First Week

This is Memorial Day Weekend, a tribute to our Vetereans who have served and those that made the ultimate sacrifice. If you are reading this in English, thank a veteran. Thank them anyway, the vets are those that took time from their life to serve our country. Put off college to serve, put off starting a career to serve. Thank you, and welcome home.

End of our first week here at Yellowstone. Monday we drove up to Gardiner, MT for training, first day was getting acquainted, some paperwork out of the way, (completely painless), and meet our fellow worker/campers. Finished the day off with a nice barberque up on the rim of Gardiner, a rental place called 'Above The Rest'. This is the view we had for eating hamburgers. Life is goood...

Our second day we joined the Park Rangers for their training, touching upon many items, including the Wolf Project, where the wolves had been reintroduced to the park. Learned about how they are managed, where they go etc. Very interesting.

Last day we learned about the retail side of our jobs, the register, products, how thy are selected for the stores. We also learned more about the membership, the value to the members, what the membeship does for the Park. If you visit me at the Visitors Center, be prepared.

Back to Old Faithful, a day off when we visited West Yellowstone, and visited this display. The town's Chamber of Commerce commissioned these buffalo and invited artists to paint in various themes. They have been on display for a while, and now they are being presented for auction in August. This one is one of my favorites.

Our first day was fun, met many people, sold many books and a couple memberships. The diversity of our visitors is amazing, so many countries in just the first 2 days. Second day, (don't worry, this won't be a day by day diary), we were a little more relaxed. Worked our whole shift including doing the open by ourselves. Getting out at 1:30 leaves a pretty good sized afternoon, so after lunch we drove over to see Grant Village and West Thumb. Even with a good sized afternoon we didn't see as much as we would have liked, so saving this place for another day off.

Have a wonderful weekend, 3 day for most of you. Our weekend arrives on Weds.

We Have Arrived

I just noticed that the last post was on 4/29. We were having fun, and not always good internet speeds.

We left Phoenix on April 30th with the destination Buckskin SP just north of Parker. Beautiful campground, could have stayed a week, but we had a schedule.

From Buckskin to Bullhead City, AZ. Davis CG in Bullhead is another state park, on the Colorado River, short hop over to Laughlin, NV. We headed over to NV and checked out a couple casino's. Not much luck at the machines, but pretty much stayed even. Bullhead City also has a big Sam's club, we decided to get new tires. The techs checked out or set and we decided to replace all the rear tires, the front tires were in good shape.

Laughlin to La Vegas. We stayed at the campground at Circus Circus. Vegas has a pretty nice transit system, you can buy a pass that i good for all day. Runs you anywhere in the city, and with the traffic it s a little faster than walking. We got to see all the casino's from the bus. In the evening we headed to Fremont St. Still on the bus. Now behind the immigration rights march which ended at Government Center. Woohoo. We finally got to Fremont St in time to be blocked by the Gay Pride parade. (not there is anything wrong with that) Aside from the blockades to our progress, Fremont St was great. Jolene won some at the Golden Nugget, enough to cover our dinner OR our camp fees.

I was a little concerned about what the noise level might be at night on the Strip, but it was fine. Actually much quieter than our stay in Phoenix.
We left Vegas for, get this, Virgin Utah. Yeah, ironic, we know. Virgin is the town on the edge of Zion NP. We joined up with our RV Forum 'Framily' for the first leg of their Hop, Skip and Jump rally. Because of our schedule we could only Hop. Zion is beautiful, and we will come back to it again.

The picture here is of the formation named 'The Prophet'. Most of the rock formation in Zion are biblical references.

We left Virgin, UT on May 4th, headed to Ogden, UT. Jolene grew up in Ogden and this is where we met and were married. Our plan was to stay the firs night at Antelope Island, really cool place in the Salt Lake, however the ranger warned us that the biting gnats were out in full force. We decided to skip that stop, we instead headed straight to Willard Bay. The bugs were there as well, just not biters. Back when we were married in 1972, our first purchase was a camper. Willard Bay campground was the site of our first overnight. We didn't remember the bugs. Two nights there in the buggy site and we decided to head to a campground found on a motorcycle ride. This one was up at the top of Ogden Canyon, Anderson Cove, another state park. This campgound overlooks the Pineview Reservoir, and it overlooks the point.Point is a weekend destination for swimming etc. This is the place that Jolene and I met, back in 1971.

Ogden stop was wonderful, we caught up with Jolene's family, spent some quality time with her Dad.

All too soon it was time to leave, but it was time for the last legs of our trip.

Last night on the road we stayed at Red Rock RV, just outside Island Park, ID. Friends of ours are workamping there this summer. Nice park situated on Henry's Lake. This lake has quite a reputation for trout fishing. Lake is still frozen, so fishing was out, but there was enough clear water for the eagles to find a meal.

Still lots of snow on the ground here in this part of the world. Doesn't show in this picture but looking the other way? Hoo Boy. We had an enjoyable evenng with Dan and Carol and headed out in the morning. It started snowing as we were getting ready to leave.

The drive from Island Park to Yellowstone was not even an hour, only 24 miles. The distance from the entrance of the park to Old Faithful is 30 miles! This is a huge place. I know this, but the reality of it is somewhat overwhelming.

Saw a roadsign I had never seen in my life. "Caution Buffalo may be in Road". Son of a gun, they were right.