Settling into a Schedule
Now that Memorial Day has gone and we’re pretty well broken in on our jobs, we are assigned to regular work schedules and shift teams. I work a late shift on Fridays and Saturdays, and an early shift on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays. With the long days here, there’s plenty of time to enjoy life in Yellowstone.
The hotel is the oldest in the Park, with the first wing built in 1891, and additions in the 1920s. In the old wing, home of the front desk, the glass is original, wavy and slightly purple in tint. The furnishings are largely early summer house, lots of wicker, arranged in clusters for family groups to gather. A large sunroom overlooks the lake, and is a gathering spot for guests in the late afternoon, for cocktails, games, or sitting with a good book. The dining room also has some pretty stunning views of the lake.
Over the registration desk and in the entry to the gift shop, etched glass panels depict wildlife. Scattered around the lobby are framed enlargements of photos on sale in the gift shop, some of which are quite stunning~but I don’t have walls large enough for them at home, never mind in the van~! A “resident artist” is set up in the lobby doing water colors of vaguely anthropomorphized bears watching firefighters, tourists, etc. His work seems quite popular with many of the guests and some of the staff. My standards in watercolor are perhaps too high, having been watching Lucia’s work develop over the past 25 years. I find his stuff pretty trite and stylistically uninteresting.
Of the 300 odd rooms in the hotel, we turn over an average of 200 a day. On the morning shift, we are checking guests out; on the afternoon and evening shifts, checking them in. With the high rate of turnover, there are all sorts of housekeeping issues, and many guests arrive to find that their rooms are not ready for prime time. If they’ve been traveling all day, tempers can be frayed. We’ve been advised that we can encourage them to go enjoy the park, but should probably not tell them to go take a hike, it might be misinterpreted. Most guests are prepared to make the best of their vacation no matter what happens. There are several less pleasant subsets. One of the more interesting, if less appealing, is the professional complainer. These guests feign illness, complain about service and housekeeping, and manage to complain enough, and publicly and vocally enough, that management comps them on services or rates. We just said goodbye to an Australian couple that seemed to have perfected the art, stayed at the hotel for more than a week, complained about everything, were oh so ill during their stay and couldn’t get adequate medical care, and bounced up to check out on their last day, hale and hearty and having managed to knock off about 1/2 of their total bill during their stay.
Our little home behind the front desk houses about 4 of us at a time, three desk clerks and our “senior”- the trouble shooter and problem solver. I have limited authority, and love calling over the senior when there is a problem; I am coming to believe that there should be such a position in every job, someone to rescue you from the difficult personality, the problem not of your own making, the error someone else made that you’re having to explain away, or, even better, your own mistakes.
I particularly enjoy talking with the guests about the park and their plans. I love this place, and love sharing what I’m learning about it. And, of course, I’m thrilled when a guest comes in wearing a Sox hat, I know I’ve found a kindred spirit. There is a surprisingly large number of Boston fans passing through.
I’ve gone out and hiked with co-workers three days out of the past six. On June 1, Maria, from Buffalo, a former flight attendant, a pilot, and a colorful personality, joined me for a hike out to Storm Point on the north shore of the lake. A short easy walk of a couple of miles across a sagebrush meadow led to the shore of the lake, and a colony of yellow-bellied marmots in the rock formations on the shore. The rock here is rhyolite, a cousin of the granites of New England, but different in its texture. The marmots are winter hibernators, who enjoy the warmth of the sun on these rocky outcroppings during the summer.
On the way to and from the point, the trail wanders through spruce and fir woods and lodgepole pine woods. Bison stroll through, currently rubbing against trees to scrape off their winter coats. They mostly look like they’re having bad hair days at the moment.
On the 3rd, I hiked up Elephant Back with Maria and a couple of other co-workers, Kerry, her sister, Molly and Lee. I distinguished myself as the ultimate flatlander, having to frequently stop to struggle for breath as we climbed from the hotel to an altitude of about 8500 feet. My goal is to do this enough this summer that I can actually make it without sounding like someone is strangling me!. We hiked through a lodgepole pine forest. As we climbed, the trail was glittering with obsidian fragments, and the boulders contained chunks of obsidian. The evidence of Yellowstone’s volcanic history is everpresent, along with the reminders of the current thermal activity. Elephant Back is believed to be the remains of one of the more recent lava flows from the Yellowstone volcano, whic last erupted in a significant way about 600,000 years ago. Elephant Back is from a flow about 70,000 years ago. The view from the top was well worth the asphyxiation on the way up. We looked down on the hotel, and across to the Absaroka Mountains. The lake is extraordinary in its beauty, and holds lots of surprises: depths in excess of 300 feet, underwater peaks 150 to 200 feet high, thermal vents deep underwater as well as allong the shore.
On the 5th after work, Natasha, a young woman from Florida who is leaving this week, joined me for a hike to Fairy Falls. A gravel road leads from the bridge crossing the Firehole River past the Midway Geyser Basin. In the late afternoon sun, the steam rising from Grand Prismatic Spring was colorful, gold purple and blue.
The trail turned off of the old fire road, and wandered thgouh a lodgepole pine wood. As we got closer to the falls, the trees changed and there was more spruce and fir. We could hear the sound of the falls, and finally came across this lovely 197 foot high cascade of icy cold water. The air was full of spray that cooled us off on this hot sunny afternoon.
These hikes are just whetting my appetite for discovering more about this incredibly diverse and beautiful place. The side benefit is in becoming a little more fit than I’ve been sitting behind a desk or hanging out in a courtroom these many years.
