Horses and sheep (2)

On Monday morning Jeff and the big two went off trail riding! It was the first time any of the kids had been on a horse. Adam and Ellie went off into the trails for an hour. I think they were both a little nervous, but when they got back they had had a great time! Ellie was in the lead, and she reportedly had some problems in stopping her horse from stopping to graze all the time; and when her horse stopped, they all stopped.  So I think it was a pretty slow ride!

Of course we couldn't leave Kate and Nicholas out of the fun.They each did a fifteen minute ride, and loved it.

After horse riding we drove through Zion into Springdale and had a late lunch, and then stopped at the Zion visitor centre. On our first drive through the park on Sunday we had seen a couple of bighorn sheep. At the visitor centre I learned that bighorn sheep were extinct in the park in the 1950s, and reintroduced in the 1970s. There are about 150 sheep in the park now, and the poster said it was considered rare to see a sighting of them.

On our drive home I was telling the kids all this, and telling them how lucky they were that they had seen bighorn sheep yesterday, when cars slowed down in front of us - to make way for a herd of bighorn sheep. There must have been forty to fifty animals, right there! Most of them ran off but we stopped the car and took pictures of the slower ones!

The drive back through the east side of the park was really spectacular and grew to be one of my favourite sights... despite the double drawback of the mountain roads and the tunnel, which I eventually got used to! Before we left Jeff had been having problems with vertigo due to a sinus infection and he said he was about 90% recovered... which was great, except when we were on those terrible roads. Then I was asking him how his head was on every single bend! After a couple of drives through the park I identified what was making me so nervous....any time there is a sheer drop on the other side, they put a tiny little two foot wall on the edge of the road. It's so small it won't save you from going over. All it does is remind you that there's a sheer drop off a thousand foot cliff on the other side. Thanks, road builders! I hated the sight of those pointless little walls!

I loved the green on red, everywhere we looked

Checkerboard Mesa