On Monday the team spent most of the day repairing caging at multiple sites around the Grand Canyon Visitor Center. The cages help to keep animals like deer and elk from chowing down on all of our freshly planted stock; globe mallow and penstemon appear to be a couple of their favorite snack foods. They also help to discourage visitors from running all over our sites (although sometimes even cages don't stop the determined ones). In the afternoon we all toured the beautiful Desert View tower. It was built by Mary Coulter many years ago to allow visitors to see the canyon and the Colorado River from a high vantage point. We also explored some ancient Native American archeology sites, including farm plots and spiritual kivas.
On Tuesday morning we took a tour of the Grand Canyon Waste Water Treatment Plant. It was an incredibly smelly educational experience! All of our reclaimed water that we use to keep the Visitor Center watered comes from the Treatment Plant. In the afternoon we finished some more berming and caging. Not quite as exciting.
Wednesday morning we worked on deciding the subject of our group project. Some good ideas were proposed, but we couldn't make a final choice. We finished up the afternoon berming and mulching out at Mather Point.
Thursday was kind of a fun day, as after we spent the morning planting and berming at the Visitor Center, we washed up our spiffy SCA truck and drove into Tusayan to see the IMAX Grand Canyon movie. It had some awesome reenactments of Native Americans and the first river explorers, as well as some hilarious shots of canyon visitors. All in all it was a great week!