Wednesday, April 13th

I have had to concede.  I can not keep up a journal for posting while I am here.  It may happen yet, but we are filling each day with more than a day's-worth of fun and frolic.  It is after midnight when we 4 girls make ourselves go to bed, saying, "We'll catch up on sleep and not get up early tomorrow."  But we are up before 7 each morning, and off we go!

We wasted no time to start our first hike; the morning after I arrived.

We went up the canyon to hike up into the Anasazi hills. 

Jo and Lou getting started at the valley floor:

(Two essentials, water and t-paper!) 

We have "Indian Paintbrush" in the NW, but it won't bloom until mid-summer, and it will be orange-red.

This was so lovely, this coral variety.  What was interesting was that these cactus-type thorny things surrounded every paintbrush we saw, very protectively:

Our goal, at the top of the Anasazi Mountains was to find the petroglyphs.

We didn't know what to expect, so we were thrilled to find so many, and such varied "rock writings", called "Tempi' Po' Op' "

Near the top, we scrambled amongst huge, angular, sharp rocks to discover the "writings".  The day was warm, but we were comfortable because of a constant breeze.

Here, myself (in the bulky but indispensable camera vest), JoAnn, Vickie:

More of the fascinating petroglyphs.  This view and others were hard-earned because of the steep slopes, and the fact that most of the writings were on the down-slope side where it was difficult to climb.  Well worth the effort, though!

I make this one small, because it is one of Jo's pics, with different pixels:

It was most certainly more than a thousand feet right below us to the valley floor!

This little guy was sure-footed, of course, and we saw a few:

This lizard moved incredibly fast for his larger size:

We rewarded ourselves with a wonderful lunch at Xetava restaurant at Kayenta, a Snow Canyon artsy community.  Our table was outside; the patio was wall-enclosed, with windows in the adobe:

Late afternoon, and we visited an historic site: the Jacob Hamblin House.  Since MaryLou and her husband Fred served in the St. George area as historic site missionaries, we got more fascinating details from her after our tour: