Saying Goodbye

As with all good things, our wonderful summer at Yellowstone has finally come to an end. We knew it was coming when we saw the aspen trees turning yellow against the backdrop of the green pines. So like the myriad squirrels storing nuts around the store and the dorm over the past few weeks, we did our best to get in the last few hikes with friends, the last bonfire, the last store party, and all the other fun year-end activities our team had planned. And all the while, we’ve been stocking up memories that we will undoubtedly enjoy all winter long, not to mention the rest of our lives!

There were a couple of optional challenges that our parent company, Delaware North, had for us this summer that awarded prizes. One is the Adventure Guides program, which offers four levels of prizes: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum for answering questions that help you deepen your knowledge of Yellowstone and its ecosystem. Rob and I both won free ice cream and fountain meals, as well as our choice of Yellowstone caps for completing the Gold level. But the real highlight of our summer was completing the 100-Mile Hiking Challenge! This seemed to be all but out of reach once I broke my ankle in late July at 72 miles, but we managed to pull off another 48 miles over the past month and are closing out our season at 120 miles. We didn’t make it all the way to the 200-mile challenge, as some of our co-workers did, but we did win water bottles, t-shirts, keychains, and Thermarest stadium seats for hitting the 100-mile mark.

And before we knew it, it was Closing Day at the store. Time for cleaning the Fountain area and storing our supplies and equipment, inventorying anything that was left in Grocery, and saying farewell to our coworkers. I am already missing my fountain team, all of whom have become friends: Jessica and Joanna, grad students from Taiwan on their J-1 visas who taught me about their culture and my own; Sheridan, who always managed to crack me up with her wry observations about customers; Chris, who could draw out the surliest of customers waiting in an interminable line for service; and Zoe, our resourceful supervisor, whose patience and positive attitude really set the tone for us all.

Along with packing up the store, we had to pack up ourselves. Rob and I ended up deciding to get a storage unit for the Airstream, his motorcycle, and some of our furnishings and clothing that we won’t need again until next year. Seemed a lot easier than towing everything back to Chicago, only to have to tow it right back again in the spring. A 50-year-old trailer doesn’t need to move that much!

But wait! Does this mean we’re coming back to Yellowstone next year? Well, maybe. As you’ve probably been able to tell from the posts, we’ve had an absolutely wonderful time here and would consider ourselves lucky to find something this good for next year. But then again, who knows how many summers of seasonal work we have in us? And we’ve been itching to work at Glacier National Park, where we applied last year but Yellowstone came through for us first. So after we said goodbye to Yellowstone, we drove up to Glacier, a mere 340 miles away, for a two-day reconnaissance mission. A chance to look at some potential workplaces and campgrounds, as well as talk to some of the folks working there this year, to get a better idea of where we would like to be. So stay tuned to find out what’s ahead!

Epilogue: We Come Full-Circle
You may recall that this blog started in a campground at Yellowstone in 2014, when Rob and I magically caught the same bug while talking to the campground hosts checking us in. And I may have mentioned that our employee RV sites this summer were right next to the Tower Falls Campground, which was run this season by the intrepid couple below: Greg and Teresa! All summer long, these two worked every single day, checking in new guests and orienting them to the campground. They cleaned toilets and enforced bear-box rules. And they did way more than their fair share of chasing bears and mountain lions away from campsites, using nothing more than a bear shaker and a blue flag! If they ever got a day off, it was invisible to us. And amazingly, they are coming back next year! These folks are tireless. Thank you for your service!! But let’s just say, I’m no longer the least bit curious about what it would be like to run a campground.

As the old song says, Happy Trails to you, until we meet again!