Today we stopped in Alcove Springs. It is beautiful here and I never want to leave. Today we had a real lunch. Not just some leftovers from breakfast. We had rabbit soup with potatoes and other vegetables, fresh picked berries, and the best part was for dessert. We had delicious apple cobbler. It was amazing. Darn. We ate it all under a nice tree in the shade and enjoyed our day. I do wish we could eat this yummy food for the rest of the trail but I know we can't. We aren't staying here for much longer so we are going to have to go back to leftover breakfast for lunch. To relax I played in the springs. It was so fun. We haven't had much time to rest so just swimming around was really nice. It's also nice for all of the animals to rest on this trip. They still have a very long way to go so getting a couple of days of rest must be great for them. We need them to be well rested so that they can make it to Oregon. Even though we are having a lot of fun we still have chores to do. We do have fresh water around so we wash clothes for the whole day. It is a lot of work but at least my clothes aren't covered in dirt, dust, and other disgusting stuff. We learned about all of the games and toys the kinds and adults used on the trail. I researched the cup and ball toy. I have one of these at home and it's a lot of fun. There are tons and tons of other things that the pioneers used to occupy themselves on the trail. Some of them include cat's cradle, and tag.

I was so surprised that 97.24% of the Earth's water is salt water. I was so sure that more than half of the Earth's water was fresh/ I just thought that because of the amount of lakes, rivers, streams, and so much other stuff that the amount of fresh water would be much higher. The real percentage of the Earth's fresh water is 2.761%. Even though there are a lot of oceans and oceans are very, very salty, I still thought that fresh water would be a higher percent. Glaciers, ice caps, lakes, rivers and tons of other stuff, water in the air, ground, on the surface, and in the ice all are fresh water but the percentage is still 2.761%. I was shocked. My predictions were really off but I did learn a lot in this lesson.

I thought that learning about Yellowstone National Park from a professional because she had a lot of great information. The hot springs were really cool because you wouldn't really expect that it was a hot spring because of how it looks. It really just looked like some colorful rocks. I also thought that the geysers were really cool because they were like giant fountains. I liked this skype a lot.

Q: What bodies of surface water did you find while examining the three maps?
A:  While examining the three maps, I found lakes, rivers, oceans, reservoirs, inlets, and channels,
Q: Were there any types of surface water on the Arlington Heights map that you weren’t able to find on the Illinois map? If so, why?
A: There were a couple of lakes on the Arlington Heights map that I couldn't see on the Illinois map. I don't know why I couldn't see them on the Illinois map though. Maybe because that they are very small lakes.
Q: Were there any types of surface water on the Illinois map that you couldn’t find on the United States map? If so, why?
A: I couldn't see a lot of the rivers, and smaller lakes on the us map that were on the Illinois map. I again think that it is because of the size.
Q: What are some names of the bodies of water in Illinois and Arlington Heights? What bodies of water did you identify?
A: There is Lake Arlington, Lake Springfield, and the Chicago River. There were lakes and rivers in Illinois.

I thought that skyping with Richard Chapman was really cool because he gave us a lot of facts and tips about the Oregon Trail. It also made our class feel good when he said that we were an amazing class, we asked great questions, and that we made his day and week. He wasn't even talking about the Oregon Trail but he incorperated it into his lesson which I thought was nice.

Q: Overall, I think that the Science Fair was a valuable experience because...
A: It made me feel more comfortable talking to crowds of people. I also learned a lot from my actual experiment and project.
Q: I definitely made some mistakes along the way, but I learned from them. Here are some examples...
A: I didn't tell people about how I started growing the plants and I didn't start by saying my name.
Q: If I were give the chance to do anything differently, I would...
A: Be a lot louder and explain my project a lot better.