Day 14- Driving into Salt Lake City!

Day 14: The Salt Flats

“Asah-dude” Sleezys here! We are reporting today from Tooele, Utah. We woke up this morning at 5:30 in Yosemite. We survived the bear habitat and woke up in forty-degree weather, slightly cold but relieved to have not seen any yearlings wandering our campsite overnight. 

After V said to load (we never load until V says to), we started our long journey to Utah. Today was a loooong day of driving and lots of repetitive scenery. Our wonderful breakfast was doughnuts, apples, and fruit snacks (for the vans). 

The bus this afternoon experienced our first movies on TWB. The premier was Cars and The Karate Kid. The vans were singing their hearts out and competing at singing and dancing together while passing by each other on the road. The music ranged from hard-core rock to country and throwbacks.

Heading towards our destination, we stopped at a salt flat where we were able to lick salt off the ground. It tasted like the ocean without even being there! Some people chose to lick quickly for a picture but others chose to really eat some chunks of salt. 

We have been surviving and thriving off of ham and turkey wraps with cheese and lettuce. The lunch was completed by our favorite snacks, Cheez-Its and fruit snacks.

The dinner tonight will be an Italian classic, spaghetti with salad and garlic bread AND cosmic brownies! We are staying at the Boys and Girls Club building and going off of our second night without a shower. We love Baby Wipes and sink "showers"! 

The participants on the bus experienced another heat wave through the desert as the bus A/C has stopped working again, but it’s okay because Henry is the man and going to get it fixed. We truly appreciate all the hard work Henry and the other counselors put in to make sure we are comfortable.

We'll be having dinner and heading to bed soon to wake up early for our venture into Salt Lake City to see the Mormon Tabernacle before heading to Bear Lake tomorrow evening! We CANNOT WAIT for mail day!!!

Also before bed right at midnight we sang Monte/Kenny Fleming happy birthday! We also formed a giant tunnel for him to run through as he came out of the bathroom. 

Day 13-Yosemite

Day 13: Yosemite 

Hello everyone! We are the Sneezys (aka Sleazys). The members are Skylar Paschke, Cade McConnell, Clara Cobb, Sealey Scott, Carson Greene, Andrew Fleming aka Greg, Morgan Hurt, Sophia Carter, Taylor Gagnon, Luke Harmon, Dakota Jacobsen, Makayla Johnson and Isabella Tarlton. We will be writing the blog for the next four days!

Today we woke up around 6:45 at the First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. Waking up at 6:45 is actually sleeping in for us, so that was awesome. It was exciting to see that there was not dew on our sleeping bags, if there were we would have had a problem. It was also refreshing to have nice, clean clothes provided by our dear friend in San Fran who did all of our laundry and folded it. Now we can smell slightly better. 

We headed out of San Fran and made our way to our first stop of the day: Wal-Mart. In Wal-mart, it seemed like everyone got the discount doughnuts that expired today. The McDonald’s was packed and the TWB participants said the iced coffee was “janky." While we were waiting for the bus, Kenny was eating his chicken wings. A few moments later, he was throwing the bones at us.

We loaded the bus and vans again and headed off. As we were eating our gourmet breakfast of bagels with the options of peanut butter, cream cheese or nutella on them we left the beautiful city of San Fran. Everyone on the buses and vans really enjoyed our bagels. 

The drive was a long journey to get to Yosemite. Many curvy roads and Henry even suggested that people should take some dramamine. The people on the bus got really creative and used their time wisely by making bracelets and drawing interesting designs on each other; for example, a flying narwhal. Others also played many games like What Are the Odds?, Would You Rather…, and many more. We almost made it to the Yosemite rest area until we were woken up by a change in the temperature...it was really hot. People started taking off their shirts and using the trays to fan themselves.

We made it to the rest area, where we were welcomed by the smell of smoke. Due to the fires in Yosemite, we had to take a bit of a different route to get to our campsite and the air was hazy on the drive up. But it wasn’t that bad since we had a wonderful lunch of subs and cookies at the rest area. The bathrooms were also sketchy since the actual bathrooms were out of service and we had to use port-a-potties. When Skylar was eating her sandwich, a bee landed on it and she threw it, wasting her sandwich.

We realized that the bus broke down and the A/C did not want to work. V reminded us that several years ago on TWB, there was no A/C, so it could have been 10 times worse. It made us appreciate A/C and other amenities. We had to drive about 47 miles until we made it to our campsite, where we were going to sleep with the bears!!

Upon arriving to Tuolumne we were excited to find a general store with pay phones and ice cream. The campsite had the most amazing and cold water out of all the campsites we’ve been to so far. Several people got to call for a low fee of $1 per every 2 minutes. We really love it when our parents pay for our phone bill. TWB got ice cream and our souvenirs before eating a great dinner.

Dinner was tomato soup, grilled cheese, lemonade, grapes, and frosted cookies. The frosted cookies are loved or hated, but everyone in our group loved them. At this point most everyone will eat any dessert that is put in front of them. The dishwashers had to be careful washing everything because they did not want to attract bears. Before bed, we had to put our things in bear bins so we wouldn’t attract any bears. Some yearlings have been spotted recently around the campsite we were in, so we were very cautious. After dinner, about 20 people went to a campfire event sponsored by the park rangers. It was interesting to say the least, and some parts were even poetic. Halfway through the performance Henry, Matt, and William came back with the bus, which they had taken down the hill to a nearby town to repair. They never found a mechanic, but Henry was the hero of the day and fixed it for us. Henry was tired and immediately passed out in his "condo" under the bus. 

It took a while for everyone to settle down and some people even thought that some snoring was a bear coming into the campsite. Tomorrow, we are looking forward to going to our next destination, Salt Lake City!