Ordinary Adventures of Sarah Hoot

Good morning everyone! Here is another two-for-one special! Remember the flat tire incident from the other day? Well yesterday we had to go get it taken care of. Mama Ramey woke Jared and I up so that we could move and they could drive to the local Les Schwab to get it fixed up. While the mechanics were working on the car all of the kids slept and the parents went to Denny's to get some breakfast. With breakfast consumed and tires fixed, we set back out on the road. The whole day was pretty much spent driving with very few pit stops. Though we did stop at a bridge where Evil Kenevil did one of his stunts and watched some people base jump. Then we just drove until we got to our campground which was in Oregon this time. Once we got there Jared, CC, and I went swimming for a bit before we all got out to go and eat dinner. Then Jared and I went to the arcade to play some games (there were some really old games) until it closed and we went back to sit around the fire. We both hung o...

We finally made it to the Great Salt Lake, though I am not sure how I feel about the experience..... As usual we woke up fairly early but Jared and I were still half asleep so we slept on the bed for the first bit of the drive. I woke up a couple of times so I could get pictures when we passed by Temple Square, one of the original Latter Day Saints sites. The temple was really pretty and I hope that I can go back sometime to walk around and see the rest of the square. After that it was only a short drive before we reached the Great Salt Lake. None of us were prepared, our original plan was hey let's float on the Great Salt Lake but then we got there.... It was awful. It stank to high heaven, worse than the ocean which is actually a nice salt smell. And there were thousands and thousands of brine flies. Needless to say, I was not impressed. We got our sand and some souvenirs and left right quick. Once we vacated the worst of the stink we headed towards the salt flats. These ba...

We are leaving the desert soon I hope!! Today we are heading to Arches National Park and attempting to get to the Great Salt Lake. We set out some what early today, Mama Ramey made actual breakfast for us! Then after enjoying our scrumptious breakfast of eggs we headed out. These last few posts might be a bit boring since we are mainly just driving now on the way to get home. But today was a good day, we drove for a while looking at gift shops for last minute souvenirs and came across this really strange tourist attraction in Utah. On our way to Arches National Park we saw this place on the side of the freeway called Hole in the Rock (and by we I mean the driver and co-pilot since Jared and I were napping in the back). Anyways, this store was literally in a hole in a rock wall, there was a little store front but the rest of it went into the wall. There was also a trading post, some sculptures in a cactus garden, and a zoo of all things. We looked around for a bit and then we were b...

Today started very early for some reason. Mama Ramey wanted to get up and go right away so she got us up out of our bed and had us move to the big bed so that they could start driving. We didn't officially wake up until like 9:30.  So we pretty much drove a lot today. We had two scheduled stops but that was it. The first was to Four Corners. For those who don't know, Four Corners is basically a place where you can stand in four states at once: Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. So we stopped for a bit and took our pictures, there were also a bunch of vendors set up around the patio area selling different wares so we looked around for a bit. Then we headed back to the RV so we could eat lunch, everybody except Austin and I had Indian tacos which are tacos on top of fry bread. I had a chicken salad sandwich and I am pretty sure Austin just had chips.  Then we set off so we could get to our next stop. This time we were going to a place called Mesa Verde National Park...

Today we are heading to the Grand Canyon for two whole days!! The morning started off as usual just having breakfast and getting ready to go since we all wanted to get going as soon as possible. On the ride over we made a couple of stops so we could see some cool attractions. The first was to the Wigwam Motel, if you have ever seen the movie Cars this was the motel that the Cozy Cone was based off of. It was one of the first original motels along Route 66. The next stop we made was to Winslow, Arizona to take a pictures with the "Standing on a Corner" statue (if you know what that is you get points because I still have no idea). Our last stop before getting to the Grand Canyon was to the Meteor Crater, this off-the-freeway stop was unplanned but it was really cool. Basically as the name suggests this was the site of a meteor landing, so there was a huge museum and three different places where you could look out onto the giant crater. It was really neat and I want to take my l...

Today we are setting out on the Mother Road, Route 66, to get to the Grand Canyon. We pretty much spent the whole day driving but we did make a couple of out of the ordinary stops. One stop we made was to this cool gift shop Flying C Ranch. It was full of different gifts, Native American crafts, and Mexican imported blankets and ponchos. Also if you had $20,000 you could purchase a taxidermy buffalo for your home. I however settled with buying a serape blanket because I am obsessed with blankets. We left after everybody got some ice cream from Dairy Queen, but not me because my tummy was acting up. The drive continued until we got to Albuquerque, New Mexico where we stopped to look around and have lunch. We went to a part of Albuquerque called Old Town, which was just a little tourist spot with a bunch of different stores selling everything from candy to jewelry. We toured around for an hour before heading back to the RV so we could head back out. Mama Ramey bought us some lun...

Today was a pretty interesting day. We spent a lot of it driving but had two pretty cool stops. Our first stop was in Dallas, Texas so that we could go to the Sixth Floor Museum. This museum is dedicated to the life and death of President John F. Kennedy. It is a really neat museum and is fairly inexpensive, only like $16 for adults 18 and up, it also includes an audio guided tour through the place and if you listen to all of the extra recordings and watch the films the tour is about an hour long. The museum itself is in the building where investigators suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was when he shot the president. The sixth floor, where Oswald allegedly shot from, was set up with panels covered in pictures and information about different times in Kennedy’s life. There was even a sealed off section from the original crime scene, where the book boxes were set up in the sniper’s perch the way they were on the day of the assassination. The seventh floor had stuff on it as well, there ...

Today starts our journey into the Wild West (at least until we start heading North again). We are heading into Texas! We woke up and did the usual routine (though now we have to try and fight off the ants that have infested the RV, nothing dangerous just annoying sugar ants). And we headed out. The drive out of Louisiana was uneventful for the most part but still really cool because we were driving through swamp land. I wanted to try and see an alligator but only Jared managed to see one, guess I will have to settle for the two toy alligators I got from Mr. Ramey. Eventually we got to Texas and after a quick stop at a "Welcome to Texas" rest area to take pictures we were off again. We kept on driving for a while until we got to our campground. This one was in Tyler State Park and right on the lake. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the store was closed so we couldn't buy anything. The swimming area was open but it was too far away from our cite to make us wa...

Woohoo! We are going to New Orleans!!! I am so excited to see the French Quarter, it's one of my travel bucket list places. We all got up and started getting ready to go, Jared and I went back to the beach to fill up a bag of sand for souvenirs (and look at what the storm washed up), and I took some pictures of the osprey nest nearby. Then we all got loaded up into our spots (we all have our spots we claimed in the RV) and started driving. The drive wasn't too terribly long today but we did pass back through Alabama and Mississippi. Finally we got to our campground in the French Quarter. It wasn't really a campground, more of just a fancy parking lot; but it was really clean, had really good security (guards, a gate, and a cement wall with barbed wire) (we would have stayed at the KOA but apparently someone heard gunshots near that campground), and a nice pool. Once we got all checked in, we grabbed our stuff and headed out. The RV park we were staying at was only a f...

So excited for today! We are going swimming in the Gulf of Mexico!! We left our camp site in Georgia after our delicious breakfast of cereal. We drove for a bit making our usual stops at rest areas, until we got to Alabama where we stopped again so we could get dirt for our collection (which has been going good we have only missed a couple states I think). However, I was horribly tricked while getting this dirt; I walked up to this seemingly insignificant mole hill (since I am from the North and we have mole hills up there I thought they would have mole hills down here), wrong, it was an ant hill. I dug down a little and they all came out. So I found somewhere else to get dirt. After that we kept driving until we reached Florida. Then after making a quick stop at a Walmart to get stuff for dinner and other resources we left for our new campground. This campground was great! It was out on this little barrier island in Pensacola and it was only a short walk to the beach, ser...

Here we go back out into the mountains!! This time we were out in the Great Smoky Mountains. A lot of the ride out of Tennessee was through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So we made several stops to various places to get our passports stamped and enjoy the views. We kept driving for a while until we got to a spot that we wanted to see up in the mountains. It was just a small park that was mainly a trail head for several different hiking trails but we went and took some pictures since in the middle of the park was the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. Another place we went to had a little museum that talked about early life in the mountains and how people made a living back then. Also in the back was a homestead set up to show what an early farm would have looked like. It was really cool; there was the house, the barn, a mill, a blacksmith's shed, a meat curing shed, and even a pig pen and chicken coop with pigs and chickens inside (well the chickens we...

Today was our last day in West Virginia, it’s very sad but we have to head back home. We got to sleep in a bit which was nice but we still had to get up somewhat early because we were having our last family breakfast, this one was at Aunt Louis’ house (sorry if I spelled that wrong). Today’s breakfast consisted of homemade biscuits, omelets, and warm cinnamon apples. Once we finished breakfast we did our last checks to make sure we had everything (plus all of the snacks and sodas that we acquired from all of the family, they were very prepared for us) and we said our goodbyes. I am really glad that I got to come along and meet those relatives they are all really nice and we got along well. Plus, they seemed to like me so that is a good sign (I even got a homemade ring made out of a bolt from one of Jared’s uncles, so now CC and I have matching rings). And so we set off on our drive for the day. This was another uneventful drive since the main goal was to get to our next stoppi...

Today was our last full day in West Virginia! We did not have a whole lot planned but Mama Ramey did have something on her agenda. She wanted to go and try and see the graves of some of her family members who were buried here. So out into the country we went. After we had our breakfast, pancakes and a really good egg casserole thing, we headed out to go look for the first cemetery. On our way to the first grave we stopped buy a Walmart to get some flowers to put on the graves. The first one was easy to find it was in a church cemetery so we just needed to hunt down the headstone. Unfortunately, all we had to go on was the picture of the headstone and we did not know where it was so we hunted around until finally we found it. The next grave was not in a maintained cemetery. It was near a church but the problem was that the graveyard was so old that people stopped caring for it. Let me put this in perspective, there was a grave for slaves of some person. So we tried to hunt ...

Today was both boring and exciting. We woke up reaaaaaalllllyyy early, at like 6:00 a.m., and we hated it. But we had breakfast at like 7:00ish and then headed out on our adventure for the day. This time we were heading out deeper into the mountains to go on a scenic train ride. This was no ordinary train ride. This train was a coal powered steam train! The tracks took us up to a place called Bald Knob where we could take pictures of the large expanse of forest. The drive out there and back was ridiculous though because the town where the train is stationed was about three and a half hours away! On the way there Jared and I basically slept the whole time because we are not morning people AT ALL (seriously, I am a grump until at least nine). We got to the town and we were still pretty early since the train didn't leave until like 11:30 so Jared and I went to go locate the geocache that was near the train. We found it pretty quickly and I put Jacob's travel bug in it so hop...

Today we took a trip out into the wilderness of West Virginia to see what we could find. Before starting our day we all had breakfast in the house -- pancakes, bacon, and orange juice. Super yummy and a good way to start the day. After we had breakfast, we got everything together that we needed for the day and then loaded up into the truck (one of the aunts let us borrow her truck). Our first stop for the day was a place called Hawkes Nest State Park. This was a pretty small little park but it is spread out, there are two different areas to go and look out over the river and the different bridges and there is even a tram ride where you can go down the cliff and look at everything. We tried to go on the tram but it was closed when we went so we are going to try again another day I think. But it was beautiful to go out and look at everything. The next stop we made was to Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine. This was an old mining town with old buildings and stuff still standing. The highlig...