Day 9--Boulder City, Nv.--Barstow, Ca.--Ludlow, Ca.

This is how I felt this morning as I got up from what I hope will be the shortest night's sleep of this trip! Once again I was ready to throw in the towel with this blogging thing last night, and you can tell by yesterday's blog that I never did quite get it all figured out because pictures are everywhere and there are huge spaces, but that's part of the learning curve I suppose. Hopefully today's will go better, because I am trying a few new things. We'll see!



Yesterday I failed to capture some fun parts of the day, but I think I got most of it today. I think Ben and River must have ridden down the pirate ship slide at least 87 times! You could hear them coming from their screams as they zoomed down on the blue mat. It is seriously the fastest waterslide we have ever been on!






If you look real close you can see Ben standing at the top of the pirate ship. I was honestly floored that he would even dare to jump from this into the water below, but stranger things have happened I suppose.

And there he goes! After Ben jumped the first time yesterday, he jumped off many more times. I was proud of him for being so brave. Of course the twins couldn't be shown up, so they jumped a couple times off the pirate ship, with Daren's help.

Good times at Pirate's Cove!!

Will was quite a character to keep track of at Pirate's Cove. It didn't take long to figure out where he was when he went missing, though. He had either gone back to our casita to watch TV, or he was helping himself at the ice cream station. He figured out how to climb up to the counter to get a cone, but there was usually someone around to help him get the ice cream. My favorite was the lemon slushie machine next to it, but all Will cared about was the ice cream.

Pirate's Cove is on the side of a hill in Boulder City, and apparently there are many long horn sheep around. This cougar (not real) is at the top of the waterfall by the entrance, and I got this great picture of one of the sheep right next to it. There were 5 or 6 of them wandering the hills that we could see.

The final picture of the boys at Pirate's Cove. Daren was doing a dance for them in the backgroud, so that's how we got them to smile so well!! Thanks again Jed, Alisha, River and Diesel!!

After a couple of stops in Vegas, including our final In-n-Out, we were on the road heading back to Barstow where we left off. We are going to take a picture at every state line, so this is the first state--California.

And back to the history lessons...the El Rancho Barstow has this huge neon sign behind it which is held up by a pair of twin towers--apparently a classic style from earlier times. Because we don't do much traveling at night we don't get to see most of the signs lit up in neon, but they are cool to see anyway.

We got to see this hotel sign because it is our hotel for the night. We didn't get as far as we hoped, so we stayed in Ludlow, located in the middle of nowhere between Barstow and Needles.

Total mileage to date: 1,731.4

Weather: 94, sunny

Premium gas price paid: see above sign!!