Parking in the 'Park'

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6:37 am - Sunday (Friday!) - 53º F, humidity 75%, wind 4 mph our of the east northeast......partly cloudy with a forecast high (again) of 86º F.  This is our Friday, and we are looking forward to our off days!

TLE and I spent a large part of Saturday morning, before work, taking the written 'Platinum' test for our final 'Adventure Guide' designation.  The test is 'open book', but was still quite hard.  It took our two 68 year old brains operating at maximum capacity to find all the answers.......I am still not sure they are all correct.  The other written tests were easy by comparison.  Then it was time to begin getting ready for another work day.  

Initially the morning temps were cool enough that I finally turned on our 'fireplace' heater to take the chill out of the air, but by 10 am it began to warm up outside with a vengeance.  By the time we left for our 5 mile drive up the Gardiner River gorge it was in the high 80's.

We have a pretty large employee parking lot behind the General Store, but by the time the 'CLOSE' shift folks arrive there are very few spots left......sometimes we have to compete with the local wild life for parking spots........

.....I haven't taken many pictures of the wild life around Mammoth Hot Springs, and specifically all the elk that wander around grazing in the abundant grassy areas.  Most of the elk are 'cows', but occasionally we will see a young 'male' elk, calf, with short antlers.  I have yet to see a grown male elk, bull, in a densely populated area like Mammoth Hot Springs.  In the middle of the day parking becomes a major issue in Mammoth Hot Springs, and we get many, many tourists driving into the employee parking area looking for a place to park. There are orange cones in every single unoccupied site, plus numerous signs advising this area is strictly for employee use only, but they still try to park there anyway.  I totally understand their desperation.  Sometimes it can take us an extra 7-8 minutes to drive the last few hundred yards to work as there are so many folks looking for a parking spot.

When we arrived our 'CLOSE' shift things were pretty slow, and that is how the day, by and large, remained.  We had some spurts of activity, but generally it was very slow paced.  At one point a young woman (leader of a youth group) approached us at the 'Fountain' to announce she would be purchasing 17 single scoop ice creams for her kids.  Amazingly, we processed those 17 orders in less than 10 minutes......we are getting good!  That was the one big rush of the day......we had a few times when there were 7-8 folks in line, but it was nothing like last Saturday and Sunday (4th of July weekend).

Just as we were getting ready to close the 'Fountain' for the evening we got a rush of about 10 folks (two families)......as the clock struck 8:30 pm we simultaneously emptied 4 of our 8 tubs of ice cream......a perfect ending to our day!

TLE and I were on our way home by 9:40 pm, and home just before 10 pm.....one more day in our work week and then our exploration of YNP continues!  The full moon peeking over the local trees.......

.......by the way, did you know that 80% of the trees in YNP are of the lodgepole pine variety?

Thanks for stopping by!

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