The season has started.....

May 10
Our hot water heater died. I've been heating water on the stove for dishes and a sponge bath while waiting for the new one to arrive. (Just like growing up in N.H.!) The big wigs are here and finally setting up the store, it's looking really nice. Since I am mechanically inclined and rather strong compared to the rest of the girls, I have been choosen to help put shelving together and do destructive work too. There's some wood shelving in Building 500 where the UPS driver leaves all our packages every night that need to come out so today I get to get really dirty tearing them out
What a day! My boss Terri had me working like a man all day! First I got to move all the trash with her, (she's about half my size if even that) and we really should have had the big strong young men doing the trash. It was all the display units from the gift shop that the big wigs didn't want to reuse, then she had me ripping out those shelves. That took me about 3/4 of a hour if that. Nancy, 1 of my co-workers, invited me to take a shower at her dorm room--what a shower!! Lots and lots of hot water. Oh how I've missed my showers. Can't wait for our water heater to arrive!! I got a few bruises today but it did feal good to be doing physical work again.

May 15

We open today! When I walked into the gift shop this morning everyone stopped what they were doing and just awed at me. I had my make-up on (I hadn't worn any since arriving) and my crisp white shirt under my navy blue pullover sweater vest and my best instantly-slims-you kakhi pant and black shiny shoes. I was a show stopper! Everyone said "Edie you look great!" my reply "I do clean up pretty good don't I!" And John our 19 yr. old says "you smell really good too!" Just goes to show that being 50 isn't that bad after all.

May 19

Tonight is that start of our weekend! So I thought we would take a picnic supper out to one of the points. Theses are a few pictures from Cape Royal.

Notice this window (hole) in the rock? We also went up on top of there but it was to dark to get any good pictures.

Now for some sunset pictures!

And some full moon pictures!

And now for some random Grand Canyon pictures.

This was Sunday May 11, 2008.

May 20

We have the worst luck. Today we went to Kanab, UT for our first doctors appointments. That all went fine. Gary now weighs 161 and I have gone down to 198!!! That's why my shorts are almost falling off me :)! We were so looking forward to eatting at Houstons Resturant. We had breakfast there last week and it was great. Lunch today was a big disappointment. We got an order of wings, 5 little, tiny wings for $8. Definate rip-off. Then we go to Page, AZ and stop at the Glen Canyon Dam to take the tour of the Dam. There was 1 ticket left for the 2:30 showing so Gary got it and I got put on the waiting list. We thought since Gary got the last ticket that I was 1st on the waiting list-NOT. There was 6 before me so Gary just didn't go without me. And of course by then the 3:30 showing was full so we didn't get to go down into the Dam. So we go to Walmart and do some shopping and then remembered we have prescriptions to get filled and wouldn't you know it we didn't here them call our name and when we went to get them at 6:03PM-the pharmacy was closed. Keep in mind we live 125 miles from this Walmart. I go back to the doctors next Tues. for my blood work results so maybe we will just wait and go back to Page next week or maybe Gary will decide to go tomorrow, I don't know. All I know is that it is a really long ways off just for $18 of prescriptions!

May 21

Another day off and so much to do, wash, clean the RV and of course more exploring of the area. The Grand Canyon National Park opened for business on the 15th. It was a busy day and has slacked off a bit every day since. But 1 more week and it will be full blown crowds every day until Sept. The gift shop is a very expensive place with lots of Native American made pottery and jewelry. We have alot of different tee-shirts too, which we constantly have to refold. We have to restock the shelves all day long as most items we have only a few or even 1 of the item on the floor at a time besides tee-shirts and jewelry. We sell a chocolate bar for $3.50 and it's not very big! Employees get a 40% discount but not on paper goods (books, postcards, ect.) and only 10% on food items. I certainly won't be spending much $$ there. The Lodge let the kitchen staff practice on all the employees for dinner the night of the 14th. It took 3 hours for some to get there meal and I over heard a couple of guests yesterday say that it was still just as bad of a wait. We in the Gift Shop are quite good at getting the customer out pretty fast except Monday all the computers went down and of course our registers are computers and we had to do everything by hand for almost an hour. Most customers were understanding but a few were not, oh well, we did our best. Hope it doesn't happen to often but I'm afraid it will all summer.

Maintanence has been very busy since April. For the most part now they have everything caught up and taken care of but every day brings a new problem too. Gary still has to get back up on the roof of the Lodge and finish the shingle work he started last week before opening and snow. I'll get some pictures of that when he gets back up there. He'll be the talk of the town when he gets back up there, everyone will be taking his picture because he will be on the back side of the Lodge where if he falls he will most likely go down into the canyon! He won't fall though, he wears the safety harness and is very careful. He also loves the view from up there.

It looks like rain may come today. We better get the tarp back up on top of the RV since the roof still leaks. Slowly we are getting things fixed but I don't want to sink a lot of $$ into this RV cause we are planning on getting a better one maybe this coming year if we can. Someone told Gary that in Yuma, AZ in the fall you can pick up a really good one for about $5000 from people who just don't want to live in them any more for one reason or another.

Well it did sprinkle a very small bit this morning but mostly it has been snowing off and on all day. I didn't think it was cold enough for snow but sure enough that is just what it has been doing. We may wake up in the morning to a few inches!