Should I keep design or s...can it.

Why do you think that search engines don't like pretty site? Why do you think that it's not possible to make a pretty site that is search engine friendly? Try CSS

This all looks like SE spam to me actually because it's all a bunch of words that aren't even formatted properly. The main body is a list that isn't actually marked up as a list. And it's even centered which makes it even more difficult to read. The sidebar is another block of run-on keywords which isn't useful for humans at all. And what are SE's looking for? Content that is useful for humans. There are too many repeated instances of the same words in your meta keywords too - they might consider that to be keyword spam.

You should definitely be able to find better pictures of the grand canyon. Try these:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon
(check the lisence, but most should be free)

So, yes, you should can it. (Hope I wasn't too harsh here! )

Search engines don't like pretty sites??? They could care less about how pretty your site looks. They only care about your content.

That does look better. It's a lot more human friendly now. It took me awhile to figure out what this was - the "My name is " Cliff ", the Kaibab Squirrel..." bit puts the rest of the text into context but I skimmed over that at first. Make that more prominent (and find a better squirrel picture!).

The text is also very long and kind of intimidating to read. Look for resources on writing for the web and making things skimmable. Also make sure the text is large enough to be read comfortably. When I see a big block of text like that I wonder if it's worth my time to try and read it. Should I bother? Am I going to learn anything .... eh, haven't go the time...

I just noticed that the copyright statement at the bottom says 2003. You might want to change that

To make money your best bet would be google ads. Perfect for this type of site. Lots of text for them to match, and probably lots of suitable advertisers available. And I think if it was targetted right you could get pretty good click throughs.

I took a look at your site. I read the first bit about the Grand Canyon and even learned a bit! However when i have the screen maximized the site looks to be aligned to the right so there is a lot of white space in the left side. I recommend keeping all of your text the way it is and perhaps picking up a free or cheap template design *or create one yourself*, that has mountains or canyons or something related to your content. That will keep visitors looking around and thinking it really is a useful site, especially when they read your content, they will want to find out more. You mentioned search engines not liking pretty pages, well, you can have pretty! It really does work, you just have to be a little creative with it. Instead of having all of your text in .jpg form, use the images as background and the text on top!
I really like the idea of speaking from the squirrel point of view, however I definitely think you should boost his picture up a little bit
Best of luck!