July 6 to July 13 - Onset of monsoon season

The beginning of our week back at the Grand Canyon was an interesting weather experience. The monsoon season, which lasts from anywhere between one to two months, had begun its daily visitation of rain. After a quick refresher on monsoon safety, we all headed to the Visitor Center to do some serious weeding. Although low-hanging clouds rolled in during the afternoon, we didn't get any rain the first day. We were all pretty disappointed; we wanted to see the rumored ferocity of Grand Canyon storms.

The next day our wish was granted. In the midst of weeding more planting sites, we had to quickly dash back to our truck in order to escape the threatening lighting strikes overhead.

During the weekend we had a wonderful volunteer group come out and help us plant some areas around the shuttle bus station, which is a very high-visibility area. Danielle and Joe gave a quick planting demo, educating our volunteers on proper planting technique. Later on in the day we once again had to take a break from our work to seek shelter from the storms. The new Grand Canyon video playing at the visitor center was the perfect length of time to wait out the fierce weather.

The end of our work week entailed an ACE crew helping us with general maintenance of the visitor center sites, putting everything in order for our quickly approaching work site shift. Our SCA team is going to end our project at the visitor center and begin an entirely new project at a newly built apartment complex called the Paiute apartments. As half of our team will be moving into these apartments to live, we will end up planting in our own front yards! We can’t wait to let our artistic landscaping skills loose on the site.