4 Wheels 4 Girls

Friday, April first, we woke up and were ready for the the second day in the Grand Canyon. We were in such a hurry to get to the tour that we didn’t notice until we got there that Ana, wearing five of her junior ranger badges, was definitely ready to get her sixth. We all had a great laugh at the way she wore her badges. She looked pretty hilarious.
Check out this picture of Ana and her unorderly pattern of junior ranger badges.

Ana with her Junior Ranger badges

Here is a picture of the awesome Grand Canyon from the amazing view of the rim.

The Grand Canyon from the rim

We headed off to the tour and it started! We walked along the edge of the canyon and the tour guide showed us lots of juniper trees and a yucca cactus. A yucca plant is like a huge ball of spikes with swirly, curly fiber strings. One thing we learned about the yucca is you can use the fiber to make rope, baskets, and sandals. We learned the yucca plant is used in shampoos.

Yucca plant

A juniper tree is a tall, stringy, hairy-barked desert tree with bright green leaves. We learned you can use the bark for a diaper. Here’s a picture so you can see what it looks like.

Juniper Tree

On March 31st, we visited the Grand Canyon. I had seen pictures of it and people told me it was really awesome, but I never expected it to be SO awesome and huge. When we pulled into the visitor center parking lot, I couldn’t see the canyon at all. We had to take a little walk to get to the rim of the canyon after visiting the park bookstore and museum/visitor center. As soon as I saw it, I thought, “WOW. That is BEAST.” I went crazy with my camera and took tons of pictures. Here is one that I really like: 🙂

The Grand Canyon is actually WAAAY bigger than this. Can you believe it?!

We stood on the lookout for awhile, then started to walk back toward our camper. All the sudden I saw some people looking at something in the woods, so my sisters and I all ran up to where the people were standing. There was a big BDLTWH, as Stella would call it, a.k.a. Big Deer-Like Thing With Horns. We soon realized that it was an elk, and we all took tons of pictures of it! Here is a great one that I took:

There's the elk running through the woods! 🙂

When we got back to our campground, we went for pizza and talked about how our first day at the Grand Canyon was really cool. I agree! 😀

Another weird name! This little national monument is pronounced too-see-whoot, and it is in Arizona. It is a thousand year old Pueblo ruin, houses made of rock, that the Yavapai tribe lived in. There are a bunch of ruins to explore and hike through there. We started up the path and we saw two lizards. I would’ve gotten a great picture- if my camera wasn’t still on the black-and-white setting. The ruins were really cool, and I took lot of cool pictures. (after I fixed my camera! 🙂 ) Here are Ellie and Ana in front of an ancient stone wall:

Ellie and Ana standing in front of the ruins

You can see some of the pueblo ruins down the hill behind them. One family lived in each room. The doors were in the rooftops.

Here is a picture of me looking out over the Verde River Valley from the top of the ruins:

Looking out over the valley

I took this close-up picture of the patterns made by bugs under the bark of one of the wooden beams supporting the main building of the pueblo:

Insects turned this beam into a work of art

The ruins were really cool, and after seeing them it made me glad that I live in a modern house. The pueblo was nice, but there were a lot of things that are much improved today.

The hike would have been a lot nicer if it wasn’t so HOT. When we got back to the visitor center, two nice park rangers, Lisa and John, taught us a lot about the park. We went there on March 31. I really liked Tuzigoot National Monument! 🙂

On March 30, we left from phoenix and headed to a place were my mom had never been before. We crossed three mountain ranges. Coming down the side of the third mountain, we came to a neat little town called Jerome on the side of the mountain. We saw small houses and a few cars. The houses were all built along the winding road on the side of the mountain. They were built one on top of the other down the side. Then we drove a little farther and saw stores and people. We got even farther and then my mom said, “Look, there’s a big, old hotel over there.” We all looked and we thought it was really cool. Then we stopped and got out to look back at the town.

An old mining town way up on the side of a mountain

Jerome was a mining town a hundred years ago. Then everybody left and they called it a ghost town because the buildings were all empty. Now people came back and live there.

I had the girls to myself because Jean had to travel on business for a few days. We dropped her off at the Phoenix airport on Sunday morning and picked her up again on Tuesday evening, March 29. It was awfully good to have her back with us.

From the airport, we drove down to Florence, AZ to spend some time with Uncle Dan and Aunt Sarah. We arrived late but were welcomed with open arms. A wonderful neighbor, Wes, invited us to park our camper alongside his home. The following day offered swimming for the girls and very nice time spent with Dan, Sarah, Wes, and Arlene. We all had lunch together; homemade chili and root beer floats.

Our Favorite Relatives in Florence, AZ

You’re probably thinking, What the heck does that mean? Well, can you guess? I couldn’t.
Asah Gweh Oou-o is the Native American name for Eagle View, which was the awesome campground we stayed at for two days and two nights with only Dad. You might be thinking I had a terrible time, but it was actually great with only Dad. He was so fun- he hauled himself over to the pool, because we weren’t allowed in there without someone over the age of 16. I felt really bad dragging him to the pool, both days, when we were supposed to be spending time with him. He brought his computer and worked in the shade under a gazebo-like-thing in a chair with rubber straps where you sit and stretch your legs out. He looked pretty comfortable to me, so I started to felt less guilty.

I had so much fun in the nice, heated pool, where I could do front and backflips, where I could be free and have fun, even if I looked dumb sometimes. But what really made me feel good was making new friends and having fun with them. My sisters and I did relay races with our new friend, Sarah, and taught each other different strokes in swimming. We all had a lot of great laughs at the attempts, and wore ourselves out.

Dad was great with us. Even as we were leaving, and trying to pack up the bikes, he let us ride them around the campground with our friend. As we were biking, Dad took our picture next to a big Saguaro cactus. When you look at this, you can see how big they really are.

You can get a feel for how big the saquaro are

Our time at Eagle View passed too quickly for me. I just had so much fun, it was hard to leave.

On Saturday, March 26, it was a bumpy ride into Saguaro National Park. Our dad told us that the cacti we were looking at were saguaro. We saw huge saguaro standing with arms pointing in all directions. There were mountains covered with saguaro and other types of cactus. The saguaro looked like tall prickly green things with arms. Daddy said the saguaro looked like crowds of people standing around all over the mountains. When you looked at the saguaro closely, you saw lines and lines of prickles and you even saw holes in them. The holes had birds flying in and out of them. A park ranger told us later the birds were cactus wren.

On the ground were prickly pear cactus. All of a sudden, our dad yelled, “There’s a critter by that prickly pear cactus!” We all looked and saw the critter. He was a small and cute rodent, and he ran away quickly.

After driving on the bumpy road for a long time, we finally saw a sign that said “Visitor Center 1 mile.” We all cheered because we had finally made it to our destination. We did the junior ranger program. We watched a short movie about saguaro.

Dad says saguaro teach us to reach high

We went for a walk in the desert and looked for birds. Here are some pictures of us imitating some of the cacti we saw:

Ellie as an Ocotillo

Dad as a Chain-fruit Cholla

Stella as Saguaro. Dad says they teach us good posture, too.

Greta as a Prickly-Pear

At the campground near Chiricahua, they served waffles for breakfast. Once we got to sleep, I was dreaming about waffles. We made our waffles in the morning. I had two waffles and Barb gave me a lot of syrup. She was nice.

In Chiricahua, the first thing I saw was a big rock with a little rock under it, balanced.

Holding up a huge boulder with one hand

After Chiricahua, we drove to a city name Tucson. We ordered a pizza. The pizza took a long time so we went out to see some fire-dancing. There was a boy and a girl. She had a stick of fire and a hula-hoop with fire on it. He had a stick with fire and then he had a rope with fire on it. It was very cool. Our pizza came. It was very yummy. 🙂

On our hike into Chiricahua I had to overcome my fear of heights. When we got on the trail to hike down from the top, I looked over the side and I saw a huge drop. I knew I was not up for this walk. I was scared because I did not like being up high where there was nothing to support you. For a long time, I did not like the hike at all. I knew I couldn’t be scared for the rest of the hike, so I decided I had to stop being scared.

We had lunch at a big rock hanging over the edge. I was really scared but I decided I was going to get up on the rock and look over. When I looked over, it wasn’t that bad. Then we continued our long hike down.

Up high in the grottos along the trail

Hey aren’t you glad I can pronounce that let alone spell it? Haha. On March 25th, we went to this awesome national monument. When we got there we had to get on a whole bunch of hiking gear ’cause we planned to cover a lot of ground in the park. In the visitor center there was a very nice park ranger named Suzanne who taught us a lot about the park AND she got us a ride up to the top of the ridge. When we got there we started to hike down the ridge and look at the spectacular rock formations. We hiked along an easy trail for a while and really enjoyed the beautiful view of the balanced rocks. All the huge rocks looked like statues of Native Americans standing in a big cluster. After about a mile or so we got hungry and stopped for lunch after exploring some really cool rock grottos. We sat on these nice smooth rocks in the shade and enjoyed the view. Here is a picture of Stella and I eating lunch:

Eating lunch on the rocks

After lunch we had food in our bellies, but we still had quite a ways to go; at least a few miles. The hike was nice but soon my sisters started to get tired and the signs were showing. We started to go up a longer steeper hill but we didn’t have a flashlight (it was going to get late) so we decided against it. When we were about halfway back down to the visitor center we stopped for Girl Scout cookies. (yum! 🙂 ) After five miles of hiking we finally made it back, and Ellie and Ana saved the last of their energy to run the last 100 yards. I thought they were insane. We ate another cookie at the bottom.

I forget exactly where we took this, so I’ll just put it in here. Here we are in front of a big balanced rock:

Geez don't you think that rock has to work hard to stay in that position!?

I really liked Chiricahua National Monument! 🙂