The beast is tamed!!

So we left our cousins house this morning. It was a teary goodbye, but I’ll see you all in 27 weeks for Christmas!
Yesterday we spent almost the entire day at Alcatraz. That was probably my favorite thing so far. It was extremely interesting and informative, and a bit creepy. Our tour guide/ranger was great and gave us a “behind the scenes” tour. We then took an audio tour and, thank goodness, it was inside. We got to walk through the cell blocks and see where all the famous prisoners stayed, like Al Capone and Robert “The Birdman” Stroud. It was a bunch of fun. We could have spent another

2 hours there easily, but in all we were stranded on the island (a.k.a. The Rock) for 4 hours!!
Then we walked around fisherman’s warf on Pier 39. Except for the fact that it was FREEZING, we had a great time. We ate dinner at Wipeout and then went to go see the sea lions. But on the way we stopped by the candy store, and Mom picked up another pack of ciggies. Shelby just couldn’t bear being without her smokes. So we had another eventful night with cigarettes in hand wandering around the city.

Last night it was freezing in our little RV. And it wasn’t until morning that we figured out why. Dad forgot to close the front door of the RV cab. I swear I didn’t sleep more than 2 hours consecutively on account of the need to bundle up in order to survive.
So today we drove down the California coast some more. We stopped in Monterey Bay Warf. Very quaint cute boardwalk shopping strip kind of place. We ate lunch right next to the bay.

Than we stopped for ice cream…. It was the most disgusting experience of my life…. Here is what went down:
I asked for a strawberry sugar cone. She scooped out a large helping and handed it to me happily. I was content until I took the first lick… It was full of icy bits. Now I am not normally picky, but this was gross ice cream. So I asked if she could get me another and explained the icy situation . She agreed and then proceeded to dump MY ice cream cone BACK into the ice cream bucket. Mom stopped her and said, screamed rather, Your going to put that back??. She looked at my mom like she was crazy but decided to put the ice cream in the trash. First of all, that is GROSS… not only did I lick it, but I returned it because it was so nasty, why would she want to put it back for other customers to enjoy. But not only that, the other older gentleman working there stared at the young girl accusingly and asked what she was doing. She explained the ice situation, but they both seemed to think that putting the ice cream back was the better alternative. I swear we had to hold my mother back, she was going to tear their eyes out. It was pretty gross.

I realize I need to stop writing… I put a lot in this one, dad will be proud. Just one more crazy story:
The thing is, a few days back, in Oregon, the awning came undone in a huge windstorm, while we were crossing a bridge. You can read about the whole story on my DADS BLOG. It was pretty crazy, and we knew it wasn’t totally fixed. SO just a few minutes ago we heard a FLAP FLAP FLAP-ing noise. We knew it was the awning. We pulled over and started work. About 20 minutes later we had the beast tamed. After unrolling the entire thing, and practically setting it up for camp, we finally figured it out and rolled it bak up successfully, and now hopefully the beast will stay that way for the entirety of our trip!!
The coast was just beautiful!!!
Alright. Sorry for the long blog, but I actually have time to write now, and I am, for once, not too tired. Oh well, Enjoy!