Raven Travels: GRAND CANYON VOLUNTEER

The past week has been full of picture editing, and creating CDs for the participants of Heritage Days. I still have to do the same for the Symphony, and will get that completed before next Tuesday when we will be going to Kanab for groceries and other errands.

The monsoon season continues. It has made for opportunities to photograph more lightning, but some of the time I have had to do my work as a VIP interpretive ranger instead. Did get out a couple of times though. I also incorporate this kind of photography with trying to educate the public about lightning and what it can do. I did get three sessions with the storms.

We enjoyed a much sought after visit with our friends, The Benses, this past week. We have been trying to get them up here from Flagstaff for several years, but many times our schedules have not matched. We took them out to The Basin to enjoy the wildflowers, and a short hike through a couple of small meadows. I

discovered two flowers new to me while out there. This means that I will be adding them to my Flora Albums of the North Rim before I leave here this Fall.

Several of my early morning walks have been to the Admin. area. There are at least three bucks that like to bed down in the area. A couple of mornings I have been able to get photos of them. They are hard to get as they are bedded down in a grove of trees so I am shooting at ISO 1600 in order to get them. Also got a couple of photos of a red squirrel which is somewhat rare to see around here.

We have been dining out a couple of times this past week. The wranglers fed us a delicious spaghetti dinner this past Monday. A week ago we were treated to dinner at the Kaibab Lodge by our friends, the Benses; and then just last night we treated Miss Vickie, a wrangler, to dinner there. She and George are early August birthday people so this was a birthday dinner for them.

Today, Wednesday, 21 August, started overcast, and continued that way through the day. We had a very loud and near thunderstorm this afternoon, and it continues to be cloudy and cool. I did go down to the Lodge and got several lightning bursts. Most of the activity was to the North of us so I had shutter activity but no lightning in the images. There was one memorable one though! We had hoped to go out to photograph the full moon rise, but the photo op. was not there tonight. We will now have to wait until next month!!

A walk along The Bright Angel Trail >>