Parking patrol......

8:09 am - Sunday - 53º F, humdity 76%, wind 3 mph out of the east southeast......sunny with a forecast high for Gardiner of 85º F, and Mammoth Hot Springs of 79º F......clouds on the way, but no rain forecast for today.

For the first time in 4, or 5 days it did not rain Saturday.....it looked as if it might rain, but the moisture never materialized.  Saturday was also our 'hump' day, so it is downhill to Monday (our Friday) now.  The weather has been so nice this past week we have been leaving most of our windows open all day and all night, and have not had to use our A/C at all during that time.  In fact, we should have good hiking weather by Tuesday as we continue our quest to hike 100 miles in Yellowstone.

The customer traffic continues to slowly decline as families with school age kids are making their way home to finish 'Back to School' shopping, and put their kids back in school by the middle of August.  The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, which has been closed most of the summer for renovation and repairs will be reopening August 1st, so that may have an impact on our customer traffic, so we shall see if the slowing trend is only temporary, or permanent. 

During the middle of the day we have this ongoing battle with desparate vacationers invading the employee parking lot in search of a parking spot.  TLE has made it her personal mission to thwart them, and she can be seen occasionally chasing parking miscreants from the lot, as well as moving orange cones around to block unused spots.  In addition to the orange cones each site has large block lettering proclaiming the site  'RESERVED', and there are numerous signs throughout the parking lot proclaiming the site for 'FOR EMPLOYEES ONLY', but that does not deter those whose motto seems to be 'It is better to ask forgiveness than permission'.  At the peek time of day which begins at 1:30 pm when the 'CLOSE' shift folks arrive we need every single one of those parking spots as for about 90 minutes we have the 'OPEN', 'MID' and 'CLOSE' shift folks all on site at the same time.  I get a kick out of her confronting the occasional scofflaw as we arrive for our daily shift.....there is almost always at least one person trying to park illegally in our lot when we arrive.

I spent my 'CLOSE' shift scooping ice cream and talking with my co-workers when the periodic lull in foot traffic occurred, which was often.  We still managed to scoop a lot of ice cream, and our customers rewarded us with over $90 in our tip basket.  The foot traffic dropped off significantly after 6 pm, and as a result we were able to begin cleaning the 'Fountain' area early resulting in us finishing our cleaning by 8:40 pm.....just 10 minutes after our official close time.  I spent time 'merchandising' around the store which essentially means straightening T's, sweatshirts, and jackets on their hangers, as well as 'fronting' other retail merchandise.  'Fronting' means pulling stock on shelves to the front to create a uniform appearance, and make the product visible to customers as the walk down the aisles.

Soon it was once again 9:30 pm and time to haul anchor and head for home port.....we were home before 10 pm putting our tired feet up, and sipping adult beverages.  I fell asleep in my recliner waking up about midnight to go to bed......:-)

Thanks for stopping by!

P.S. - Just a reminder, we do derive some income from our blog.  The first source is via Google Adsense.  You have probably noticed various ads in the right hand column of our blog, and in between the daily blog entries.  If you are interested in any of those products and click on any of those ads we do get a few cents for each click.  Secondly, we have an Amazon Affiliate account through Amazon, which means if you click on this link (Amazon Affiliate link) and do your Amazon shopping using that link we will receive a small commission on each completed purchase.  Using this link does not add one penny to your purchase price, nor does it affect your Amazon Prime account status.