We solo'd today.

Today was our first full day of camp hosting for the North Rim.  It started at 7:00am with making the rounds to every campsite in the park and pulling permits off the poles of campers that had already left and removing the 'Reserved' signs from the sites we put them on last night (for the people that had not shown up by the time the ranger station closed) while making notes as to whether someone had come in and occupied the site or if they were a no show.  All the signs and permits were turned over to the ranger in the check-in kiosk at 8:00 am and then it was time to start cleaning fire pits.

Ash buckets and shovels in hand we repeated the process of going up and down every row of sites and cleaning the fire pits and generally policing any campsite that had been vacated.  It had been almost a week since this had been done as the previous hosts had left early and the rangers were staffed too thin to add this chore to their duties.  We filled every ash can that the little Polaris Ute could carry three times.  It was a solid two hours to make our way around the whole campsite.  That ran us up to 10:00am and left us an hour to dink around until the first half of our shift ended at 11:00.

In that short hour we had a number of campers come by with questions and requests for help with minor things.  One guy (an international visitor from Germany) could not get his toaster to work.  We got it fixed for him and he had a place to put his Nutella.

We also had visitors.  Our trainer, Nancy came by and moments later two of the LEO's (the guys that carry weapons) stopped in to borrow the Polaris for a little recon work on a barking dog complaint.

Nancy, our trainer and general support life-line on the left with Ryan, center and Brandon, right, two of the seven LEO's on the North Rim

Nancy came by to see how we were doing and wanted to know where our cameras were so that she could take our pictures during our first day on duty.  Both we and our co-host, Don readily obliged her.  Here is the result:

Yep, hard at work sitting in our reclining camp chairs in the shade of giant Ponderosa Pines sipping iced tea.  Life is good.

Did you notice the center piece on the picnic table?  That is Cyndee's geranium that has made the entire cross-country trip with us.  The wind of West Texas and the high desert of Arizona just about got the best of it but now it seems to be pretty happy in this new clime.  It has put on a slug of buds and should be blooming in a few days.

By now you have to be asking why I would be devoting attention and column space to a ragged potted plant.  Well, we did not plan it this way but it has given us a way to beat the system.  This being a national park they have lots of rules about feeding the wildlife.  And all the rules say you can't.  So we are not allowed to put out our squirrel proof bird seed feeders or hummingbird feeder.  But we have found that this well worn geranium is quite the hummingbird attractor.  So we have a feeder of sorts and the hummingbirds around here are insanely curious.  They will fly right up to your face and go nose to beak with you.  I had one that attempted to use my ear for a perch!  So far they have been moving way to fast for the camera to get a focus lock, so no pictures.

Before the second half of our shift started at 6:00pm we went back down to the lodge to listen to an Interpretive Ranger give a talk on Condors.  We had not been over there at this time of day before so we got to see the canyon in a different light.  Tonight I leave you with the one and only good shot I came away with.

If you are on a machine that has a large monitor you really owe it to yourself to double-click on the picture and see it full-screen.