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<Alex> Trip to the US

  • Alex Lin
  • Nov 13, 2017
  • 6 min read

The summer before I was in fourth grade, my family and I took a three week trip to western America. I was super excited when I first heard this great news from my parents because I no longer have to go to the cram school in my summer vacation again. I told all my friends and classmates about it, they all have the same surprise and envious reaction after hearing this, some of them even want me to buy chocolates and send postcard to them. However, I could not wait to get there, my excitement increased day by day until we finally drove to the airport.

After we reached the airport and took off smoothly, I started to play poker and some other board games with my sisters, and I tried to keep my holiday mood until we arrived at Los Angeles world airport but the route was about thirteen hours, it would be extremely boring if I only played board games for the entire 13 hours, so I watched several movies such as “Madagascar”, “Avatar ”and “Mission impossible” right after the board game. I really like the movie Madagascar, especially the penguins, they were adorable and funny, they always did something cool to trick the people on the road, they even stole a car in the middle of Africa. Finally, we arrived the LA airport, it was night time when we finished all the procedures in the airport, we rented a silver van and started our journey to Las Vegas. After a couple of hours, we stopped at a little town next to the highway, I was tired and hungry, my mom went to the hotel to check in, and the rest of us went to burger king for dinner. The burgers in America were more expensive than the burgers in Taiwan, the french fries and the nuggets tasted quite the same. We went back to the hotel and my mom told me the next day would be super boring because we would do nothing except driving. Next morning, I went to a bookstore and bought a comic book about doctor octopus and his fellow inventing some strange equipment. If you really think I am going to read the comic book then you are totally wrong, I ate some oreos and fell asleep. When I woke up, my sister told me we were almost there, I sit up and I saw a city in the middle of a desert, I was so stimulated and excited because I could finally see the “Disneyland for adults” with my own eyes.

Las Vegas

We drove our van around the city, there was a big tower in the middle of the city known as the “Stratosphere Tower”, it was super tall and there was even a mini roller coaster on it. Before long, we arrived at our hotel - the Luxor Resort - its appearance was very glamorous because it looked just like a pyramid. I couldn’t believe we actually lived in a blue pyramid, furthermore, there was even a giant artificial wave pool next to the hotel, how good is it if I can live here for the rest of my life. We stayed in the “sin city” for about six days and I realized almost every hotel has a big casino. My dad told me never gamble because he just lost almost a hundred dollar by playing the 777. It was very sad that we ate almost every meal in the same Korean restaurant just because my parents didn’t like the hamburgers in Vegas was too expensive. After a week of joy and happiness, we started our journey to the salt lake city in the state of Utah. From the name I could already guess the city was next to a big salt lake, but I wished the name was just a trap to trick all the tourist to visited there, because my family would definitely spend a lot of time on taking photos - I could never understand why people like to take photos wherever they go. During the boring and suffering route, the sun was extremely harsh, I took some newspaper and stuck it on the window but the sunlight can still penetrate the paper and burn my skin, so after we arrived the salt lake city, my right arm was like super red, and the skin began to came of my arm, it was really painful, this might be the worst experience I had in the trip. We stay in the city for a day, and as usual, we did took a lot of photos next to the lake and the view there was actually quite beautiful. Later on, we went to a pizza store to have dinner, my mom ordered Hawaii flavor pizza because she has no idea what other flavor was; the pizza tasted great and if I have the opportunity to came back, i will like to try the double cheese pizza with ham.

Our next stop was the Yellowstone national park, the size of the national park is about one fourth of Taiwan, the weather there was great and we travel around the park for a week. Paint pots, mud pots, geysers and fumaroles was all over the park, it smells awful but the view was super beautiful, the paint pots was like a mixture of boiling water and rainbows, really cool. Not only the natural landscape, I was also thrilled with all the animal sights, we saw a lot of bisons in the park; i was very surprised to see them in the first few days, but there were too many of them, so I was kind of tired to see bisons in the last few days. It was quite a good move as during this drive we saw various organisms like black bear, cubs, mule deer, cranes, osprey, baby mountain goats, elk, pronghorn, we even saw a scenes which almost paralleled what we were imaging – two grizzlies fighting a wolf for the carcass of an elk while a coyote was eating the elk !!! Can you even believe this just happened 20 meter away from us. Yellowstone was very famous with its animal but you must go mountain climbing, the scenery on the very top of the knoll was fantastic, you can see almost every natural features on it such as waterfalls,forests, rivers, giant paint pot, grassland with a bunch of bisons on it etc. The most unforgettable view I have ever seen in my life is the remains of a forest fire in yellowstone, a normal forest is green and lively but if you see the remain of a forest fire, you will a hundred percent been shock by the tremendous difference between the two, the forest was just like been bombarded by a million pounds of TNT, there was no leaves, no animals, but dust and scorched branches. To commemorate those forest, the national park established a museum to introduce the wildfire and how it affect the evolution of life cycle. I learned a lot in that museum and I bought several postcards and we continue our journey. I participated in a lot of activities in this short week, I went kayaking in the Eustis Lake, I fed the cubs in yellowstone zoo, I even went swimming in the Yellowstone River in Hayden Valley. Yellowstone was our last stop in america, we went to the Jackson hole airport. then flew to LA airport and back to Taiwan.

We had such an exciting time in America that we all wanted to stay a little longer, I remember very little from the flight back home as I was sleeping most of the time on the plane. I do however remember the cool and humid weather when we arrived to the airport in Taipei. I travel with my family several times but the trip to America has been an unforgettable experience, which will remain in my mind as the best holiday trips with my wonderful family I had so far. It would be a dream to go back again, or even another part of America like Florida or New York. This trip also motivated me to travel around the world, so I can discover unique and fantastic natural feature and enjoy my life.

 
 
 

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