Stairway to (Polliwog) Heaven

So... we're walking down Capitol Gorge and we notice a sign where the canyon gets wide. It says "<---Tanks" with the arrow pointing up the cliff. It was time to explore, so we headed up a stairway carved in the stone. Once on top, this was the view that greeted us.  If you look really carefully, you can see Andrew and Chad down in the Gorge. They sat this part of the trip out.

We found a bunch of potholes in the bottom of a canyon leading to the Gorge. It had just rained a day before, so they were full of water. The kids soon discovered one of the secrets of the desert. When these potholes fill up with water, they are soon teeming with life. The kids found water skeeters, fresh water shrimp, miniature fishes and POLLIWOGS!

T

The kids caught all sorts of little critters and soon had 20 or so polliwogs in various stages of creation. some with no legs, some with two or four, and even some that were little toads hopping around the pools. There were a few of the kids who had to be restrained from swimming with the amphibians. Elsie was particularly adept at catching  them and was totally disappointed when she found out that she couldn't keep animals she caught in the National Park. We got to hear all about her guppy that got flushed down the toilet and how she never got to keep a pet. Talk about drama!

 There was a whole series of the "tanks" going down the canyon and most had  tons of little wiggly things trying to escape. It was looking pretty dark, so we headed back into the Gorge and started to get out of Dodge. It was a little unnerving to be in this little narrow canyon with thunder and lightning upstream. Heather and Janene stayed up on top for a while longer than the rest of us. Girl talk, I guess.

Have you ever

seen two 

more 

GORGE-US 

women? 

(pretty buff if you ask me)

We ended the day with a gorgeous (no pun intended) double rainbow and an

i

Incredible Sunset over the Reef

(and a little dutch oven BBQ chicken with watermelon from our garden)