Everybody's getting sick!

Everybody is getting sick here in Canyon, and there are probably many reasons for this.

1.    We all live and work very close together, so it is hard to get away and quarantine yourself for a day or two
2. Most people are in their first 3 weeks of work, so no one wants to take off, and they end up bringing their sick selves to work and spreading it to everyone else.
3. The RA's (Room attendants) have to clean sometimes up to 50 rooms filled with people who have come from all over the world and bring strains of different viruses and illnesses with them, so they are normally the first hit.
4. People in the dish pit in the kitchen have to deal with guests and visitors dirty dishes, and even though they are cleaned and sanitized in near-boiling water, some germs still manage to get us before we get them.
5. The weather here is unpredictable. In the early afternoon you may go out on a hike and it be in the upper 50's-lower 60's, but within an hour or so the clouds can roll in, the temperature drop, and rain or even snow begin to accumulate, and if you go out under dressed, you could get sick (this happens a lot to employees who go out camping or hiking on their days off). 

     Not to mention we all use the same laundry room, bathrooms, one computer (which everyone seems to like to COUGH all over -GROSS!!!!), one pay phone, gym, and rec center equipment, you are bound to catch a slight cold in the least. It's just kind of funny because you never think about getting a cold in the summer time.....then again, no one really remembers its summer here on top of the mountain where its barely above60 half of the time.....

Pub & Inspiration Point

Friday June 8th - A lot of kids here like to request the weekends off, and the company is very flexible when it comes to giving people days off with their friends, so mostly everyone has their days off with their friends, if not the weekends. Friday night at the pub was the most crowded I had seen it in the three days I had been there. Some kid ran up and down the hallway knocking on doors saying their was a Toga party, so my roommate said she would take me to the pub and introduce me to some more people. When my roommate came to my room to pick me up, she was already drunk, which disproves my conception of how hard I thought it was going to be to get alcohol around here. We walked over to the pub in the pouring rain(at least it wasn't snow!), but then we got separated and I ended up their with a couple of her friends. At first, I sat down at a table while I waited on my roommate to arrive. The people are seriously so friendly; one guy sitting at the bar waved me over and after learning that I was from the Philadelphia area, just exploded with conversation about the Flyers (I'm a HUGE FAN!!) He was a 'native' from Montana, but only by his standards. I learned from the conversation that in order for the locals to acknowledge you as a "montanian" they want to know where your parents are from, and where your grandparents are from. Most people who are from Montana, he said, have several generations who lived in Montana before them. Then he asked me if I had ever been sledding, and my immediate reaction was duhh what kid hasn't been on a sledding on a snow day off from school? But then he had to clarify that his sledding and my sledding was two different things. My sled was yellow, probably three feet long and cost about $14....his, on the other hand, was a snow mobile that cost roughly $3400. So sledding out here is really snow mobiling. There are a lot of different slang words and phrases out here that everyone uses, some are relative just to park terminology and others I guess are regional, like, 'get off my koolaid', which I had never heard until I came out here. There are lots of phrases just people in the park use, like crack, the honey-mustard, mayo hot sauce combo dip that is great on pretzels to everyone except me...and lot's of people yell corner when they are walking around corners, or behind you when you're behind someone who can't see you. Mostly these are just used in the kitchens, but sometimes you'll hear it outside the workplace. Another thing I noticed is that people like to touch you when they talk to you. At first I thought maybe it was a guy thing, then I figured maybe it was a drunk-at-the-bar thing, but girls do it too. Most people place a hand on your back, shoulder, or arm when their talking to you, especially when introducing themselves, and that was a little uncomfortable at first considering I'm not used to people doing that, and I didn't know most of the people who were doing it to me. I also noticed that when the people I met introduced their friends to me, the touching increased. Guys especially gave each other handshakes and hugs, but  I didn't observe many girls doing the same.
  I also met some more people from the East Coast. A guy from Connecticut road his motorcycle (for the first time) all the way to Yellowstone, and told me about his last night on the road before coming to Gardner. It was sleeting and snowing for most of the last day's ride out here. On his last night, he stayed in a hotel where the pools outside were heated by hot springs, and there was a swim-up bar, and he told me how he went in the 107° pool in the snow and ordered a shot and it was the coolest thing he had ever done and how there is nothing like that on the east coast.

                                                                           Saturday June 9th
Today was cold, but the wind chill factor made it reallllllly cold, especially with the canyon nearby (it gets really gusty). After work, I took a hike up to Inspiration Point with a couple of coworkers and one of her friends. For those of you who don't know, two days earlier a girl fell 400ft to her death into the Yellowstone canyon. She had literally been at Canyon for 2 hours, unpacked her stuff and went out on a hike. She went too close to the edge of a cliff, apparently trying to get a picture, when the loose rock fell out from underneath her.
Yellowstone Park Worker Fell 400ft to Death

The girl was Russian and had just moved into my dorm, only she lived on the first floor. A boy had taken her and two of her friends out to the Canyon, and from what I heard from some friends around the dorm, he tried to pull her back or at least told her not to do it and she wouldn't listen. He was so distraught that he had to leave and went back home. Needless to say the two other Russian girls went home. Park rangers left the girl's body in the canyon from 5PM until about 8AM the next morning, and didn't successfully reach her body by helicopter until about noon Friday. It was a really tragic accident that no one would ever wish on someone. I can't imagine how her friends and family must feel, and while no one deserves a death like that, but her actions were asking for it. She took a risk against hundreds of signs which warn visitors to stay on the trails, and unfortunately, though I've seen many people stand ontop of huge boulders and get away unharmed, she has to be the example for everyone. I've been out to the canyon at least three times so far, and probably 95% of people stay on the trails, some will go just over the guard rail where it looks okay, and only a rare handful have I seen actually scale a boulder or go where I would deem 'too far'. Most people stay on the paths because you can get find a couple thousand dollars for breaking park rules (considered federal laws, and you could go to federal prison), and if you do survive one of those falls, you will probably still get a hefty fine on top of your medical bills.
Walking on the trail we saw a total of 6 people. The trail is just short of two miles, and I would estimate most of the trail was about 20-30 feet away from the cliff of the Canyon. It made for some really spectacular pictures. One of my coworkers is studying to be a geologist, so it was cool to hear her talk about the different types of rocks and what the colors meant.... for a little while... It was just soo windy and sooo cold! We walked back on the road and attempted to hitchhike (lots of people do it out here...doesn't mean its safe and I'm not promoting it in any way) whenever a truck passed by (the plan was to get a ride back to Canyon by riding in the bed of the truck, since riding in the back of a truck is legal out here) but only two trucks passed us and we were too chicken to wave one down. Here are some pics of our trip

The 'point' of inspiration point

Fenced off area around inspiration point

         

View from Inspiration Point

 View on the hike to Inspiration Point

Living in Canyon

The view from the door on my floor

Here are some views in and around my dorm

down stairs to the second level

My hallway, I'm second door on the right

Outside view of entire length of Employee dorms

From of my dorm, you can see the second employee dorm, Grizzly, behind it

Front of Canyon Lodge - lots of construction

The General Store

Sporting Good and Camping Store

America!

Dates and Sightings of Wild animals in the park area

Inside the Canyon Visitor Center 

The Grand Loop Topography 

Canyon Junction

Those are Miles to the next villages/lodges

More Snow, it was in the 60s today

"Company Volleyball Courts"

First Day at Work - Deli!

Today I reported at 9AM for my first official day of work - in the Canyon Lodge Deli! This, I have been promised, is the most relaxed job in the whole food and beverage department. I work with maybe a total of 5 people throughout the day, serving hot dogs, cappuccinos, and  scooping ice cream.Don't be fooled though, some of that ice cream is rock solid being served at between 5°-9° F. As I was being trained in scooping ice cream (yes, there's a technique and if I don't do it properly I could injure myself  '_'), I read that because of the altitude difference, if ice cream is left for more than ten minutes outside the freezer, it expands and pretty much explodes out of the carton, and I got a laugh out of picturing a pyroclastic cloud of ice cream exploding over the sides of the cardboard... especially the huckleberry, because that's purple and a colorful explosion would be all the more fun

I work with an array of people from all over the country and all different ages. I work with a man from Alabama who is probably in his early 60s, and my shift supervisor is 22 and she just graduated from Penn State. I've met a lot of people today from eating in the EDR as well as working in the fast-paced kitchen which is located right behind the deli. The kitchen has people from all over the world, from France, England, Ecuador,  Russia, and of course all over the United States, and there are people running back with hot trays of food as well as dirty plates stacked high to go to the dish washing room. Oddly, despite the many  language barriers, the kitchen seems to run very smoothly. People shout ' corner' when they are going around a corner with a load in their arms, and everything has its own place or room, for example, the bread goes in the bread room, there's a room for dishes, a dry pantry, at least 6 different types of freezers for thawing, freezing, cooling, and what not. Everything is pretty organized and it helps production and output move smooth and quick. 

The deli was really slow today; we didn't have a lot of customers or business, so I got trained in how to scoop ice cream and basics on the cash register (which I will learn more extensively tomorrow). It was so slow I got let go of early at 3PM (supposed to stay until 5). My sleep has really been off here, so I went right back to my room and tried to pass out, but the noise from the construction kept me up. At 6 I went to dinner and met up with my roommate. The cool thing about Yellowstone is that there is an employee recreation center at each location, and they try to put on cheap activities so we don't get bored and we get to meet other people, so at 7, after I went on a rendezvous to find the post office, I went to play in the first 3-on-3 volley ball league. My team didn't do too well (we were eliminated first round), but I met some really cool people who, after I got to talking with, said they wanted to do more trail running, so hopefully I can get a group together. I met a bunch of cheese heads from Wisconsin hahaha and they were pretty nice. The good thing was that people of all athletic abilities, who some had played volley ball and others hadn't, all came out to play, and  everyone had a good time laughing and watching everyone else play.

One thing that didn't occur to me until after this Czech guy, who thought we were playing Olympic volley ball, spiked the ball at like 90mph at my arms was that when you get injured the elevation really makes you swell up faster. My arms were about as red as a lobster and probably as thick as a lobster's big claw, too! The swelling did go down eventually. Another thing you wouldn't think is that there are mosquitoes at 8,000ft. I didn't get bit, but some of them were huge! I couldn't believe that they could survive the elevation let alone the temperature (it was about 60° outside). Most people ,after their team got eliminated, went back to the dorms, but I hung around and spoke to some more kids. There was a boy from Taiwan taking pictures, and besides the Czech guy (who was about 6'3), everyone else was from the states. One girl's uncle even was from Swedesboro and works at the same place my mom does - what a small world!

After volleyball got too cold, I took a nice hot shower (the only nice thing about these dorms), but the downside is that the showers are maybe two feet wide and the shower curtains are clear....so needless to say everyone takes 5 minutes showers or less and its extremely awkward. It's kind of like that unwritten guy code where no one makes eye contact at the urinal, only this is at the showers. My roommate invited me out to the employee pub again, so we hung out at the bar and ordered some food while everyone else around us played pool or darts. The bar tender had his ipod playing and played some really good music, at least to my standards (Muse, Foster the People, the Clash). There I met my first Navajo. His name was Shirley, and I don't mean to be stereotypical, but he was drunk and having a good time. When I asked him whether he lived on a reservation, he smiled and replied "I have reservations everywhere!". It took me a minute to get, but then I laughed. He also said he didn't believe in skinwalkers and that he hadn't seen one yet.  For a Thursday there weren't a lot of people in the pub, and since most college kids partake in 'Thirsty Thursday" I thought it was a little strange there weren't more kids in their. 

I keep meeting new faces everywhere I go. There are at least 200 people on food and beverage staff besides the other employees who make up house keeping, grounds keeping, construction, tech support, and every other position you can think of out here. My friends introduce me to their friends and so forth, and everyone seems really open minded and into the same things. Almost everyone goes on a hike or camping on their days off, and I've noticed that people who work together generally go hiking and camping together. Tomorrow I should be going on a run with some of my new friends, so I will blog again then! More pictures tomorrow, its getting too late for me

First Full Day in Canyon

View from top of Canyon Falls

The trail we ran down ( it was a lot steeper - trust me!)

By the way, these pictures were taken around 4:30PM MT; it's 9PM mountain time now, and it's still daylight!

First Day - Canyon Lodge

I was going to post a video blog tonight, but quiet hours are from 10PM-7AM, and the walls in the employee lodges here are paper thin, so to make sure I don't wake anybody up tonight I will just blog like a regular person.

Last night I went to bed around 1AM and set my alarm for 5:30, but I just couldn't fall asleep! I ended up waking up at 4:30 thinking I had missed my alarm! My alarm, mother, and wake-up call all got me up at 5:30. I went to breakfast in the hotel and found these decorations on the walls: 

The eagle chandelier was carved out of some type of antler, though I'm not sure if they were real or fake. The buffalo definitely looked real. The scenery and decorations just reminded me of the textbook America that comes to mind when you think about 'the wild west'. My cab driver picked me up at 6:30AM and drove me about 11 miles to the bus station in Bozeman, Montana. On the way there he pointed out the different mountain ranges like the Tobacco mountains and another set named after a guy whose name I don't remember. The driver was from Washington State, just north of Seattle. When I told him I was from New Jersey, the first thing out of his mouth was, "Oh! You're from New Joisey!" AND I BUST OUT LAUGHING!!!!!! I had never heard someone actually pronounce it that way - and I thought New York accents were bad! I was almost embarrassed at the way I outright laughed at this guy, but then I was just like yup, that's where I'm from. 

 Carved out of wood outfront of my hotel           Sunrise and mountains opposite my hotel                Mountains on the way to Bozeman

More Mountains

  If you had closed your eyes to sneeze while going through Bozeman, you would have easily missed the Bus Station it was that small. It was really no bigger than a Wawa, and no, not a super Wawa. When I arrived there was one kid already sitting outside with his suitcases smoking a cigarette; he was very friendly and said good morning and after talking for a few minutes I found out he was the same age as me. As 7AM grew nearer, more kids started rolling in. A total of 8 of us  sat outside by the time the bus to Yelllowstone arrived. Most of us were 20 with two 21 and one 19. I couldn't get over how friendly and outgoing everyone was and eager to talk to other kids within the first few minutes of meeting each other. Two boys from Michigan were supposed to drive out to Yellowstone when not two miles from their home their car got T-boned and totaled and they had to take a day and a half bus ride out. A giant yellow and brown tour bus rolled up that said Yellowstone on the side, and this bus was to take us to Gardner from Bozeman for our check-in. The bus was already half filled with international employees; a couple girls from Russia, and a bunch of people from Bulgaria, Macedonia, and France. 

       I tried so hard to stay awake on the bus ride to Gardner - the views were simply breathtaking and beautiful, unlike anything I had ever seen before, but I succumbed to the lack of sleep from the days before and knocked out for most of the 1-1/2 hr. ride. When I woke up in Gardner, the Gardner river was rushing underneath me. At check-in, everyone stood in line to hand in their identification, filled out some more paper work, and then received their name tag, uniform, and information on what to do if you got attacked by a bear and other first aid. In the uniform room, I was almost annoyed at the tone of voice the young girl who was doing uniform paperwork was using to speak to the international students with. She sounded like she was talking to a child, as if these kids only spoke basic English, when in reality some of the internationals I had met had been here for the second, third and even fourth seasons! My best guess is that this girl just assumed it was their first season.

View from Outside Human Resources in Gardner

From Gardner we were taken on a bus to Mammoth Hot Springs, which is in North Yellowstone underneath Montana. Here we dropped off some of the kids who would be working here for the season, and everyone else went to lunch in the Employee Dining Room (EDR). I sat with two girls who were around my age, a 19-year-old from California, and a 21-year-old from Bulgaria. I was really amused at our lunch - "Philly Cheesesteaks" (I think they did it just for me haha) with Valveeta cheese -_-..... I didn't partake, but the mac-n-cheese was dead on! When the three of us sat down at a small table, I looked around and was pretty surprised to see how many older employees there were, like, gray hair and wrinkles old! I'm not sure if that's a sign of how desperate for work people have become, or if they retire and work here or whether they just simply love the area so much... I haven't got the chance to talk to anyone in depth yet. 

     I had my first Bulgarian cigarette after lunch! Apparently its customary to smoke after you eat, so I told my new friend I would go out with her and we just chit chat. This was her second season at Yellowstone, so she told me about some sights to go see like Jackson Hole and the Boiling River. Afterwards, I walked with another one of my new friends from Michigan (Oddly, lots of people here are from Michigan) up to the base of the Mammoth Hot Springs...or at least the first ones you see. We didn't have a lot of time to actually go up and see them, but everything smelled like rotten eggs because the water is full of sulfur, so I guess I can be thankful we didn't get to go all the way up. There were some really cool rock formations, and some animals had clearly left hoof prints in the mud near the stream (I'll upload photos in an album later). My new friend from Michigan said he had heard a rumor that sometimes pockets of toxic gas get trapped when their being released from the ground, and pockets will get blown around by the wind and can be so powerful that a whiff of it can kill a buffalo dead! 

A view from the bottom of Mammoth Hot Springs - these ones you can't go swimming in.

   After our quick adventure, we walked back to the Mammoth Hotel to be picked up by the bus, when somehow a Bison has wandered over to the EDR where we had had lunch! But unfortunately my camera was locked away on the bus :( so I had to take a picture with my cell phone (will upload later). We were probably a little less than a hundred feet away for it (Park regulations say you have to be a min. of 100ft away). On my way to Mammoth I met a kid who had been in the park a few weeks and was hitching a ride to Old Faithful (and coincidentally from Somerville, NJ) had told me stories about how Buffalos had charged him and he even got cornered by a river by some elk for over two hours. So on top of not getting mauled by bears I'm going to try to not get trampled by a buffalo, either.

   The bus ride from Mammoth to Roosevelt lodge was about 45 minutes, and the ride to Canyon Village from there was another 45 minutes, but the ride was soooo beautiful. I took so many pictures - all of us kids on the bus were running back and forth from window to window snapping pictures on either side of the road, from mountain sides to trees to lakes to animals. I think I took a picture of a moose laying down under a tree, but its a bit blurry. There were only about 12 of us on the bus; my two friends from Michigan were the only ones going to Mammoth, and the rest of us (Me and 9 other French-speaking internationals) were all headed to Canyon Village. Canyon Village is at the highest elevation in  the park at 8,000 feet, and it is also the most centrally located village in the park. There is still snow on the ground in some parts of the park, as you will see in some of my pictures of the snow capped mountain tops. The weather at Mammoth and Canyon was sooo nice when we first pulled up - I was walking around comfortably in a t-shirt and jeans, but as soon as the sun went down MAN DID IT GET COLD! How cold? It started snowing. Nothing really stuck, but it was wet, cold snow all in your face.

Snow on the mountains and the side of the road - just so you get a feeling of how deep it was in some places.

When I arrived and checked in, I was first assigned to a dorm called Wapiti, the Shawnee and Cree Indian name for Elk. But apparently everyone had to be over 21 to live in this dorm so I got kicked out -_- because GOD FORBID I live with kids who are old enough to drink....so they moved me to an Alcohol-free dorm called Bison where mostly everyone is under 21. The park is very serious about obeying and enforcing Federal laws about drinking, so that was blow number one. Blow number two was having to wheel my 52+ lb bag back and forth twice to two different dorms over rocks & gravel and wow was that tiring. The elevation really took a toll on those 100m - my heart was pounding like crazy and I was out of breath half way there. The kids were all really friendly and I must have had at least 5 different kids offer to help carry my bag, and I gladly accepted when I had to climb a whole flight of stairs. As soon as I got my room key, I put my sheets on my bed and K.O.'d for about 3 hours. In that time, I slept through Venus passing over the sun (which apparently happens only once ever 100 years) but honestly I don't care. My roommate walked in while I was sleeping and  she said I rolled over away from her so at first she thought I didn't like her, they she thought maybe I didn't speak English, so her Russian friend some Russian to me in my sleep and when I didn't answer they concluded I wasn't Russian hahahaha. When I woke up I went to turn on the lights (which had worked when I went to sleep) but the light bulb blew. I was thinking about going to find someone to get a new bulb, but then the lights magically turned back on - my first power outage! When I told my roommate what happened she flat out laughed at me and said she was glad I didn't go asking anyone because they all would have laughed at me too. My roommate is really cool so far, she is from Michigan (told you there were lots of them) and she works as a room attendant. She's been here a couple weeks already, and she showed me the general store and deli where I got dinner and got to look in some of the gift shops. We swapped stories about college and home and crazy roommates (SHE IS NOT A VIX!! and was completely appalled when she head that story). So I hope we get along well. I'm going to breakfast with her tomorrow morning so she can show me where I go for orientation at 8:30AM. 

I'm just really relieved that the people here are so friendly and nice and eager to meet and talk to new people. I have been sat in my hallway for the past hour writing this blog and so many people have come up and introduced themselves and made sure I was okay (apparently its weird to sit on the hallway floor on your laptop, but I didn't want to keep my roommate up). One girl even came up, gave me a bunch of Nutter Butters, and then invited me to go hiking with her. What I'm starting to realize is that most of these friendly people are all from the West Coast, I've only met the one kid from the East Coast from NJ; everyone else has been International or Michigan or West-er. So tomorrow is my first day of orientation and training - I will leave off with some more pictures, and try to post again tomorrow!

Bye Rona!!

Stage Coach Wagons @ Roosevelt

The Bus Ride

My Michigan Friends in their new home in Roosevelt

Horses at Roosevelt

 My new Wardrobe