4 Wheels 4 Girls

On May 13 we drove from the stables to the Monterey town were we hopped out and took a walk.

Our campground in Monterey was next to some horse stables. All the stable doors looked like this.

First we went to a barber shop to get Daddy a hair cut. We read some books and then Daddy’s hair cut finally ended so we could move on. When we got outside it was so cold. We walked to the Cannery Row. We were so hungry. I saw a sight that made me go crazy. Cinnamon buns! Warm, hot, steamy on a cold, freezing day. We could smell them.

On Cannery Row with John Steinbeck, who is wearing a very fancy hat.

We keep on walking and got our pictures taken and then went back to the RV and had lunch. We were having tuna salad and chicken salad. I do not like either. Daddy made me have both. I got real mad. Then he made me a hummus sandwich. After that we left. I had a great time but a cold time.

On May 11th we drove Mommy to the airport. We got there at night and I was fast asleep. All of a sudden, a huge noise woke me up. Be quiet, I thought. I was so, so, so mad at that airplane. Then I fell fast asleep. Guess what happened! Another dumb airplane woke me up again. I was fast asleep when uhhh there were so many airplanes. I don’t think you will want to hear me telling you the same thing over and over again.

Noisy airplanes are not good

In the morning my mom got packed up and left. I cried and then Daddy came and cheered me up a little and I hopped out of bed and ate breakfast. Stella helped Daddy navigate us to a place were we got our oil changed. When we got there they made us get out and go to the waiting room. Greta brought Uno so we played a couple of rounds and then they told us that the RV was ready. After that we went to San Francisco.

On May 8th we woke up and it was Mothers’ Day. Happy Mothers’ Day, Mommy. I love you so much.

When I got out of bed I got paper, markers, and color pencils. I wrote a card. Then we went for a walk into Yosemite Village. We went to the Yosemite Cemetery and we searched for some people that we needed to find out some things about them for our junior ranger badges. It was so boring. We went to Caleb Clarke’s grave and saw that he had planted giant sequoia trees around his own grave. We also learned that there were two girls that were best friends. There names were Florence and Effie. Florence died at age 17 and Effie died at age 14. They died a month apart.

After that we went to the to the Curry Village to go get breakfast. When we got there we asked a lady where the buffet was and she said it was closed so we went to the store and got bread and milk. Then we went back to the RV and made french toast.

After that we got out and went on a walk back to Yosemite Village. Daddy did not come on the walk with us, he stayed home. We went to the store and got Stella two bear key chains and got Ana a pencil case. We went to the museum.

Ana and John Muir. Dad says they are contemplating the Sierras, but I think Ana is just posing for the picture.

In Yosemite Valley, we saw waterfalls everywhere. They were pouring down and you could hear them very clearly. They sprayed water everywhere. Sometimes it sounded like huge boulders coming crashing down. When you got some mist on you it felt like needles raining down. It hurt a little. My favorite waterfall was called horsetail. I think there were 100 waterfalls in that park. I had so much fun there.

On May 3rd we finished our Death Valley junior ranger packets. When we got to the Visitor Center, we went to a table and looked at an album that taught you about the park. We had to look for a nocturnal animal. Guess what? I got a Badger. Don’t you think they are not nocturnal?

We turned in our junior ranger packets. Ranger Mike did our packets and our pledge. He was so nice.

Us with Ranger Mike

We went to the Salt River to see pupfish. When we got there we were all so hot. My dad and Ana and Greta left and me and Mommy and Stella stayed and locked up the RV. Then we came and saw minnows which were actually pupfish. We walked up to Daddy and said look at the pupfish. I thought they were so cute. We saw males chasing each other around and around. I told Daddy that I wanted one as a pet because they were cute.

Watching pupfish at the Salt River

After that we left Death Valley. I had fun but I hated the hotness.

We went to a lunch buffet at Treasure Island. Our dad told us to get a lot of vegetables and healthy food before we went to the desert line. I got mashed potatoes, bbq ribs, a biscuit, and a huge caesar’s salad. I felt a little full, but I remembered it was time for desert. Me and Stella ran to get our deserts. We split some cinnamon donuts and powdered donuts, and we each grabbed a cookie. We also got ice cream; Stella got chocolate vanilla swirl and I got tropical fruit. Greta told us she had gotten malted milk balls. We all went back and got malted milk balls, three each. We stuffed them in our pockets to save them for later because they were so good.

Dad says this picture sums up Las Vegas better than anything else

After lunch we continued our walk along the Vegas Strip.

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.

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

When we got out of bed on Easter morning, we all ran to see what we got. We got jellybeans and malted milk balls, and we also got a chocolate bunny. We had no basket so the easter bunny put our candy in a bowl. It took me about three day to eat all of it.

Here we are with our easter candy

But the best thing was a knitted bunny that Stella made for me.

Here is the bunny that Stella knitted for me

We also got a hip pack. My hip pack is green. A hip pack is something that you put your stuff in while you are hiking. I like my hip pack because we go hiking a lot so we can use it a lot of the time.

After that we made french toast. Me and Ana made the french toast together. It was so good.

April 23rd, we went to Dead Horse Point. Once again we got our Junior Ranger packets and looked through it and then we started it. We worked for a while and then we started our hike. We actually went to a lookout first. When we got there you could look down and see the Colorado River 2000 feet below. It seemed like it was straight down below us.

Here is me and my family way up on the cliff

We stayed there for a short while and then we left to go on the real hike. Right when me and Ana got on the trail we loved it already. Why? Because my mom told us that we could climb on rocks.

Here is Stella looking over the edge. It goes straight down.

Dead Horse Point got its name because some ranchers herded wild horses into the natural corral at the top of the cliffs so they could pick out the ones they wanted. One time the ranchers forgot about the horses and they left. The horses starved to death.

We hiked for a while and got our pictures and then we headed back to the RV. When we got back we turned in our Junior Ranger packets and got our badges. We also turned in our Red Rock Ranger packet that we had worked on for a really long time. To get our Red Rock Ranger badge, we had to visit and become Junior Rangers at three national parks and one state park, all in the southeastern corner of Utah. We ended up doing even more: we visited four of the national parks and two of the state parks, and they were all great.

Then we left Dead Horse Point. I had great fun!