Desert View - Day 65 - Pay attention!

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7:42 am - Sunday - January 14th - Grand Canyon - 39º F, 47% humidity, wind 4 mph out of east by southeast.....sunny day with a forecast high of 51º F.....BP 119/71.

We slept in Saturday morning.......when we are working day after day and our start time changes from 'open' to 'close' each day it pretty much means we are both awake about 5:30 am each day regardless of what shift we have.  Even though I still awake around 5:30 I just stay in bed, and usually go back to sleep until about 7:30.....nice to wake up with the sun for a change.

I spent a lot of time working on the second installment of our 2017 year in review post which covered our Yellowstone experience.  Originally I was just going to do the year in review in two posts, but realized after I began the Yellowstone post that it deserved a post all to itself.  I'll post the 3rd installment in the next few days.

Once the outside temperature had warmed up sufficiently I went out to the trailer to put a few things away, and putter around.  I haven't really been in the trailer for over a week due to my illness.  I keep a small space heater in the trailer set at a very low temp.....40 something.....to keep the water in our Camelbaks from freezing, and to make it easier to heat up the trailer when I am working out there.  

Around 1 pm TLE and I decided we needed to take a walk.....we haven't done any exercising for a couple of weeks now, and it was such a nice, sunny day.  We walked down to the Watchtower and back, and learned a couple of new things along the way.....

.....for instance, did you know there was a collision of two passenger aircraft over the Grand Canyon near the Watchtower in 1956?  Yup, on June 30, 1956 a TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collided in mid air at about 21,000 feet killing 128 people.  It was the largest aircraft disaster in the U.S. at that time.  As a result of this tragedy the modern FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) was created a few years later to make the skies safer....

....as many times as I have walked down to the Watchtower since we arrived I never saw this sign until Saturday.

The second sign I had never seen gives some vital statistics about the Grand Canyon I also did not know....at least not all of them......

....did you know that the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long from Lee's Ferry on the east to Grand Wash Cliffs on the west, has an average depth of 1 mile, and and average width of 10 miles?  Did you know that within the canyon the Colorado River averages 300 feet from side to side.....I didn't.  The entire canyon is composed of 2,600 square miles (larger than the State of Delaware), with 1,904 square miles of that contained and preserved within the Grand Canyon National Park boundaries.  Finally, there are 1,750 species of plants, over 90 types of mammals, and over 362 species of birds found within the park boundaries.  It's amazing what you can learn if you are just paying attention.....:-)

The Visitor's Center at Desert View

The final thing we both learned is that there is actually a formal Visitors Center here at Desert View, but it is closed during the winter.

We were back home a little after 2 pm and relaxed the rest of the afternoon.  I read a book, and took a couple of naps.  Around 4:30 I lit the Sea-B-Que so I could grill a fabulous filet mignon TLE had purchased a few weeks ago.  Due to its thickness it took about 14 minutes to get it to medium rare.....I cherished every single bite!

So, it is now official....TLE and I are on the mend.....TLE is recovering quickly from her bout with bronchitis, and I am as close to 100% as one can be and not officially be there.  

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