North Rim, AZ

After anticipating this moment since February, we are here.  The campground here on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is nestled amongst a mix of Pinon Pines and Aspen.  It is truly beautiful.  The altitude is high, 8,800 feet and the temperatures low, in the mid-70’s today with overnight lows expected to be in the 40’s.

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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