It was a beautiful Friday afternoon. The May weather was perfect, with a slight refreshing breeze. Excitement was in the air as we all prepared for the 23 hour drive to Colorado. This was going to be the trip of a life time for our family. This much awaited trip had everyone on the edge of their seats.…
Imagine a place where everywhere you look, you see beauty, everywhere you smell is crisp fresh air. Everywhere surrounding you are ginormous mountains with snow slowly melting and one huge blue body of water. There are trees all over the place, and everywhere you look you see nature and all of God’s creations. This fascinating place is Lake Tahoe, in Nevada. Lake Tahoe is absolutely one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been.…
Epic trees It was actually green The ocean Skull rock The major butt workout When we first moved to LA, all of the locals, whether by birth or adoption, would gush about this marvelous "Runyon Canyon" and how we NEEDED to hike there to finally feel like we had done the best hike in all of Los Angeles. After a few months of putting it off, Damon and I finally decided to christen our move by putting on the sneakers and trekking it up dusty, dry, desert like hills to see the "glory" that Runyon has to offer.…
I've lived in the Rio Grande Valley my whole life. Ever since I could remember, I had never been outside these valley roads. I had always dreamed about what a vacation would be like. I ustheir ed to have friends all the time tell me about their trips to San Antonio, Houston, and Florida , just to name a few. I came from a lower class family of five so a vacation was never an option for us.…
On this weekend, our leader Mario had selected Red Box Canyon which is situated on the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. We were headed for The Valley Forge Campground. A round trip hike of around six miles in and out. We had planned to stay over night and pack out on Sunday. We had a full group with us, besides ourselves, there was Ralph and his brother, Kevin, Jim Spencer and his son Tim, and Mark Cook.…
Throughout my life I have experienced many events have laid down the foundation for the future I am building. One of the most influential and eye-opening was a trip I took to Yosemite National Park during my junior year of high school. The trip was offered to high school students in Northern California, provided by the McConnell Foundation- an independent foundation that awards grants to nonprofit organizations, public education, and government entities. The goal of the trip was to educate students on the importance of the national park, learn about its ecology, explore its natural wonders, and to interact with and meet other students.…
Vehicles roar past me down the street and make strands of hair wrap around my face. There are so many colors that surround me in the autumn atmosphere. Pine and evergreen is the smell that enters my nose as I breath. It looks like the typical autumn season. Looking past the trees and cars I can just vaguely make out indigo triangles in the distance.…
This autobiography is about me a thirteen year old girl named Kelia Portis. I grew up in Alameda, California(the bay area). All of my family on my mom's side had lived there my grandma, aunts, uncles, and lots of cousins. The sad thing though is that I had to move out of California and go to Colorado. My birthday was even the day that my family and I were moving so I had a sixth birthday party before we left all of my family was there.…
When I was a child, every night before bed my mother would read to me. She would lay next to me on my little bottom bunk, while the snow fell in the Maine woods outside and the dog slept at my feet and she would read. The stories she read to me were almost always historical fiction, a favorite of both of ours. We read about medieval Europe, ancient Greece, victorian England, the roaring twenties, the world wars, anything before this century really. One day she read me a book called Brighty of the Grand Canyon, the story of a burro that got involved in a wild west adventure.…
The time I almost drowned into a deep, cold river, for an icicle that I wanted. I’m Sixteen I was the second tallest I am in the middle for skin color. My group and I decide that we are done playing games and we want to do something, but a few of didn’t have money so it had to be very cheap. Austin was the oldest out of the five he had more muscle mass and brown hair.…
I hate that the bottom of the Grand Canyon has such good cell service. I finished hiking down ten miles of steep sedimentary rock, in what felt like a million degrees. Having ran out of cold water at mile seven, I was practically crawling for the remaining three. When we reached the bottom, my mother and I sat down at a picnic table and, in the absence of much else to do, I whipped out my phone and signed into the college board website—you know, what every millennial does in one of the most beautiful natural creations in the world. Looking back now, I’m amazed that in the midst of the Grand Canyon, the only thing I could think about was my AP score.…
The first time I went to Colorado The very first time I when on a vacation with my family to Colorado. My family was all getting ready for the big trip. Mom was getting straus out about the trip to Colorado and me and my dad was all relauks. Then we started are trip to the airport in the car.…
I was just going on a plane to Albuquerque, New Mexico and I didn’t know what laid ahead of me. My father, was part of the United Air Force so I had to move around a lot with him. I was just a shy fourteen-year-old with a wide nose, high cheekbones, and a thin and frail body. I never really thought about going into the army as it really never matched my shy and kind personality. The middle school that I went to in Afghanistan was a small hut where children sat down on the floor and learned together as a class.…
With what little wisdom and perspective I have at twenty-one years of age, one thing about which I am certain is the harshness and deep-felt pain of the hole left behind when a loved one dies. If I know nothing else to be true, it is the ache and sometimes-unbearable sadness my family and I are experiencing at the loss of our beloved wife, mother, and grandmother. But just as much as that sorrow is real, so, too, is the welcome relief of laughter and love we exchange as we remember the wonderful, funny life of our very dear Patty. It is only with fond remembrance and a good laugh that we are able to keep our heads when dealing with the grief of losing my Grandma, and she has given us an abundance of anecdotes and stories with which we can chuckle and attempt to patch the huge hole that settled in our hearts.…
When I was little I remember my father speaking of his mother. She died when he was young, so he did not know much about her, except she was in excruciating pain the last year of her life. She had cervical cancer. My best friend’s mother dealt with a similar illness, and the last six months of her life brought on so much agonizing pain; for her and the immediate family. My friend often says he wished he was not around for the end.…