Month: September 2016

Maryland

During the summer, my family and I go to Maryland. We drive to a small town called Rock Hall, it is on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake river. We stay with a bunch of our family friends. The house sits by a creek. It has a barn and pool, and is surrounded by woods. The kids that come are Sarabeth, Maximo, Quinn, Lucien, me, and my brother Kai. We do a lot of swimming in the pool there. Sometimes we play games like Marco Polo, or have water gun fights. Most of the time we stay in the pool for a really long time. We usually go there for the fourth of July. This summer we got to see the fourth of July parade. Lucien and Kai are on the sailing team in Rock Hall, so they got to be in the sailing team float. They were shooting water guns into the crowd. Some of the floats threw down candy.

This summer we also went crawfishing. That’s when you try to catch crawfish with nets. they basically look like tiny lobsters. We caught A bunch of them. After we caught them we cleaned them and ate them that night.

Surrounding The driveway to the house is surrounded by woods. There are wild raspberries, and sometimes we pick them. There are lots of raspberry bushes, so we usually pick a lot of raspberries. Sometimes we make a dessert out of them. This summer we made raspberry ice cream.

We usually spend around one or two weeks in Maryland. It is very fun there.

Horseback Riding

During the summer I went to a horseback riding camp with my friend. We rode at a place called Dream Come True Farm in Long Island. We went there for a week, and stayed at her grandmother’s house. The first three days I rode a horse named Diamond, and the next two days I rode a horse named Destiny. Since I haven’t ridden a horse much before the camp, first the horse just walked. After a few days of walking I learned to trot. Trotting is the next slowest after walking. I learned a lot about horse back riding that week including how to groom, tack, and un-tack. When I groomed, I used to different brushes. With the first brush i brushed in circles, with the second I brushed across the horse.  Tacking is when you put on the saddle, saddle pad, reigns, and some other things on the horse.  And un-tacking is taking the tacking parts off the horse. It was very fun to learn something new. It was especially fun to trot. I definitely want to do it again.

Camping

This summer I went camping. We went to four places on our trip: Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, Sedona, and Joshua Tree. One of my favorite places we went to was Zion National Park because went on a hike where we rappelled. Rappelling is when you’re harnessed to the top of a cliff and you slowly walk down it on a rope until you get to the bottom. We also did a lot of climbing on the hike. At the campsite there was a mini golf place so we went there twice.

Another of my favorite places was Joshua Tree because there was a stream with rocks, and we climbed on them. I went with my mom, my dad, my brother, and some of our friends. We had an RV, so we slept in that for one night, but all the other nights we slept in tents.

In Bryce Canyon there were many different hiking trails. On some of them there were benchmarks. The benchmarks looked like plaques. If you took pictures with three of them, and went to the gift shop, you would get a prize. We spent a long time getting three benchmarks and when we finally went to the shop, they gave us a sticker.

One of the places we got a benchmark was called Mossy Cave. First we hiked to a bridge running over a river. Luckily the river was very shallow, if you put your foot in it would got up to your ankle. The river had lots of rocks and crevices that a foot could fit on, so we walked along them. we followed the river until we got to two signs, one pointing right that said waterfall, and one pointing left that said Mossy Cave. To the right of the two signs, the river continued, we decided to go to the waterfall first, then Mossy Cave.  When we walked to the waterfall we only saw the back of the waterfall, and we wanted to see the front. We had to walk back to where the two signs were, and we went to the right where the river continued. we followed the river again and it led to the front of the waterfall. We wanted to go behind the waterfall, but the parents said it would be too slippery. The camping trip was super fun because of all the hiking and repelling. I want to go again and visit more national parks.

 

Art Camp

This summer I went to an art camp. It was at Parsons University, which is very close to my house. I went with my friend, although he  was sick the first few days. I learned a lot about shading and other art techniques. One of the assignments that we did was the hybrid animal assignment. In that assignment you had to come up with at least two animals, and then turn them into one hybrid animal. First we drew it, then we painted it with watercolors. The camp went on for two weeks. On the last day we had an exhibit and all the parents came. At the exhibit I saw some self portraits that were really good because the shading was very realistic. I also a hybrid animal I liked. It was a mix of a rooster, porcupine, pig, and anteater. I liked the camp because I learned a lot about watercoloring. =

Summer Reading