4 Wheels 4 Girls

April 29th, we got up early to go catch a shuttle with Ranger Sonja to get a tour of Zion Canyon. Ranger Sonja checked off all our names and we saw she had a caterpillar crawling up her arm. On the tour, Ranger Sonja told us all about the canyon. We learned a rockfall happened one year and people were trapped at the Zion Lodge. We learned that three mountain peaks in a row were called the three patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they were named by the Mormons who settled there. We learned how to tell the difference between a California Condor and a Turkey Vulture: Turkey Vultures usually fly in groups, Condors by themselves; Turkey Vultures have white feather tips on their wings, but Condors have white on the leading edge of their wings; Condors are the biggest bird in North America with a wingspan of more than nine feet. We also learned that at one time the Condor was almost extinct. There were only 22 left. Now there are about 400.

We saw a seep spring along the tour. A seep spring is where water comes out of the sandstone. Water at the top of the canyon get soaked into the sandstone and flows down through the canyon walls until it hits the harder rock layers below. Then it has to go sideways and seeps out of the sandstone walls. It can take a thousand years for the water to go from the top of the canyon to where it seeps out. Ranger Sonja told us all the water in the park comes from the seep springs. Someone spotted a duck swimming in a pond up on the canyon wall below the seep spring.

We could look up and see Angels’ Landing, where we hiked the day before. We couldn’t see Walter’s Wiggles, but we could see the top of them where we stopped. And, we could see the narrow ridge that you had to hold on to chains to get to the end of the trail at the tip of Angels’ Landing. Looking at it from below, it was easy to see why we decided not to hike that part of the trail.

From the floor of Zion Canyon we could see the Angels' Landing hike. The part of the hike with the chains goes along the top of the dark ridge from the right side all the way up to the tip.

We drove to St. George to drop off my mom. She had to fly to Denver for work. I felt sad having to take Mom to her second flight away from us.

After we dropped my mom off, we made enchiladas for dinner. We mixed the chicken and beans and cheese and stuff inside the tortillas and covered them with salsa and put them in the oven. We were really hunger while we were waiting for them to cook. The timer finally went off, but then we remembered we had to sprinkle cheese on them and let them cook for five more minutes. We were really unhappy because we had to wait such a long time while we were smelling them, but they tasted so good. We all had seconds.