Desert View - Day 86 - Surprise visitors

5:49 am - Sunday - February 4th - Grand Canyon - 23º F, 79% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the east by northeast......forecast for today is sunny with a high of 60º F.

The sun is rising earlier and earlier as we edge away from the winter solstice.....it's now rising around 7:25 am.....nice to walk to work nearer to sunrise.  I started off my Saturday by wet mopping the entire retail section of the store again.  I don't know if it needs to be done more than once a week, but it gives me something constructive to do until customers begin arriving.   

Saturday was a much busier day by far.  I had my first customer a little after 9 am, and by the end of my shift I dropped $185.44, while TLE reports she dropped over $500.  It was kind of nice to be busier, and to spend time talking with customers about the park, and hiking trails.  

Around mid morning I saw two potential customers walking in the front door so I greeted them as I always do with a "Good Morning!" to which they responded in kind.  Instead of walking off to the Deli, or the retail store they walked up to my checkout station to speak to me.  It turns out they are long time readers of my blog, Donna and Bob (hope I got your names right!), who became full time RV'ers about 6 months ago.  I am always caught by surprise when this happens, but it is always delightful to meet people who read my daily offerings, and actually want to meet me.  They had driven up from Camp Verde which south of the Grand Canyon near Sedona and Cottonwood, AZ.  We talked for about 10-15 minutes before more customers began to flood into the store at which time we bid our adieus.   I wish I had remembered to take a picture for the blog.....😕

Before  I knew it I had 5-6 people lined up at my checkout station, which hasn't happened for several weeks.  Suddenly it was 11:55 and there was TLE to relieve me.....it's nice when the time passes more quickly!  I was on my way home by 12:30 pm looking forward to an afternoon of sun, and no wind.  There were a few things I wished to do outside and this seemed like a perfect afternoon.  

I ate a sandwich, and read a little before heading outside to clean the front windshield.....I love the view out the front and it's even nicer when the windshield is clean.  Next up I put some wood in the portable fireplace in preparation for a fire that evening if the wind didn't come up again.  Then I straightened up the trailer so I could do my workout later in the afternoon.

Around 3:30 I headed out to the trailer to ride my stationary bike for 30 minutes....I turned on the PGA golf tournament to watch while I pedaled.....always helps the time to pass more quickly if I can distract myself from the pain!

Around 5 pm it looked like the wind was not going to be an issue so I quickly lit the fire in anticipation of TLE's return from work around 5:25.  By the time she arrived the fire was going well, and the smoke had disappeared.  We sat out by the fire until almost 6:30, which we haven't done in a long time.  We talked about this and that including the happenings with the termination of our manager the afternoon before.  We both noticed that there was a palpable difference in the mood of our fellow workers who had worked with our ex-manager a lot longer than we had.  We are hoping this change will bode well for the rest of our stay.  As I reported yesterday, he wasn't around that much, and seemed to leave TLE and I alone, but you could tell there was a cloud over the rest of the staff that seems to have lifted now.

We headed inside to eat dinner (pollo asado taco salad) and watch the recorded two hour finale of 'Hell's Kitchen', which was ultimately won by our favorite, Michelle.  We were in bed by 9 pm looking forward to Sunday.

Thanks for stopping by!

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