Many Pools Times Two

After a wonderful visit in Page, the WINs moved on to the east side of Zion NP. From reading other blogs, I knew about a "secret hike" to Many Pools, so I offered to lead the group there. The trail goes up a canyon where there are "many pools," one right after the other.

But one of the first things we saw was a group of Desert Big Horn Sheep, running down to say "Hi."

They were all females and young ones. Apparently the males stay in high altitudes this time of year.

They posed for us very politely.

We all got good pictures.

We then moved up the canyon stopping by each of the pools to see what they held.

Almost all of them held Canyon Tree Frogs, busy laying eggs and getting them fertilized.

Doesn't she look happy?

Continuing further up canyon -

We occasionally stopped for photo shoots.

The rock was kind of slick and I was worried about how long it would take me to get back down, so I turned around at this point.

It turned out it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought. So I took more pictures and waited for them in the parking lot.

I felt like I shouldn't have turned around so soon, so when I later joined my sister Barbara and "brother-in-law" Ron on the west side of Zion, I took them on the hike, this time going all the way to the top.

And I'm so glad I did - the scenery was even more spectacular farther up.

But here's the funny part. Remember all the frogs in the pools earlier? Well, they were nowhere in sight now. But we saw lots of eggs and little tadpoles. And we could hear the adult frogs back in the canyon.

If you are in Zion and want to do this hike, go .9 miles east of the small tunnel and go down between these 2 trees. You'll love it!