4 Wheels 4 Girls

On Tuesday night, April 26, we drove from Bryce Canyon back toward Kodachrome. Dad said it was going to be so cold at Bryce that we needed to drive down to Cannonville for the night so our pipes wouldn’t freeze. We stayed at a KOA campground that night and this is what I wrote the following morning:

This morning I woke up from a good dream about school and my friends because of the sun. It was SO bright and it even kinda hurt my eyes. I opened up my curtain/blinds and I saw lots–and I mean lots– of birds. They were on the grass next to our camping spot, probably searching for worms or something. I saw one that plucked a worm out of the grassy soil, and it was pretty cool. Then another bird landed with the others, and it was definitely the prettiest of all. All the others were black and brown like normal birds, but this one was pretty amazing. First of all, it was pretty big. All of it was black like the other birds except for the head. At first I thought my eyes were tricking me, but when I concentrated a little more, I was sure it had a yellow head. I even took a picture to make sure, and here it is.

Here is the bird with the yellow head

Well anyway, then I went to take a shower and I silently sang about being a cowgirl, (which I REALLY want to be) and stood in there for at least 20 minutes. It was so hot, and it felt so good. When I finally finished, I hopped out and headed back to the RV.

Later, when we were leaving the KOA, Ellie, Greta, and I decided to go over to the playground. It looked pretty boring to me but we’d find a way to make it fun–somehow. ( I was the first one out, of course, ’cause I don’t think I need to look extremely nice just to go to the playground, and by the way, I was wearing jean-shorts and a t-shirt that said “No more school, see you at the pool” which is funny because I had just told Ellie and Greta to meet me at the pool; it was right next to where the RV was parked. ) I stood by the pool as it was being filled up. I thought I was going to be bored waiting for my sisters but nooo, I glanced at the pool and I saw, like, a 20-foot-long drunk snake that looked like it was having a seizure. I got interested and looked closer. Oh my gosh – it was not – it was – a hose!! A hose that was supposed to be filling up the pool! I guess it kinda was, but all it looked like it was doing to me was spraying water out of the pool! And it kept wiggling around like – like it was drunk! It would shoot up into the air, almost spraying me, even though I was outside the fence, and then flop back down into the, like, inch of water it had filled! It was just – so — *sigh*

Ellie and Greta finally came out, and I showed them the drunk snake/hose. Ellie laughed but Greta cracked up, and she thought it was so funny that she said, ” Hold on!” , and dashed back inside the RV. When she came out, guess what she was holding? Her camera! She took a video of it and we stood there, watching it for a long time. Dad says I can’t post Greta’s video because it takes up a lot of space on the computer and website, so hopefully I described it well enough.

Anyway, after we got bored with the hose, ( which took a really long time) we decided to check out the General Store at the entrance to the KOA on the way to the playground. I looked around at the magnets, postcards, little packs of candy, bags of Trail Mix, bottles of water, homemade Navajo jewelry, Guatemalan weaved bracelets, tennis and ping-pong balls, sports equipment, dish-soap, t-shirts, sweatshirts, other items of clothing, Birthday and Get Well cards, soap containers, and other items of interest. In the back of the room, I spotted something that made my eyes light up…. a cowboy hat!!! Oh my gosh! I ran over there and tried one of them on. It was too big. I tried another one on. It was too small. Oh, no, I thought, I hope this one fits! And I really did; it was the only one left, plus, I really loved it! I tried it on and…. IT FIT!!! I was so excited! But I still didn’t know if Jean and Dad would allow me to get it. Greta looked over. ” Ooo, that looks good on you! ” I smiled. ” Thanks.” Ellie looked over, too. ” Oh, yeah, that looks really good!” I kept smiling. I hoped it did. But I really hoped I could get it!

I showed it to Jean and Dad and I recieved the exciting news. It’s mine!

Anyway, now it is the day I am submitting this post. You will see a picture of my hat in the next post. I wear my hat every day. I love it so much, I even wear it when it’s 110 degrees outside! ( Okay, okay, Daddy made me wear it, but it really was 110 degrees!) I’m inside right now and I’m wearing it! I thank that KOA so much and I’m glad we got to stay.

After checking out the visitor center and watching the park movie, we went to the Bryce Canyon Lodge. It was nice and cozy, and the family got our own little area with a coffee table, couches, and armchairs. We drank hot chocolate which tasted so good after being outside in the freezing cold. After hanging out for a bit, we ate dinner at the lodge restaurant. I had a burger and fries, something I haven’t had at a restaurant since I was probably six, but it still tasted good. We ordered two bowls of elk chili, and everyone thought it was delicious.

After dinner there was a ranger program in the lodge auditorium about astronomy. It was really interesting, and the ranger, Ranger Ron, was great, inviting people up to do hands-on experiments. It was a great way to get the crowd to enjoy the talk. I liked learning about the color spectrum, exoplanets, and lots of other great stuff.

We left the lodge pretty late, so we got in bed while Jean took us to our campground. It was a fun and exhausting day! 😉

Tuesday, April 26, we hopped out of the RV, realizing how cold it was. I had stepped out in jeans, a sweatshirt, and almost completely bare feet except my brown and pink-flowered flip-flops. Man, my feet were as cold as ice! I can’t even describe how freezing they were! ( You know what I wish I could do? I wish I could take a video, I mean, like, not a video, but…. I guess a video, where if I posted it on this website, and you played it, you would feel freezing cold wind blowing out of your computer, just as cold as it was for us, as we were standing there. Wouldn’t that be so cool?! ) Well anyway, I really can’t describe how freezing it was, especially since I don’t know how many degrees it was. (Dad says it got down to 15 degrees that night.)

So, as you should know, I was really cold, and we had to go on a hike. Well, not really a hike, but a short walk down to the lookout. I had been groaning and moaning about having to go out in the cold, but really, it was…. I guess worth it.

We began walking to Bryce Canyon Lookout, and I wanted so bad to complain about my feet being cold, not to be annoying, but because they hurt from the cold, but I was afraid I’d just get yelled at. So I didn’t say anything. I wanted to run or at least jog down the trail to the lookout, ’cause I was freezing, but Jean and Dad said no way, that’s very dangerous. I guess that was true. I looked around me and thought, Yeah, I don’t really want to run. When we finally made it down to the end of the lookout, I stared over the edge. I really did think this hike would be boring, but…. It looked like a soft pink and white castle with shiny white pearls and stony pink walls that would block any water that would come near….

Dad writes: The pink and white hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. And I write: I don't think this is the right picture, because, in real life, it looked really pink and really white.

“Wow, this is awesome…” I whispered to myself and I kept staring over the edge. After I had seen it all I said, ” Can we go now? I mean, back to the camper? ” Dad kept looking over the railing and Jean nodded and said, ” You can start heading back, but take your sisters with you. ” So I collected my sisters and I jogged back up the hill.

I road most of the Kodachrome Basin bike trail in the company of Ana and Ellie. As Greta wrote, it was a difficult ride. There was a nice path but it was very sandy and soft with lots of ups and downs. Often there were tight curves and sometimes big rocks (and sticks) to navigate around.

This photo typifies the bike trail: sand, obstacles, and hardship.

The trail was designed for those who had a range of gears on their bikes and knew how to use them. That was not our case. Ana’s bike doesn’t have any gears at all, nor even a handbreak. Elllie has a nice new bike with all the necessary features but it’s a bit big for her, and she hasn’t had much experience using it. Anyway, it was a very challenging ride for me, I could only watch and admire the girls as they did their best. I was amazed at how much of the trail that they were able navigate. They kept going, riding their bikes when they could and pushing them the rest of the time. They kept going even though they were so TIRED. The final stretch back to the RV was the last straw. It was on paved road, which everyone was very happy about, but it didn’t take long to realize we’d have to ride the last mile straight into the wind. At last we arrived at the campground exhausted. While the ride was miserable in many ways, it was great doing it with Ellie and Ana. They did all they could to keep going and to make the best of a the situation.

Ana zips along the trail

On Tuesday, April 26th, we got up in the morning at a nice campground in Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah. I wasn’t very excited about the day to begin with, but every bit of positive energy I had in me melted away like dripping ice cream cone when I heard that Dad was making us go on a bike ride. Normally I would be somewhat happy about biking, but there were many reasons why I didn’t want to go on this one. For one, we had just been on a tough six-mile hike the day before, and my legs were still aching from it. Second, it was COLD. I mean like I’m-in-a-ton-of-layers-but-it’s-still-freezing kind of cold. I loved my warm bed and I would be perfectly happy to stay in it all day long. But I dragged myself up anyway and got ready despite all my contradicting feelings.

Then a crazy thing happened. It started to snow! Actually, it was a mix of rain, sleet, snow, and hail, and I tell you, it was GROSS. I was very unhappy when our bike-riding plans were not cancelled. Dad would not give up and he went outside to get the bikes down from the RV. After a lot of complaining, we were ready to go on this horrific bike ride.

Preparing the bikes in an unexpected snowfall.

By the time we were all outside the strange snow had abruptly stopped and the sun was shining although it was still cold. We left the campground and biked a little ways down the road to get to our trailhead. When we biked just a few feet on the sandy 6-mile trail, every single one of us realized that it was going to be a very hard bike-ride. The trail was sandy and hilly and just terrible. Even though the trail was awful, Dad was determined and he wouldn’t turn around. He wanted to complete the full six miles. After biking a bit on the difficult sand, Stella and Ellie were incredibly discouraged. I was actually starting to like the ride ’cause we all hated it together. I even went with Dad on a little off-trail that led to a place called Panorama Point. It was so steep that we had to get off our bikes and walk the rest of the way to the point.

Exhausted at the top of Panorama Point

We had to bike really fast to catch up to our family, and I tell you, biking this trail was hard work. We were in our lowest gears and it was still so tough to pedal through the thick sand. We sometimes had to get off our bikes and walk them in the middle of a hill because it was too steep to bike up. When we caught up we had to stop for a bit because Ana’s chain had fallen off her bike. Also, we had multiple wipeouts so we had to stop for those too.

Stella, Dad and I went on another turnoff called Cool Cave. We had to leave our bikes along the trail for that one also. It was a little slot canyon with a big circular room in the middle. It was really neat.

This cave was really a small slot canyon. The white in the walls is calcium carbonate.

We caught up to Jean, Ellie, and Ana and we biked for quite a bit until we finally came to the end of the trail! Haha I wish. We came to the place where we split off for Panorama Point, and this was a huge letdown. Everyone thought that we were getting close to the end, and then we find out we’ve still got a ways to go. We eventually made it to the end of the trail, and we all cheered for each other as we passed the “finish line.” You’d think we’d be done, but we still had a little further on the road before we got to the campground. My sisters hated this because the long stretch was uphill and we were biking straight into the wind. But we did make it, (YAY!!! :D) exhausted and hungry. Lunch sure tasted good after that!

On April 25th, we went on a hike to Calf Creek Falls. It was in the Calf Creef Canyon in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. We put on warm clothes, filled our waterbottles, and started our six mile hike. When we got going, my dad took a wrong turn; it let to the wrong side of the creek. We got turned around, and my mom teased my dad about making a wrong turn.

Once we got on the real trail, we started our hike to the waterfall. We walked on sand. My dad spotted a mini-arch.

This may be the smallest arch we have seen so far

Stella spotted a small cave. We all ran to see what it looked like inside. There was a window in the side of the wall. It was sort of cold in there and we saw a wall inside. We thought maybe some people have stayed in there.

A small cave with a window. Can you see everyone inside?

We came to a sage forest–it smelled so good when we walked through. Greta spotted a fish in the creek as it swam under the bank. The rest of us couldn’t see it because it was hiding.

We saw a plant with little holly leaves. Stella says it is called a Datura. It made us miss our Aunt Holly.

Thinking of you, Aunt Holly!

We walked for a long time until we heard a huge sound of rushing water. We ran to see what was making so much noise. When we got there, we saw a huge waterfall in a big opening in the canyon. We also saw some plants clutching the rocks in the water on the cliffs. Dad says they were ferns.

The Calf Creek Falls, or at least the bottom of them. They fall from way high up.

Me and Ana got sticks and dropped them in the pool and let them flow downstream. We had a snack at the waterfall. We had sausages, almonds, apples, oranges, and crackers.

Then we headed back up the trail and out of the canyon. On the way back, we all saw a few fish. They were gray with orange fins. Dad says they were trout of some kind.

After the hike, we went to Escalante, Utah, where we got our first Junior Scientist badge at one of the Grand Staircase visitor centers. Greta says it was a Junior Scientist badge instead of a Junior Ranger badge because Grand Staircase is managed by the Bureau of Land Management instead of the National Park Service. We did the whole Junior Scientist booklet to get some extra stuff. It turns out the extra stuff was some plastic cards about canyoneering and hiking safety. I thought we should have gotten something better than plastic cards.

This is one big collared lizard at the Grand Staircase-Escalante visitor center

We drove through a very nice little town called Boulder, and then down into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, headed for Calf Creek Canyon where we would hike the next morning. The road down was basically a controlled fall out of the sky, weaving down the top of a thin ridge between two canyons. The views on both sides were stunning.

When we reached the mouth of the Calf Creek Canyon, we were informed that we could not stay overnight at the trailhead campground, and the nearest place to camp for us was eight miles back up the road, on top of the ridge. Sigh.

So we turned around and drove back up the 14% grade to camp at the top. The bright side of this story is that we got to experience the beautiful views all over again the next morning, driving down the ridge into the canyon a second time.

Looking down into Calf Creek Canyon from the ridge above

April 24, we drove through Dixie National Forest. We were on our way from Capitol Reef to the Grand Staircase National Monument. Me, Greta, and Ellie were hanging out on Greta’s bed. We stopped at the top of a mountain and Jean said, “Girls come out, it’s time for dinner.” I came out and asked, “Are we at our campground?,” but looked outside and didn’t need an answer. I had been watching out the window along the drive and saw patches of snow on the ground. But, I didn’t realize that it was actually snowing. Hard. It was kinda cool, because it felt like were eating in a blizzard. Which we kinda were.

Aspen trees in the snow

I felt so safe inside the RV. The view was amazing. There were white, snowy mountains with tall evergreen trees. It felt like we could see all the world below us. Dad said it made him feel so small. Down below and across the world, it seemed, stood the Capitol Dome. It looked so tiny and far away, when just that morning it towered over us.

The only thing better would be if there were bighorn sheep.

Dad on the hill where we ate dinner, but after it snowed. Capitol Reef is down below him on the left.

One day Daddy left his big pitcher of tea on the side of the counter when Mommy started to drive down a bumpy road. We know that if it falls, it makes a huge mess. It has fallen twice before. Ellie and I realized it was going to fall again. She ran up and caught it just in time. Then Daddy said he was so grateful that the next time we have ice cream she could have half of his ice cream as well as hers.

That pitcher is in a dangerous spot

On Easter we went to Capitol Reef National Park. At Capitol Reef we hiked to a natural bridge. Me and Ellie were playing horses. Along the way, Mama spotted a little natural bridge. I didn’t see it, so she had to point it out to me. It had three bridges over where water runs when it rains, and we could stand on it and under it.

This natural bridge was easy to go under and walk over

Once we got to the big natural bridge, Stella took a picture of it. She was the only one to take a picture.

This picture looks lopsided, but actually the world is lopsided.

On the way back, me and Ellie found a rock that we could sit inside. It looked sort of like an arch. Someday, maybe it will become an arch.

This rock looked like an arch

At Capitol Reef we drove through an orchard. In a flash we were at the Visitor Center. We got our junior ranger packets as usual and filled them in. We had a ranger talk with Ranger Crystal. She was very nice. She told us what trees are in the orchard and what animals live here and how Capitol Reef got its name. One reason Capitol Reef got its name is because there is a mountainish thing that looks like the Capitol building. Ranger Crystal told us that the old schoolhouse was never bigger for all its life; it was always small.

Capitol Dome at Capitol Reef National Park

We checked out our junior ranger packets with Ranger Rick. He was very nice. He asked me a lot of questions and he told us about a lot of things. I liked his stories because he told us about the kids in the old schoolhouse.