Saturday, March 8, 2014

Coming Home

We survived the week!  We spent Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday stacking sticks.

On Wednesday, we had our day off!  We started the day off with a tour at a museum, where we learned  about the history and geology of the Grand Canyon.  Then, we ate lunch before setting off to hike in the canyon.  We hiked for two hours (down and back) but didn't even make it to the first stop at 1.5 miles!  We had to take a lot of stops on the way down for photo opportunities, and then we had to stop on the way back because we were working so hard!  Following that, we traveled out to the Tusayan Ruins, and then to the Watch Tower!

On Friday, we worked to clean some trailers for seasonal employees, as well as the apartments we were staying in.  We ended the week with a dinner at El Tovar, a restaurant and hotel at the Canyon.

We are currently all sitting in the airport waiting for our flight - which is delayed!!  But we will make it home this evening!!

Monday, March 3, 2014

The Arrival and Beginning of Tree Cutting

We made it to the Grand Canyon!  We had a very long travel day yesterday, starting at 4:00am (EST) and ending at 10pm (MST - that's 12am EST!!!)  We stopped in Phoenix at a small burger place called "The Stand", where we had delicious burgers, milkshakes, and tacos!

This morning we woke up and got ready for our service project.  Todd, the volunteer coordinator at the park, met us at 8am and took us to an office where we had our introduction to our service work.  This week, we will be working with the fire program at the park to remove trees that could become hazardous if there were to be a wild fire.  We learned a lot of history of wildfires in the west, as well as why it was so important to thin out the forests around Grand Canyon Village.

Then we went out to the field! There were sawyers who cut down the trees for us, and then we moved the parts of the tree into large 6'x6'x6' cubes.  We were told that we would finish about 150 piles, and we were in disbelief, but after the day, we think we had around 50 piles, so it wasn't such an extreme prediction.

At lunch time, we went to an overlook and were mesmerized by the views!  We took plenty of pictures, but are not able to post any because we don't have a computer to use!  If you want to see pictures, check out our Facebook pages!!

After our day, we had soup and salad for dinner and walked to the canyon to look more and shop at the gift shop.

We look forward to learning more about fire safety and prevention in the park tomorrow!