Weeks around Thanksgiving

Since I would be at Nanny and Skip’s house for over a week before the rest of the family came I decided volunteering would be a good idea. Nanny set me up to volunteer at New Hampshire Peace Action through her yoga teacher who also volunteers for them. Peace Action is a non-profit group with sections all over America that’s aim is to promote the end of the wars and stopping of new ones. I only worked here for 5 days and could go in and out as I pleased, a satisfying feeling when in a real job you are bound to strict hours. The guy who nanny had set up the volunteering with had forgotten I was coming on my first day, so arrived fairly late. It was difficult for the staff to find things for me to do because organising volunteers is like a different job completely, so in the end I mostly created my own stuff to do and had a lot of interesting conversations with some of the radical people working there. I decided to create a few interesting pages for their seasonal Newsletter, including a big article about a War photographer. I also stood out in the weekly anti-war vigil for a short while holding huge protest signs with another older lady and the intern – we got some abuse from rednecks in trucks but also got some positives. Volunteering was a very nice experience, like having a job but with no real ties and no forced work. I also went to Nanny’s Unitarian Universalist church quite a lot while I stayed, pretty different from your regular English Christian church service. Over the two weeks in New England I went on a pretty crazy cooking run now that I had so much freedom to make good food, compared to Yellowstone where crap was just served to me on a plate. I did tonnes of vegan baking so a lot of scrumptious sweet desserts were had all round. I thought that it would be snowing while I stayed so had got my hopes up for skiing trips, something I have only done a few times but thoroughly enjoyed, however it only snowed a little towards the end and not enough to go skiing, sledding or ice skating.

I met up with the English family (mum, dad and Emma) at Boston airport in week two, a strange feeling because I have always been the one greeted here so now it was like greeting them to my new home for a year – it was great to see them after 4 or so months. The first night we stayed at Ned and Andrea’s in Boston, near the Bunker Hill monument, a short visit with just a few shared meals but enjoyable and nice to see more family. The next day we went to Rhode Island to get to the Cicchetti’s for Thanksgiving, picking up Gian Carlo from the hospital on our way, after a cancer treatment. We stayed in a motel in walk able distance from their house since Gian Carlo was very susceptible to catching viruses from others and if he did it would halt his treatment. So our stay mostly consisted of hanging out, talking, preparing lots of food (including a 40 pound organic turkey!) and then evidently eating tonnes of food with all the American family on Thanksgiving Day. I enjoyed this holiday, which I had never celebrated properly before, because it was more about having fun with others and eating good food, there are no worries about presents involved.

After Thanksgiving we went up to New Hampshire to stay with Nanny and Skip for four days, the second time for me. We went on nice walks with the dogs, I baked more of course and we mostly just hung out together. On Tuesday morning mum, dad and Emma were to return, travelling over to Boston for their flight. They took me with them and got me safely to the train for my next move of the year, hugs and kisses as goodbye for the next section of the year and then I boarded the train for the 3 day journey all the way to the West coast in Olympia, Washington.

Journey to the East - Part Two

After leaving Yellowstone, while on Greyhound, I kept subconsciously searching for some great funnels of geothermal steam climbing out through the trees or perhaps a Bison out for a stroll on the roadside. It was odd to suddenly leave the place I had been living for 3 months (in such a unique place too) and I became so used to all the spectacles.

After Rochester I went straight across, by train this time, to Poughkeepsie, NY to visit my old friend from Ferry Beach (A Unitarian Universalist conference centre – sort of) who goes to Vassar College. I spent over a week here and it was a very pleasant place, the campus was pretty with lots of greenery and old buildings. A very alternative school with lots of interesting and diverse people. I didn’t get to spend tons of time with my friend because of busyness with schoolwork, etc.

Next it was to New York City to meet up with Team Malaysia, a big group of friends from Malaysia who I met in Yellowstone. They had travelled for a month all around the U.S in their huge American beast of a car and their final stop before going home to Malaysia was NYC. I decided to meet them there because I knew I would be near the city at the time, I booked the same hostel as them and we all got a New York Pass which gets you into pretty much any tourist activity for the price of the card. We surely got our money’s worth because each day, for 3 days, we rose and started by 8.00 and went non-stop until 12.00 at night. It is somewhat mind blowing the amount of activities we managed to fit in, this meant that most things were pretty rushed but my friends did not expect to come back to the city again. The activities included: The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, The Bodies museum, Natural History Museum, The Met, Chicago the musical, the top of the Empire State Building, Central Park Zoo, the top of the Rock building, Madam Tussauds, boat trip around Manhattan, tour of Ground Zero, bike rental around Central Park, and even more that I do not remember.

I was slightly worried about the hostel my friends had booked because it had gotten pretty terrible reviews on the internet but was cheap and in a great location. However, when I got there it was actually quite nice and clean; I also managed to get a room all to myself probably because of the time of year. I got to the hostel after my friends did, was given my room key and opened the door to the surprise that my room was fully occupied by two of my Malaysian friends. It turned out they had switched around their rooms but the different front desk workers had not exchanged the information, so a conversation of mass confusion and terrible communication ensued with one of the not so friendly staff, but it was eventually sorted out.

The things I enjoyed most were the Bodies Museum and biking around Central Park. The Bodies museum was in some ways gruesome but greatly filled the desire for curiosity. It was a space filled with cadavers all preserved and cut up in mysterious ways, each string of raw red muscle revealed, insides exposed and bold open spheres for eyes broken from their lids as if each one had a face of immense shock at your presence. Each one revealed something different, lit up in contrast against the black rooms, some were halved down the middle, bent in curious shapes as if playing sports, gripping to one another or sliced all through into pieces that I swore looked no different than your regular American steak (I think this put my friend off steak for a while when I mentioned it). I explored these bodies all around with intrigue; I can now say I have looked up the hairy nose of a dead man! Central Park biking was a very fun outing, although a scary one too. We had the bikes for 3 hours on the New York Pass so headed straight for the park and road around the winding streets inside – all 9 of us were going along with cars, horse carts, roller skaters, runners and walkers, it was a fairly busy road for being inside a park. Our wheels spun past the autumn leaves and grey boulders and under the towering buildings that peeked through the branches. Since my friends had travelled for a month and had gone all around the U.S they had assigned one person to lead and organise the activities in each place. The leader this time unfortunately didn’t ascribe enough time for us to get back to the bike shop and he took us on the main road parallel to Central Park to get back. This turned out to be a big mistake because it not only took us around 5 times longer to get back than through the park but because it felt we were fighting for our lives with the traffic. Riding on NYC roads with no bike lanes is probably one of the scariest things I have done, but also the most thrilling, it was like an extreme assault course. At times I really thought one of us 9 would be knocked down but we all got back safely in the end, although not on time.

I had said goodbye to my friends the night before I was leaving, they had a flight at some terrible dark hour, and the next day I caught the bus to New Hampshire to stay with Nanny and Skip before meeting Mum, Dad and Emma for Thanksgiving.

Yellowstone Pictures

Here is a small selection of the many photographs I took in Yellowstone. There are more on my flickr page which includes the ones from the rest of my year -http://www.flickr.com/photos/oliverseary/

I also have added the Subscribe feature to the blog (on the right column) which you can set to send you an email whenever I put up a new post.

Journey to the East - Part One

I have about 6 weeks of catching up to do on this blog, I am writing this on my 3 day train journey (yes 3!) all the way from the East coast to West coast in Olympia, Washington. Since I have so much to cover I will try to keep it short or shorter than normal.

So as soon as I left Yellowstone I was headed straight for Minnesota to meet my friends Johanna and Jordan, who I had known from the first few weeks of Yellowstone, in Morris where Johanna goes to college. Jordan actually lives 6 hours away, working at an ethanol plant on crazy 12 hour night shifts while completing college through an internet system. However, he had not seen Johanna in a while and when he heard I was coming, decided to drive the long journey for the weekend.

I was driven to Bozeman by my manager, who was taking the assistant manager for a day out on her birthday - I thought I would miss my Greyhound if I got on the slower Xanterra bus. The ride was somewhat uneventful due to the darkening hours. Although, it was a very different social scene than what I was used to, a diverse crowd but with few kids and one guy with a tattooed teardrop (apparently the gang enforced symbol to show you have taken a life). That is until I transferred at Billings and hung out with a group of 3 young Minnesotans the whole ride, my ear for different American accents seemed to kick in when I heard one of them pronounce their state as “Minessooodaa”. Fairly soon in we had to stop and transfer buses in a town where a luminescent Christian cross hovered over us on a black hill. The door kept opening on the motorway, apparently due to there being no air pressure. This also meant that when changing buses we could not get our bags from the bus and were told by our new hostile driver we would receive them 12 hours later at our destination. I had to go on borrowing my friend’s clothes for the whole stay; luckily she’s very tall as I could only pick up my bag when I got the bus to leave.

My long term memory is slightly scrambled, which is rare for me, but I’ll try my best. First off we briefly visited a state park where apparently the Vikings had come before the colonialists and left a carving in a stone. This detailed how there had been a fight and they had been slaughtered except for the guy who ran off and carved the stone – sounds a little dubious to me, many people think it’s a fake. I’m not sure why the Vikings would leave their only trace in the centre of America either. We mostly hung out but did things like rock climbing on the university facilities, rode bikes up to the universities farm and single power generating windmill (it’s a very rural place), chilled out with her friends, watched some films, explored a barn, drank Johanna’s homemade hard cider and to top it all off made an excellent 3 course vegan meal, the syrupy pecan pie was a favourite. I hadn’t been able to cook and hadn’t come across a decent tasting meal in 3 months at this point, so everything tasted heavenly and the joy of cooking sprung forth.

My next stop was Chicago, a city to be explored alone, something I had never done before. While there I had visited the Art Institute, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Navy Pier and had mostly hung out in Chicago’s Cultural Centre. Chicago was to me a city smaller and with more charm than New York, less daunting and overwhelming. I stayed in Greektown in a hostel above a big Greek restaurant called the Parthenon. It took me lots of trouble finding this place, even though it was right near the Greyhound station, I went I am sure up almost every wrong street in all ways before I found the correct one, with 80 or so pounds of luggage in tow. When I did find the correct one I passed it many times, there was no sign for the hostel just the restaurant. Eventually a guy working there saw me with my luggage walking around and whistled me over to the hostel; not a friendly man but he got me in nonetheless. The hostel was very clean and good facilities including free breakfast, unfortunately there was one frustrating guy in the room who had been there a week and insisted on talking to new hostel mates loudly at 2am. He would talk about how much of a genius he was and his famous friends; apparently he knew the Walgreens pharmacy owner and the builder of the Sears tower and someone or other.

Before coming here I hadn’t really the slightest of plans. I had spent a lot of time planning my travels to the east and where I would stop off but not exactly what I would do in these places, I was following a plan and I didn’t think much about what was happening next. So I did a lot of wandering and exploring, I am sure I walked more miles here than in any one day in Yellowstone, my feet scorched at the end of the day. I’ll tell some notable little things –

· The over ground railway skated above the streets and when beneath it a great bellow and roar ensued of grinding steel wheels on hard tracks and took over all the senses.

· It is called ‘The Windy City’ for a reason, in the fall of autumn’s leaves I was often caught up in miniature leaf storms, struck and slapped by natures hand all over.

· The Art Institute is a delight, especially on free night, it was a museum of grand scale and so I visited barely the nooks and crannies, but I stood in awe of this art – a lot of very famous pictures too.

· The time when a ‘homeless’ man scammed me. He came up joking about me scanning over a map of America ‘You lost?’ he said, or something like that. ‘No’ I said, I thought he just wanted a friend at that naive moment, so joked along. He moved on to beg for money for a burger, just a few bucks. So I got out my wallet and found the lowest a 10, he offered me change so I handed it over and he took a few dollars out and handed me 1. ‘I’m homeless, I’m homeless. C’mon man.’ ‘Fine, take it’ I said not wanting to bother with his tricks. I turned with a scarlet face and found him attempting to apply the same trick to almost everyone in the park. I felt guilty because for sure he was now saving up for drugs or something. The next day a man asked me for money hawking me on the street, ‘no sorry’ my instant reaction was. I turned a few seconds later and saw a red, white and blue arrowed jacket. I had recognised it and then I realised seconds later when I placed it, it was the one hanging on the homeless man the day before. He was the same guy who had scammed me previously.

· On the way to Good Will (thrift store) I passed Oprah Winfrey’s studio, abundantly dressed with CCTV cameras and Oprah’s face. I looked at getting free tickets but read it was extremely hard; people were practically spilling their guts out over the internet to beg for them, but that would have been a truly American experience.

Next it was Greyhound again to Rochester, NY to visit Mary from Yellowstone, in the same friend group as Johanna and Jordan. I made a Canadian friend on the ride; we talked for hours in mid-night until a passenger sharply shushed us from behind – an awkward happening. They informed me that Rochester was actually the number one hotspot for homicides in the U.S, what a splendid statistic it was to learn; thankfully I was out in the country about 40 minutes away. I was to spend my first real Halloween here and go on my first American trick or treating expedition. I dressed up as a zombie soldier, face paints and all wearing her green winter coat, while she wore my big denim jacket and dressed as an 80’s punk rocker with her mum’s big 80’s glasses. We went to a State park near her house; it was a long winding canyon with three big waterfalls and a train bridge above. It reminded me of Yellowstone although with more trees. She had to go to college for most of the time so I hung out in the library a lot and got some business sorted.

Last post of Yellowstone

Over the whole stretch of summer I had many experiences of interest with animals. The scariest and most notable being a close-up meeting with a Grizzly bear after I took a lone hike to the Upper Falls of Canyon. I was walking back on the road to Canyon at sunset and joined a trail leading to the cabins where I recognised two friends from afar and called out to them. I joined them and we continued into the woods, talking loudly as a pack. With no prior warning a Grizzly with a mountainous humped back and striking stature sprinted across and cut the trail just yards ahead. We all did the opposite actions of official advice, turning and walking away very fast, you are supposed to be slow and walk backwards but our hearts pounded in a profuse spur, leaving no room for rationality. It disappeared over the hilly bumps or behind the cabins, we were not sure but we walked cautiously and loudly home. I think it was more frightful of us than us of it, I am just thankful I found friends to be loud with at the right time, or who knows I could have been a bears meal! This was the closest I got to a Grizzly, and definitely the closest I ever want to get.

During the time I worked in Canyon’s P area cabins most of us kept a constant watchful eye, you never knew when a squirrel or raven would smoothly make its way down to our carts and unleash terror in great disarray on our garbage bags and linen. A sharp clap would usually draw the ravens away but the squirrels were fearless, I never knew them as such cheeky creatures before. I often found myself chasing a squirrel around my cart in circles as it jumped sneakily from tyre to tyre. I eventually got a talent for spotting them in trees; they would sit on long branches staring with conniving eyes in waiting for my disappearance to a room. Fortunately I did not have to worry about this working at the Old Faithful Inn.

Finally, the smallest creature I had an encounter with was a mouse that managed to make its way into my room. As I swung open the door and switched the light I noticed little pink feet dashing along the carpet from corner to wardrobe or under a pile of random junk from my roommate. It paced so quickly that it seemed nothing but a ball of travelling brown hair. I propped the door in hopes it would want to make its own way out – the mouse did not go for this. I noticed it had been hiding under the dresser a while so reached for my torch and found in the flash of light its legs stretched to climb and it disappeared up the back. It was untraceable after this, I had moved everything except a jacket and some shoes next to the dresser so began to wearily remove the items until only my single hiking boot was left. I plucked it up by the heel and peeked into the dim foot hole where I found the mouse curled up tight and staring with black orbed eyes into mine, it had made a new home. I ran outside, through the porch filled with smokers, and placed the boot to the ground waiting for the mouse to leave. It must have just been too comfy in there (I understand, they are nice to hike in) so someone came over and did the cruel act of kicking the boot after I informed them of the situation. At which it darted to a little patch of grass in terror. I felt bad later because it had snowed overnight...

My pay cheques for the whole season have been quite poor looking for the amount of work I did. Although, I spent very little, for there was only things to use it on if you really tried. On my pay cheques I noticed something amusing. Printed on the bottom, below all the various numbers, is a small funny comment that differs each time. They always made me laugh for they are irrelevant to anything. Some examples are:

· ‘Don’t mow the grass when the ground is wet’

· ‘One safe act can lead to another’

· ‘Helmets save lives

I had no clue what these were supposed to be for or who even has the job of thinking these up, but they added some entertainment to the sad looking numbers on the pay cheque.

I also heard many funny guest or ‘touron’ comments on comment cards or spoken out to friends of mine, here’s some good examples –

· ‘I was just wondering where do they put all the animals at night?’

· ‘This is such a nice place but it would be much better if you got rid of all the trees’

· ‘The service here was both inadequate and appalling, I was given only two packets of coffee creamer in my room!’

· ‘Do they turn Old Faithful off at night?’

· ‘At what time of year do the deer turn into elk?’

One thing I forgot to mention in my last update was the Old Faithful Inn sleepover, on the night before our final work day we all got to sleep in a room of our choice in the inn. People were picking the most interesting rooms first, ones that were apparently haunted or Robert Reimer’s office (the architect of the inn). One girl stayed in the room where a man had decided to murder his wife by decapitating her over the bathtub, then holding the head he ran up the crow’s nest (a jungle of stairs leading to the top o the inn) and got to the high roof outside and thrust it to the sky. I simply picked out a random one on the night which had a faint view of Old Faithful geyser and sunrise through the branches. Some friends and I set up games prior, like chemical bottle bowling and bison toss, a game of throwing a soft toy at a target from the balconies. The name made me chuckle; there is a double meaning to the word in England. At the end we watched The Shining, a perfectly timed film because it is set in a hotel that had just been closed down for the winter which is just what we had done to the inn. It was actually supposed to be filmed in Yellowstone at the Lake hotel but the park service would not allow them to do so, it would have been perfect. The lights were all switched off at the end; slightly creepy walking the narrow wooden halls after watching a horror film.

There have been so many experiences I have surely missed out from this blog, there are too many to remember. I have met so many great people from all over the world; I feel I never have to worry when I travel because I have friends now from almost every imaginable place. I discovered that I love to hike, something I would complain and whine about doing as a child. It was a shame I didn’t get to see more of Yellowstone due to having to work 6 days a week for the majority, I would like to visit again (I plan to stop off in wintertime on my way back West) but I do not think I would want to work for Xanterra again! Overall, it was a fun experience.

Days Off - Old Faithful

So I am gone and Yellowstone is over for the season. I have been travelling, via Greyhound, across America to the east coast, stopping to visit friends and interesting places on the way. I am sorry for my lateness in writing, but have had little free time between working, planning and travelling. I’ll inform you of the happenings towards the end of Yellowstone to begin with.

All of my days off at Old Faithful had been visits to waterfalls or cascades – there are so many of them here. The first, the day after getting to Old Faithful, was one titled Moose Falls, I don’t know how they named this since it didn’t seem like a good habitat for Moose. It was a very short walk from the car and we managed to stay for hours in the high heat, it seemed to never fully become fall or winter in Yellowstone but drifted in summer’s warm ends. I went with my Malaysian friends, who we began to call ‘Team Malaysia’, and Angela; a new American friend from Canyon who I only met on the bus in transfer. We brought along our swimming attire, for me it was to bathe beneath the falls, for others it was to jump into them. The latter did not appeal to me after we tested how deep the water was – enough for small Malaysians but I did not think for a tall western kid. The first to jump, CCY, decided to leave his glasses on for he was scared he would jump in the wrong place without them. As soon as he popped up from the water he shouted, ‘My glasses! My glasses!’, so spent the rest of the time searching for them but without luck. They repeated to drop themselves besides the falls many times, some with hesitation, and I photographed them mid-air. A nice day which ended by going to Grant Village, another Xanterra hotel location, to meet our friends Tien and Ting Ting for dinner. They worked in Housekeeping at Canyon but had to transfer to Grant to close it down before coming to Old Faithful at the end. An annoyance I thankfully managed to avoid through negotiation of my work extension.

The next week no friends had a day off which coincided so I decided to rent out a bike from the Old Faithful Snow Lodge gift shop, another one of the hotels in the huge parking lot area, which stays open for winter. The rental was fairly cheap because of employee discount, so I had the bike for half a day. Because it was a rental I was also forced to wear a helmet, something I never do at home, but if a ranger spots you a fine can be given – although it made me feel safer around the speeding R.V’s with incapable drivers at helm. After investigating some local maps, found in a great book that a guest left behind in their room (one of the perks), I chose to ride on a bike trail leading to Biscuit Basin that passed many geothermal areas on the way. I stopped off at Morning Glory Pool, the colours are supposed to be spectacular but unfortunately people throw coins and miscellaneous objects inside – they drained it out one year and found things like teddy bears, coins and underwear. Also, as the weather gets cooler the colours get more brownish and dulled. Yet it was still quite beautiful to see the unusual rock walls inside. The trail to the basin was bike friendly, of which there are few, and was fairly easy with the big tyres aiding on the rocks. I was slightly nervous about random animals being on the trail since I was alone and could obviously not clap to scare them away. I am sure it would not be fun to ride straight into a grizzly. I kept pondering on the mathematic possibility of being able to ride faster than a bear or bison, I concluded that the adrenaline could give me a chance. I locked my bike up to a rack and wandered around the basin on the boardwalks. I do not generally appreciate the boardwalks for I feel they somewhat falsify the experience; it makes me feel as if I am more on the property of Disneyland than a national park. However, I got to see Sapphire Pool, one mystifying example of a hot spring with its so very very blue waters – the deepest I ever witnessed in any. It used to have knobbly rock formations around the edge, which apparently looked like biscuits, until the powerful earthquake of ’59 caused it to explode and destroy the surroundings. I saw an opening through the bushes which led to a trail, I followed while not having a clue where I was going, looking for adventure. A sign indicated ‘Mystic Falls 0.7 Miles’ and ‘Overlook 0.7 Miles’ so I went in the arrows direction. First finding the overlook, at the top of the steep hill, it opened up the land far and wide around Old Faithful, up to the hills which circled it. Steam rose from all over, sporadic locations that I had not known existed before, and at the same time I saw a geyser erupt from the Upper Basin which the inn overlooks. There was a snaking river below, which I presumed was connected to the falls that I had not yet found. I continued and continued and continued on the trail, never finding anything resembling a waterfall. After hiking for what felt like hours in the heat, and just finding the landscape to be forests with no differentiation from each other, I turned back. I also worried of bears, so clapped anxiously alone. I finally reached a divide in the trail and went down, I turned back and saw there was a sign which I had clearly missed on the way, it indicated that I had been walking on the 9.2 mile Fairy Creek trail, I am glad I turned around! I found the falls eventually, after that lengthy blunder, watched and ate some sandwiches. I had planned to reach Grand Prismatic Spring, the biggest hot spring in the world, later in the day but my mistake left me no time. On my way back I also found some friends, who had just finished work, on the same trail up – a funny coincidence.

In my final week, the majority of my friends had left already so I borrowed a bike from a friend in Personnel. It was a nice bright red colour and unfortunately was not made for my body type or height, so gave me aches for days. The back wheel also wobbled and squeaked, not giving me the most confidence, but at least it let me be free to explore. I headed for Lone Star Geyser while stopping at Kepler Cascades on the way. The trail to Lone Star was off from the main road and a short journey away from Old Faithful but over an endless hill. It was an old disused road running along the Firehole River, a nice ride with little tourists. However, not without wildlife, as I rode in the peaceful quiet I turned my head to the river and what sprung into my vision was the biggest bison I have seen with its Viking horns and beard, stood still feet away on the side of the road. It seemed contented but stared and followed my movement, people warned me on the way back of its presence which I was already aware – I was just glad to not be on foot. There were no predictions for Lone Star because it has gone off every 3 hours in its recorded history. A notebook lay in a pedestal and inside a wooden box, visitors are supposed to write down the time of the eruption for the next people to be able to predict the next display. No one had wrote recently so I guessed with the visual indications my book told me to lookout for (minor eruptions). I thought I would miss it because I had to be back to work as a Server Assistant in the dining room, an extra shift I picked up. I picked up only two of these shifts towards the end because I wanted experience in a kitchen, making it easier to become a waiter later in the year. I was happy it was only two shifts, on the last night 550 people had made reservations, leading me to screw up from the pressure and drop an entire tray of glasses. Anyway, as I strolled slowly back to the bike racks Lone Star Geyser began to shoot just in time, water spurting high up angled and all around the sides to quickly bounce up and float as steam from its oversized beehive cone.

After deep cleaning on the 20^th for the second time now, which was exhausting because the rooms were much dirtier than Canyon, I was not supposed to have another day off. I could not get a ride until the 22^nd so managed to scrape another free day in Yellowstone. My ride was actually from my manager and assistant manager because they were going to Bozeman to celebrate a birthday; I did not get the bus because it wouldn’t have got there in time to get the Greyhound. They also couldn’t tell me its departure time until the day before which made matters more stressful. On my free day I borrowed another bike, one from my other Personnel friend, simply out of the level of comfort of the bike. Since I did not get to go to Grand Prismatic Spring in the previous weeks I tried again, I had visited it once before on the Fairy Falls trail but only seeing it from a hill; I wanted to get closer to this natural wonder. Something again stopped me from reaching it, around half way there on the road my tyre squeaked for a second then succinctly and ferociously popped, meaning a completely flat tyre. It seemed I was not permitted to Grand Prismatic so headed back walking, sticking out my thumb when I heard the whizz of a car. Many passed including many trucks, 4x4’s and R.V’s which could blatantly accommodate me and the bruised bike only a little way back to Old Faithful. A truck slowed and u-turned eventually, with waving hands to display their wants to help. It was a friendly young married couple who worked in the snow lodge and had recognised me from the canteen. So I rode in the back of the truck with the bike, an interesting and windy experience! My friend was not mad about the bike, more worried about me because the bike was given free to her and was pretty crappy...clearly. This days plans didn’t work out well so I found a friend, who had come from Canyon, gone on a road trip but then started at Old Faithful weeks later, and we went on a short hike to Fern Cascades near the dorms. I also discovered that she was a vegan! It made me very excited because she was the first vegan I have ever met.

Old Faithful

I have been working at Old Faithful for around 12 days now and I have to say that I prefer this place to Canyon, although I do miss my various groups of friends. There is much more to do and see, the buildings are much nicer, the work is easier, the managers are friendlier and my dorm is right next to the canteen and the famous inn built by Robert Reimer – where I work. On my last day at Canyon I unfortunately had to work, along with all others who had later end dates. We did menial tasks such as count all the stock individually and one absurd job which took up most of the day; unfolding and re-folding 2,162 bath towels after they had been done by machine. Jennifer was apparently not happy with the machines way, so made us do this for hours on end - I now know what a factory job is like! Apart from that it was a nice ending, we all (Housekeeping) went down to the Canyon together after dinner for a final time and the next morning I came back again before getting the bus. I wanted to visit my favourite spot, the brink of the lower falls, one more time. It is so intense and overwhelming to stand right at the drop, especially in mornings light.

I checked out of my room after doing a simple vacuum and dust, easy for me after being in Housekeeping for 2 months, and the room was left feeling cold with its bare display. I got the bus at 1pm, the bright yellow Yellowstone one, after saying my goodbyes to friends that were left – waving through the tinted windows as the bus disappeared into its trailed dust cloud. We stopped at various Xanterra spots to drop off and collect employees for transfer to different hotels. Few remained for Old Faithful, with only two left over to go to the last stop at Mammoth. I was placed in the dorm Laurel, which I like because it is not 10 minutes walk to work like the others but the rooms are just like Canyon,. It also has an amazing view through the exit window; a geothermal hotspot is right across. In the morning as the sun just starts to wake, a huge cloud of sun pierced steam hangs in the air, frozen in the cool climate. It is amassed from the dotted steam vents and murky fizzing hot springs; which for some reason ducks seem to enjoy splashing about in at times. These features are thought to be the reason why the dorm is so hot, as they surveyed this summer the geothermal area is moving underneath the entire dorm. My roommate tells me that many people exclaim that a geyser may shoot up and wreak havoc at any moment. I am not worried.

I have really fallen in love with the Old Faithful Inn, at night I will often find myself casually climbing the split log steps to read in one of those grand red cushioned chairs on the balcony edge, or to write beneath the dim glow of the candle-like bulbs. The ground floor is structured with local pine logs of great circumference, laid closely together on their side with others splicing through at the ends. The next two floors are not built up by logs but wooden slats, somewhat like they have on those little charming beach houses, yet with a coffee russet coat. The lobby has two platforms peering down to the cornered gray stone walled chimney, which seem like they have the mass of boulders. Wide mouthed fireplaces are dotted on each edge of its square base, occasionally all four will roar in harmony. I am easily distracted here and often little reading will be done in truth. My eyes could ponder on the structure for hours, particularly at the details, those features that give the feeling of being in a living and breathing structure; conveyed by the naturally formed bowing branches as stair handles or, bulbous tree deformities as banister ends. The roof is held by straight up tree bases, meeting a horizontal support at each level, conjoined by bent pine bottoms (supposedly formed by a snow impression) and then continuing on its vertical journey to the narrowing top. You get a grand feeling of nature, of the place being at one with the surroundings and often that you are in some secret wonderland in a hidden veiled forest.

I am also distracted by the guests. In any sitting, even if it follows the previous one, I will never set my sight upon a familiar face. Sometimes there will be an old man with a cane and a funny waddle where he will dip twice on each side in one slide of the foot. There could be a close-knit table of Europeans laughing huskily in an unspecified language, while drinking and shuffling cards in their middle aged hands. Or an awkward group of teenagers on a school trip all clambering around a couch, some not knowing where to be positioned. Their attention focused toward the centre where a fair haired and made up girl sits with one high leg beside a classically posed male – trying too hard with legs wide, back leant and arms smoothly winged out as an eagle on the couch top. And for a last stereotype there could be, to much amusement, the whole product of an Asian tour bus dropping to their chairs and picking out brown paper lunch sacks from packs or handbags. The fumbling of hands that dive for an apple or a jam sandwich along the crinkled paper edges is in synchronisation; felt through the grand resonance of rustling ubiquitously, leaving not a nook hushed.

I will let you know of my other adventures soon.