First Day On Duty

Judy and I reported in for duty at nine o’clock and will be answering to West, who is the Interpretive Ranger.  Yesterday they had a group of around a hundred school kids showing up for a tour, movie, scavenger hunt, and a reptile (snake) demonstration.  West took care of the snakes (that’s a good thing) and starting the movie while the teachers/parents took care of the scavenger hunt and Judy and I led the tours.

We divided them up into three groups so that they could be rotated through the various events.  The movie and scavenger hunt were combined as one event which balanced out time wise.  It took about 45 minutes for us to walk each group to three different “stations” along the North Rim Trail.  West, Andy, and Toni pumped us full of facts and off we went.

  

So, we “worked” about five hours yesterday.  Our schedule will primarily be on the weekends with about six hours on Saturday and five hours on Sunday afternoon (leaving us Sunday morning for worship) and then six hours on another day during the week.  We will remain flexible so that we can assist West with special events such as yesterday and another group that is showing up tomorrow (Friday).

Now, a couple of corrections on yesterday’s entry.  There is a third way to the bottom of the gorge as another flight of stairs exist on the South Rim Trail as well.  So, you can go down 346 steps to the suspended bridge and then go down the 221 steps to the gorge floor which makes it “only” 567 steps to the bottom (not 1099 as I reported yesterday).  It would be 1099 steps if you walked the entire North and South Rim Trails as well as crossing the suspension bridge.

The other correction is that the gorge was formed primarily by the “folding together” of rock plates during the glacier era.  The Tallulah River has contributed to some of the formation through erosion over the centuries but, only ever so slightly in the entire scheme of things.

There are several sightseeing trips that we want to take but, being that we are in a rain cycle over the next week we’ll have to wait on that.  Therefore, we are not exactly  sure what today has in store for us.  We’ll probably walk both Rim Trails to get a better overview of the gorge; that would be a three mile hike.  We’ll save the trip to the suspension bridge and gorge floor for a clear day as it may be something that we only do once.