure who, said all. In my mind, I had a small panging that they were right. But I also knew that couldn’t be true. So I was confident with my guess. Do you think I was right? What would you guess?

We counted up the wheels that were flat and guess how many there were? Seven! Just as I had guessed! For me, Ana, and Dad, every single tire was flat, plus one of Greta’s. But Ellie’s, Jean’s, and the other one of Greta’s worked great!

So the contest turned out well for me since I won, but not so much for Jean and Dad, who will have to buy all the new tires….

On April 10th, we went for a bike ride into Albuquerque to a bookstore as a reward for our hard work. The ride was very windy and what made it worse was that we were riding against the wind. When we got to the bookstore, it felt awesome to go inside away from the wind and read in the warm store. The store was called Under Charlie’s Covers, and I found lots of great books, although I only bought two. I’ve already finished one!

Here are some of the books we are reading right now.

The bike ride home was somewhat disastrous because of these evil, money-eating thorns called goatheads. Read Stella’s post to find out more!

After many busy days of travel and exploration of national parks and beautiful places, we needed a break. So, we settled into a cozy campground for a few days to sit, rest, work, catch up on school, breathe, stretch, clean, relax, and, unfortunately, do our taxes.

The first order of business was to clean a dirty camper. Jobs were assigned and completed (a heartfelt Thanks! goes out to Stella for treating us all to a very clean bathroom).

Doing schoolwork at the dining room table

After three days, our bodies are rested, our camper is clean, our taxes are done, and we are ready for new adventure.

When we were at Petroglyph National Monument, we went on a hike up a volcanic ridge to see petroglyphs which were on lava rocks along the ridge. It was a nice sunny day, but we had a problem which was the wind. While hiking up, I lost my sunglasses three times. As we were hiking up, we saw lots of petroglyphs and the trail twisted and turned all over the ridge and I had no idea where our camper was once it was out of sight.

Hiking the Boca Negro Canyon. That is Stella's head amongst the boulders.

On the way back down, there was a sandy trail and then the hike got a little less fun because the sand was blowing into our eyes. Stella saw a roadrunner, a bird common in New Mexico, that hops and runs instead of flies, even though it can fly.

The petroglyphs are carved into volcanic boulders.

After Petroglyph National Monument we went to Trader Joe’s, which is now my favorite grocery store. What I love about it is it is decorated like a beach and I am into tropical stuff. The food there is delicious and we got so many yummy meals, such as shrimp dumplings, four different kinds of pizza, indian meals and bread, and lots more. We also got some kumquats, which are one of my favorite fruits.

On the way back to the campground we had the pizzas, which were delicious. By the time we got back, we were tired from a long, eventful day.

On April 9, we went to the Petroglyph National Monument, in New Mexico. My mom and my dad did a senior ranger program and then they got their badges and got a postcard. Then they did the senior ranger pledge. It was very fun to watch to watch them do that, because I had never seen an adult get a ranger badge like we kids do.

My dad got a patch and a pin at Petroglyph

My mom giving the senior ranger pledge for the first time.

A petroglyph is a picture hammered into a rock. They call it the Petroglyph National Monument because there are 20 thousand petroglyphs on rocks in the park. The bird on a petroglyph usually has a beak and a tail that goes all the way around, like this:

My drawing of a bird petroglyph

Saturday, April 9, Ellie, Ana, Dad, and I went on a bike ride into Albuquerque city. At least we started to.

When I got on my bike, the wind was so strong that I almost blew over. We went up to the trail and started biking. By the time we made it ten feet, we were all tired and our legs ached like crazy. Each time I peddled, I only made it about half a foot. We were riding right into the wind.
Suddenly a HUGE, and I mean huge, gust of wind hit me. Since I was leading, I got most of it. Most of it was sand, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to pull over to the side and rest. Plus, I couldn’t see anything with all that sand in my eyes. Dad told us to turn around and go back to the RV. The ride back was glorious, though. We could go as fast as we wanted because the wind was pushing us.

I would take a picture to show you how windy and sandy it was, but nothing would show up except blurry sand. Anyway, you’d feel like you have sand in your eyes. Just like me, sadly.

So when we got back, we ate lunch which was turkey and cheese sandwiches and the fruit salad Ellie, Ana and I made. It was pretty small, the fruit salad, which only had apples, bananas, and oranges, but it was still really good.

Well…. I guess our supposed-to-be-fun bike ride turned out to be a fail!

On April 7th, we went to a KOA campground near Albuquerque. When we got to the campground, I liked it already. It had a playground, pool, and a volleyball court. When we got there we ran right to the playground. It had two swings, a seesaw, and a spin-y thing. We played until we had dinner and went to bed. In the morning we got free pancakes at the KOA’s “Winter Kafe.” When we looked out the window of the Kafe, we saw Sandia mountain.

Sandia Peak is out our breakfast window.

After free pancakes we did some school work. After that we went to go play volleyball. We played and then my mom came and played with us. She tought us how to play. When we had to go get the ball we got thorns in our feet. It reaily hurt our feet. Me and Ana played horses while my mom and Stella played volleyball. It was an awesome campground. The next day we meet a boy. He became our friend. We played with him for along time. Most of the days were nice. There was a lot of sun. We stayed there three whole days.

After the Acoma pueblo, we ate tortilla soup and our pies for lunch, (yum!) we drove to Albuquerque to camp for awhile and to shop and explore. On the way to our campground, we saw the most spectacular house I had ever seen! It was made of old parts; plane, car, boat parts; and it looked like an automobile of the future. It was concealed by trees on most sides, so we couldn’t get a very good picture, but we took pictures anyway. Here are two pictures we took of it: (You would have loved it, Granddad!)

There's the long, winding staircase on the side of the house.

Ana really liked the house!

There was another similar, awesome one next to it with a big statue in front of it that looked like a huge human molecule. (with lots of soccer balls attached to it!) My favorite part about it was that there was a huge dinosaur in front of the first house, and my friend Alanna (Hey Alanna! Miss ya!) got me hooked on them. Dad took my picture in front of it:

The downfall of humanity wouldn't have happened if the dinosaurs still existed!

After the house, we headed to our awesome campground. Read Ellie’s post to find out more about it!!!

We saw neat houses made out of mud and water. The Acoma people learned how to make Adobe houses from the spanish. We walked until we came to a cemetary. Gary told us that the men made the walls to keep the spirits of the dead people inside and the women brought all the dirt and coved the dead people with dirt that they carried up the cliffs from the valley below. Then we went into the church. It was big and tall. Gary told us stories. Then we came out and saw people selling pottery. We walked and learned about sky city. To our surprise, a guy who was selling blue birds gave us each one for free. That made us all so happy. After that we said thank you and then left. Later on the walk we saw people selling pies and cookies. We got blue berry pie and apple pie. Then we saw another person selling pie. We got more pies. We got peach and cherry.

This is near the top of the stairway down from the mesa

At the end of the tour, we could either take the bus down our walk down. We walked until we finally got to the bottom. When we got to the bottom it started to rain. We all ran to the RV and got back on the road.

Thursday, April 6, we visited the Sky City Pueblo. The Sky City is the coolest Pueblo I’ve ever seen, and it’s located on the very top of a 374 foot tall mesa. The Acoma people still live in this amazing town today. You might think the Acoma people just live up there part time, only so people can say it’s the oldest continually inhabited city in the USA. But no, people still live there, even a few kids, and I met quite a few men and women selling jewelry and clay pots with beautiful paintings and designs on them. Here’s a picture of an Acoma woman’s amazing pots. She was selling them on the top of the mesa, right outside her house.

Here's the pots. Aren't they beautiful?

Our tour-guide, Gary, who was an awesome tour-guide, by the way, lead us all around Sky City. As we walked around, we stopped at a man’s little sale set-up. Gary said, “Look at his great bluebirds!” And that attracted our attention. Well, I would have looked at them anyway, but these bluebirds were so cute! I stared at the four sizes of bluebirds, the biggest ones, about the size of golfballs, were five dollars, the next size down, four dollars, next size, three, and the smallest, which I thought were the cutest, were two dollars. I kept eyeing the tiny bluebirds and thought about asking Jean if I could get one, and I finally asked. Guess what she said? No. So I asked again. She still said no. Then Ellie said, “Please momma can we get one?” And I said, “Just the little ones? Please, can we each get a little one? There’s four! And they’re only two dollars!” She still said no. But I couldn’t let her say no! They were so cute and I felt bad looking at the man’s artwork without buying anything. During all this, the man was listening and could tell we really loved them. I couldn’t believe what he did next. He picked up the four little bluebirds and handed one to each of us! Oh my gosh, I wanted to give him something in return really bad! He was basically giving us eight dollars! Actually, more! With all the hard work he put into all those adorable birds, I think they were worth at least twelve dollars, at least I think. I didn’t know the man’s name, so I couldn’t name my bluebird that, so I named him after the tribe he came from, the Acoma tribe.

This is Acoma! Isn't he so cute?!

As we finished our tour, Gary gave us a choice:
Take the bus back down
Or walk back down
You might think I’m joking, but I am being completely serious. Look at the pictures in my sisters’ posts to see that I’m not lying.
We made it back to the RV with all six people, my bluebird, Acoma, Ellie, Ana, and Greta’s bluebirds, a bag of four cookies, and six pies!!!
Even though it was rainy, we had a great day at Sky City.