Ashley, if you are still keeping up with us you will not
have to read about hot temperatures or sticky humidity again until next
summer. However, it is going to be more
difficult to read anything about us for the next three months. This place is remote, and old. The National Park Service has not brought
civilization to this neck of the woods.
Phone service is going to be a pay phone down by the camp store, so no
Verizon Jetpack connection to the internet.
Our power is a 30 amp connection instead of the 50 amp we normally get;
we’ll have to run only one major appliance at a time. It is a good thing that we’ll probably not
have to run the A/C’s. But like I said,
this place is old and the quality of the power that we do have is poor. Just the few hours we have been here we have
already had a couple of voltage dips low enough that the power manager has
tripped out to protect electronics and motors. That is the same problem that drove us out of
Palo Duro Canyon, but down in there it was 108 deg. Life was not possible for us without air
conditioning at those temperatures. Here
at high altitude it looks to be different, we’re going to give it a shot.
There is no chance for a connection to a satellite signal
either. There was no position we could
get in in the camp host site that had a clear look at the southern sky. I asked the ranger if they could send a
logger in and harvest two giant pines but I got a quick “No” reply. Grasping at straws we gave the aerial antenna
a try, maybe we could get one or two channels.
After scanning the full spectrum twice we were able to pull in
absolutely nothing. Looks like lots of
reading is in order for the next twelve weeks.
We have tomorrow to ourselves. Training and issuance of uniforms is set for
10 am Friday. We’ll finish getting
settled in and explore the campground and lodge, maybe meet some of the folks
working in other parts of the park. We
already made it over to the camp store and met Art, the afternoon and evening
guy behind the counter. He has a
counterpart that does the morning to mid-day shift. I think they will be seeing a lot of us. That little store is going to be our source
of perishables such as milk and a very limited selection of vegetables.
I have to say that if anyone is contemplating driving to
the North Rim, do it. Cyndee and I loved
the drive through first Flagstaff and then Glenn Canyon and the Vermillion
Cliffs. The cliffs and mesas are
stunning with their deep reds and just pure massiveness. Glenn Canyon is wide and flat-bottomed,
affording one a view that stretches for miles.
We’ll get around and get some pictures of the park, and
IF I can get an acceptable connection at the camp store we’ll post them. This post with the two low resolution
pictures is an experiment to see what I can do.
If you see pictures, then there is a good chance we can keep making
posts with photographs.
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