BACK IN BUSINESS

With the outside Internet phone connection completed two days ago, it was just a matter of waiting for the modem to arrive via UPS. Rather than sit around twiddling my thumbs, impatiently awaiting Big Brown to show up, I jumped on the KLR, and took off into the depths of the Kaibab National Forest. I started toward the west end of the canyon, and the Havasupai Indian Reservation. After about 10 miles, the landscape turned from dense forest to an open plateau, with scrub brush, and not much in the way of trees. Being completely in charge of my destination, I quickly decided that riding in the Ponderosa Pine forest was much more pleasant than the open desert. A quick U-Turn took me back into the trees, and back toward the South Rim Village.

East of Tusayan and the village, I stumbled across this really cool 123 year old log cabin. It started out as a sheep camp in 1889, and eventually became part of the forest service inventory. There was a fellow doing some carpentry work on the cabin, and he told me that when it was retired as a ranger station, it became available for rent by the general public.

Just a few miles from the cabin, I stopped at an old fire lookout tower, that has been preserved by the forest service. The original Grandview tower was built of wood, then later reconstructed of metal. After climbing about 30 feet up the 80 foot tall tower, my acrophobia overwhelmed the desire to see what the view was from the top, so back down I went. Once again on sold ground, I jumped back on the bike, and came out of the forest on Desert View Road near Grandview Point. Prior to the arrival of the railroad in 1901, most of the visitors to the Grand Canyon came by Stagecoach from Flagstaff, and they traveled very near to this old Forest Service fire lookout tower.


When I arrived back at the motor home, there was a not too unexpected small box by the door. It didn't take me long to hook everything up, and once I got the modem and computer configured, it was Back to the Future, and a rejoining of the electronic civilized world.

Tomorrow is my first day of work, and for the next two weeks, I'll mostly be driving the Hermits Rest (Red Route), with Tuesday & Wednesday as days off. In the next couple of days, by seniority, all the drivers will be bidding on their summer schedules. Out of 57 drivers this year, I've moved up to #47, and with any luck, there might just be a few good schedules to pick from when it's my turn to choose. We'll see...........