We are more or less getting settled into a routine in our current camp hosting job. We have met a good number of rangers and people that work for the interpretive services group. They call the interpretive people volunteers, they have the same volunteer patches on their uniforms as we do, yet they get paid. We'll have to find out more about how you draw a paycheck for volunteering.
But now that we know so many and they know I am scouting wildlife to photograph, we are getting some good intel on sightings. Such was the case in the last couple of days. An off-duty ranger biked over to our rig and wanted to let me know he had spotted a grouse and some deer.
We were between our split-shift so I grabbed up the camera and headed out. The grouse turned out to be a hen that had decided to roost on a pile of lumber outside one of the park service employee cabins.
After the grouse I headed out to find the deer. On the Kaibab Plateau there are only mule deer. No white tails and no elk. It is hard to miss-identify deer with there only being the one kind, as if a mule deer would be mistaken for something else with those big, honkin' ears.
There are four bachelors that hang together and seem to work their way around the perimeter of the developed areas of the North Rim. We hear people saying that they had spotted them in one point of the compass or the other from day to day. On this day they were on the southeast edge of the campground in a ravine, foraging.
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| This six-point was the biggest of the band of brothers. He always stood off a little from the other three. |
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| This guy is the larger of the two, smaller four-points. |
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| These three hang pretty close together while the big six-point stands off, but always within site. |
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| Busted! One of the little four-points made me as I leaned out from behind a tree to get the shot. But it did not seem to bother him too much, he soon went back to grazing. |
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| In the foreground is the smallest of the four-points. He has a couple of pretty tall stalks with just barely the points beginning to show. The larger one to the left has an atypical rack, five points on one side and two on the other. |
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| Big brother found himself a comfortable spot and decided to bag it for awhile. |
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| He knew I was there, but I was far enough away that he felt comfortable enough to look away. |
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| The big four-pointer took the lead from big brother and bedded down to watch the sun set. |
But living full time in the RV and campground hosting is not all game stalking and vista photographing. You still have to fix three squares a day, do laundry, pay bills and all that junk. Cyndee also has a sewing project that she is continuing that was started more than ten years ago. Her sewing machine is probably the single largest thing we brought with us from the house. And that is even after she had significantly down-sized machines a couple of years ago.
We have a great picnic table just outside our door so I got her machine out of its storage and got it all set up. Out came our travel blanket. We have collected sew-on patches from everywhere we have gone since the kids were in middle-school. And these patches eventually end up attached to the blue fleece blanket we got just for that purpose.
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| There were times when Cyndee drew an audience as campers would walk by and want to see what she was doing. |
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| We had quite a few patches on the blanket already but we had acquired so many in the last 10 weeks that Cyndee spent almost all day getting caught up. It won't be long before we will have to start using the other side of the blanket. |
We also got a wild hair one afternoon and made the 45 mile drive to Jacob Lake. That takes us about 30 miles outside the entrance to the park and past some of the prettiest meadows you have ever seen. We have been told that is where we should see large herds of buffalo, but so far all we have seen is one mule deer from a long way off.
We have been in the North Rim for approximately 15 days now. Our stock of groceries are dwindling in certain categories. We still have plenty of frozen meat and vegetables in the big chest freezer the park supplied but all our fresh food is gone and, worst of all, we are out of Coke Zero! We are both jones'n bad for that tasty, bubbly concoction and at half way between the park entrance and Jacob Lake there is The Country Store. We saw it come up in the distance and Big Gulp mysteriously started picking up speed. By the time we got to the driveway we had enough speed to make the turn on two wheels. We screeched to a stop with tourists hanging around outside the store looking at us like we had two heads. But we did not care, we were on a mission and inside on the back wall were the coolers that held the prize. We each got a twenty ounce bottle and started drinking before getting to the cash register.
The plan was to just get the one bottle and get to Jacob Lake where we thought we could buy six-packs or cases of bottles. But noooo, there was not a Coke Zero to be found in Jacob Lake. Oh well, we dinked around and looked at all the wares there were in the store/restaurant/lodge/diner/bakery/gift shop (Jacob Lake is just two buildings, the aforementioned and a gas station) and then headed back to camp. This time we made a more leisurely approach to the Country Store and I eased up to a diesel pump. Fuel is danged expensive up here on the Kaibab Plateau but so far, the Country Store has been the lowest of the high prices. While filling up I went inside and got an armful Cokes to take home with us. We're set for a few days but we are going to have to make a grocery run pretty soon.
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