“You’ll look like a baby elephant when we get back home,” prophesied Carol encouragingly.
They rode like regular westerners now, and every day they appreciated more and more the beauty of the country through which they rode. If Jim had planned on showing them the loveliest scenery, he was running true to plan. The girls had never realized before that nature, untamed by man, could be so lovely. They never realized that just to sit and gaze at a sunset could bring such a thrill. In every way the country was affecting them. Physically they were healthier than they had ever been. Their mental outlook was brighter, more cheerful. Here in limitless space, mid tall mountains, they felt more drawn to one another. Their friendships grew and flourished.
One day they camped close to the mighty Colorado River that flows through the Grand Canyon. The cliffs of sandstone and limestone, almost a mile high, were so rugged and majestic as to fill the girls with awe. All the colors of the rainbow were in the rocks and under the influence of the sun and the shadows cast by it, formed pictures of entrancing beauty, pictures too beautiful to ever be put down on canvas. Rain and wind had sculptured the cliffs into bewildering and fantastic forms which added to their brilliant coloring.
“Doesn’t it make you feel tiny?” murmured Janet, scarcely above a whisper, afraid to disturb the great hush that hung over the Canyon.
“The Canyon was first seen by white men in 1541,” Tom told them. “The Colorado River where it runs through the Canyon there is three hundred feet wide, and in times of freshets it’s a mighty torrent.”
“You sound like a traditional guide book,” Janet told him.
“It’s wonderful,” Valerie murmured, voicing the feelings of all of them.
Another day found the Adventure Girls and their friends examining the colossal stone tree trunks of the Petrified Forest. Here they found more to awe and surprise them. Still another day found them at the rim of the Painted Desert, the desert with its multi-colored plains alive with somber, purple shadows.
“I’m overwhelmed!” Carol declared. “From now on I shall be a strong advocate of See America First!”
Valerie had out the little sketching block she always carried with her. With a strong talent for sketching and limitless subjects on which to try her skill, Val rode with her pencil and pad in her hands nearly all day. She wanted to take back home sketches of the spots that interested her most on this trip.