The wrong job at the wrong time

Please remember if you are reading this as a follower that the intent of the blog is basically to journal events in our lives - good - bad, happy - sad,  rewarding and disappointing.

I have hesitated writing anything that would be negative because Bud and I are NOT that kind of people,  but our dream as we have chosen to call this event in our lives, has become the nightmare (to a certain degree) that we hoped would not happen.

We are  home - and very disappointed.  When we were hired by Xanterra in February we were told that we would work hospitality services - that included housekeeping, food services, camp grounds etc. etc.  When we called numerous times to check to see  if they knew where we would be staying or what we would be doing, they never knew.  That was OK.  We had filled our applications out honestly and felt they knew our ages and our limitations (cardiac and orthopaedic).

When we arrived Tuesday (7/12) at HR in Gardiner they saw who we were and processed us through to Grant Village as Room Attendents (RA).  When we went to get our unifforms, some of the older people told us that RA's worked really hard,  OK, we thought - we can do it or they wouldn't have hired us for that position.  We drove down to Grant Village and met with our Personnel managers and they told us again that this was really hard work.  At that time we asked "Do you think we can do it?" and they said they thought we should give it a try.  The Personnel Locator remarked that he was glad we were there but ws not encouraging to us,  Once again we were reminded how hard the work was.  We then drove over to meet the Housekeepings Supervisor and he told us again that it would be hard work, but we told him we had a good, strong work ethic and we were willing to try.  He was not disagreeable to that.

After orientation on Wednesday morning, we met with the team leaders - ALL of them about 18-20 years old.  They were not real impressed with the group of new RA's (me, Bud and 4 Equador students.)  But they reluctantly took us with them to finish the days work.  We observed, participated and generally thought that other than the scrubbing of the floor in the bathrooms that this was do-able. We had eaten breakfast with the Personnel Locator on Wednesday AM and he told us that he felt we needed to be in another job position and he was looking into it. Thursday we reported and all 6 new RA's accompanied 1 Team leader and we cleaned as a group - 18 rooms and on top of that,2 rooms that had been snow damaged and the carpenters, etc had left them a mess.  They required ceiling to floor cleaning and that was very difficult - all the time we were on a time schedule.  New occupants start coming in at around 4PM but a tour bus was early and the pressure was on.  We worked VERY hard . When we clocked out all the new RA's had worked harder than any group and of course, we were praised.  Bud and I got in the car and looked at each other and said, "We can not do this 5 days a week for the next 3 months"

We went to our Personnel managers and told them that we could not sustain this pace. They assured us that we had been the topic of every supervisory group meeting since we arrived at Grant Village.  We were told to take Friday off and give them an opportunity to try and work it out.  We were given great reviews by all of our team leaders, even our co-workers were impressed.  The housekeeping supervisor used us as an example in his AM motivational meeting Friday - he told them they could all develop our work ethic.  A compliment, but it didn't make our backs feel any better.   He told Bud that had we been able to withstand the strenuous workload for a few weeks he would make us supervisors.

Well, long story short - at 10PM Friday night the Persoanl Locator came to our cabin and finally admitted that Human Resources had made a BIG mistake in February when they hired us to Housekeeping, then he proceded to tell us that we actually had arrived 3 weeks too early and that there were no jobs for our age group until the 1st week of August. He told us that employment with Xanterra throughout the park was greater than 100%.   To say the least we were pretty upset.  We had just invested a large amount of time and money to be where they had told us to be. They had messed up royally.  He suggested we try a competitor there at the Grant Village and we did that on Saturday morning, but it was the same story - the college kids leave in August and they could use us until  then.  We could not stay in the area for three weeks (height of their season and hotel rooms are at the least $150/day.)

We have learned that HR doesn't look at age, health or time you want to be there - they look at "Will you do anything while you're here". 

So we loaded the car and started back home. 

We are not completety over Yellowstone.  We spoke in earnest with all the supervisors and they gave us good advice for next year - how to apply and how to avoid such a catastrophe.

ALL in ALL, we had a good time.  We saw more than most who were out there vacationing.  Wish we could have fished, but the water was too high and too swift.  Maybe next year.   Lord willing we will try this again  next year - August for sure.  Don't think we could take the 10-14 foot of snow that might greet us if we went earlier!!

So the blog will end.  I have added a few more pictures for our memory and if anyone has followed this blog - hopefully  you will see just how beautiful the area is and perhaps venture out west sometime.

                                          Heading out of Yellowstone toward the Tetons


                    

                                              View of the Tetons around the North end of Jackson lake,

                       Another look at Jackaon Lake with part of the Tetons in the background

Flooding is still evident along I-29.  You can see the Missouri River coming right up to the south side of I-29.


We are ending the blog the way we started it - with the flood in Nebraska,  The detour was still present and our trip was delayed by about an hour and a half. 

We are so blessed to have had the opportunity to do what we did get to do.  In retrospect - we have our health, our family, our home and good memory upon good memory.

So until next year the blog remains open and we will invite you to rejoin us August, 2012.

A day of rest at Old Faithful

                                                                  REFLECTIONS

After working two days and doing laundry this morning, we decided a short trip to Old Faithful would be very nice.  We are about 20 miles from Old Faithful, so the drive over was a short trip for us and very beautiful.  Considering the unusually large snowfall this winter in Yellowstone, the month of May brought an additional 4 feet ( a total of 14 feet for Grant Village).  As we were driving to Old Faithful today, along the Continental Divide there were still numerous snow mounds for about 2 miles in that higher elevation.  We pulled over to take a few pictures.

                                          SNOW MOUNDS @ THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE           

                                                                   KEBLER CASCADE

Bud probably had another reason to visit Old Faithful.  Before leaving home Dr. Wallace Prescott (a member of our Sunday School Class and former head of the School of Engineering at Tech) gave Bud an assignment for the summer---"research and try to find a way for Old Faithful to reduce it water output so as to conserve energy."  I think we may have to visit a few more times before he can tackle that assignment.

                                                           

                                                         OLD FAITHFUL LODGE

Also, I am posting a few more pictures of our new community.  Our cabin is becoming quite cozy and the peeling paint we understand is a step up from the mold in the other cabins.  Last night was movie night - "The Glass Bottom Boat" with Doris Day showing on the widescreen of our laptop.  We sat up on one of the twin beds and ate Fig Newtons.  It really was fun!!

POST OFFICE

EMPLOYEE DINING ROOM

OUR CABIN

Cruising down the river

Today we attended orientation to Xanterra, safety procedures and then housekeeping information.  All in all we were in class about 4 hours.  After lunch we were able to "shadow" Room Attendents and help stock service carts and count clean linens.  We have met some really great kids.  There are a lot of Eastern Europeans working the park this year, but in our little village there seem to be a lot from Taiwan.  Also, 5 new hires came in from Equador yesterday to work in Grant Village.  We all attended orientation together today.  They have so many questions about the US - very nice kids.  They are here until October like we are.  After dinner we decided that it would be fun to drive around to Fishing Bridge, which is about 20 miles from where we are staying,  to see if there was a "hatch" going on and if there were any huge Cutthroat trout  to be seen.  We have so many mospquitoes we thought maybe there would be a lot of trout flies hatching, too.  We parked our car and starting walking over the bridge - saw a few caddis flies but no trout.  There was a crowd of people gathering on the other side of the bridge and a Ranger was with them.  We thought maybe he was holding a Ranger Tour and just sort of wandered on up to the crowd.  Well, were we surprised to find out there was a grizzly about 300 yards away on a penisula out from the side of the Yellowstone River.  We didn't have our binoculars with us and even if we had we would have had to use our imagination to "see" him.  We had been talking with the Ranger and Bud decided to go get the car and bring it to where I was on the bridge.  The Ranger received a call about that time that the bear was on the west side of the river and Bud stopped in his tracks for us to follow the Ranger to see the bear.  The bear decided to take a swim and started floating down the Yellowstone River right to where we were standing on the bridge.  He swam right under the bridge where we were - not 10 feet away.  It was a sight and we caught it all on the camera.

He started out on one side of the river and then treaded water for a few seconds.  This gave me time to catch up to him with the camera.  The first picture shows him on the right side of the bridge,  a little distance away from us.  Then the pictures progress to him swimming a little distancce  and then getting out to head to higher ground.

                                           OUR BEAUTIFUL DRIVE BACK TO THE CABIN

Back to "work"

We arrived at our scheduled time to HR in Gardiner and fortunately we had filled out all of our papers correctly and were processed through pretty quickly.  We had been praying that we could have a cabin with our own private bath (which is a rare commodity).  When we were told we had a few choices we could make we held our breath hoping for the "desire of our hearts".  Sure enough one of the choices the HR rep said we might be interested in was a married couples cabin at Grant Village.  We could hardly believe it.  Then we had a choice of kitchen work or room assistant (maid service).  We opted for the room assistant.  It took us about an hour and a half to drive down to Grant Village (south end of the park).  It rained pretty hard all the way and we saw a few bison - not impressive enough to stop and take pictures today.  The snow fall this year was heavier than it's been since the 1920's.  We were very surprised to see the Yellowstone River overflowing into reservoirs that have always been dry.  We met our personnel managers and then our housekeeping boss.  We were given a choice of cabins - 1 with the young kids not old enough to drink or one near the "pub".  We chose the one with the young kids.  The manager was so happy - she said that cabin was one of the nicer ones.
Now let me say that Bud and I are accustomed to rustic - I've spent time in Africa and Moldova and Bud spent time at Paris Island - we've seen rustic.  But then you have 1932 RUSTIC!!!  Don't feel sorry for us.  We knew what we were in for.  So we vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom facilities, made the beds with our new linens, comforters and blankets and decided to give it the good old American try!!
Tomorrow is orientation and job safety class.  Our uniform trousers should be here in the afternoon tomorrow - but never fear, bluejeans and our uniform shirts will do very nicely we are told and we will spend tomorrow afternoon working.  We will have a buddy the first few days then be on our own.
Don't want to make any snap decisions or comments about the food ...yet!!

So here are a few pictures of our cabin. 

  GINNY'S SIDE OF THE ROOM.  SINK NEXT TO THE BED.  BATHROOM WITH TOILET AND SHOWER TO THE LEFT OF THE MIRROR.  IN THE BATHROOM WE HAVE AN EXHAUST FAN AND TWO 40 WATT LIGHT BULBS.

                OUR MATCHING CLOSETS.  ACTUALLY BIGGER THAN WE EXPECTED.

    BUD'S SIDE OF THE ROOM.  HE HAS A FLOOR LAMP TO HIS LEFT.  MORE OF THE CUSTOM PEELING PAINT MOTIF.

  THIS IS THE FRONT DOOR (ESCAPE HATCH).  THERE IS A SPACE HEATER, 4 WINDOWS AND "CUSTOM PEELING PAINT ON THE WALLS.  OH, AND THAT'S "THE" CHAIR.

We were told that the snow this year was so heavy (10 ft) around the cabins and dormitories that windows actually broke on the first floor of the dorms.  It didn't melt until about a month ago.  Everything is wet, wet, wet and the mosquitoes are very thick.  We were told not to get too comfortable because in about 3 weeks the college students will be leaving and they will be closing down the cabins.  At that point in time we will move to the dorms.  We have been told that the dorms are very nice compared to the cabins.  An older gentleman, Roy, who works maintenance here was going to show a dorm room to Bud today but decided not to.  He was afraid we would leave if we saw what we were missing.

We've arrived

After driving out to Moose Junction last night  the only thing we saw were Moose-quitoes.  We stayed around for about 30 minutes then decided they were not going to show up.  Unfortunately, the poor moose missed an opportunity to see The Gaddy's from Tennessee.

This morning after sharing an omelette at Bubba's, we started west from Jackson on Hwy 22 for West Yellowstone.  Instead of traveling due north out of Jackson, we thought going up through Idaho might be nice.  We had been up that way about 20 years ago.  It was a nice drive through the western part of America's bread-basket.  The variety of green we saw from wheat, barley and potatoe fields was truly beautiful.  The western side of the Tetons is pretty fantastic, too.  We took a small detour off the beaten path to stop by the very beautiful Upper Mesa Falls of the Henry's Fork of the Snake River.

                                                 
                                                                      IDAHO FARMLAND 

                                                       

                                                             IDAHO SIDE OF THE TETONS

                                                             

                                                             GREEN FIELDS

                                                                      

                                                                      UPPER MESA FALLS

                                                                                       
We made a quick stop in a few fly-fishing stores in West Yellowstone for Bud to check out what's rivers are producing the most fish right now .  Then we headed on up to Gardiner, Mt.  It was a really nice drive and much quicker than it has been the past few times we visited the park because there was no road construction.  It is so much fun for us to drive these familiar roads and recollect precious memories of visits here with family and friends.

So here we are, eagerly awaiting 8AM tomorrow.  The suspense will be over.  We will have jobs and living accomodations and then the real fun begins.

A BIG Surprise!!

This morning we decided that we would go to one of our favorite places around Jackson Hole for breakfast.  We took a long ride up to Jackson Lake Lodge and had our favorites - Mountain granola with blueberry yogurt for me and a short stack for Bud.  We had planned to take pictures of the beautiful mountain flowers, the snow covered Tetons and perhaps see a moose (we have always been pretty lucky seeing moose in that area). 

After having breakfast and visiting some of the specialty shops at the Lodge we headed for Willow Flats - a place that we have had our morning devotions for all the years we have visited the area.  We had noticed a sign earlier in the morning announcing the presence of bear in the area, but was told by the ranger at the Lodge that she didn't appear during the day usually, so we went on our merry way to have our quiet time.  A diesel pick-up truck loaded with a very powerful telescope  pulled out ahead of us (we learned later that he was working with the rangers) and we noticed about 300 yards ahead of us on the road a herd of elk was running swiftly across the road.  That was a sight but we didn't think much of it, BUT then to the left of us in a field of Willow there was a momma Grizzly and two little cubs, their little heads peering above the Willow.  We pulled off the road  behind the pick-up truck and turned on the "always ready to shoot" camera.  Bud took the pictures - he was closer to the bear.  We were about 75 yards from the bear and  he took some fabulous pictures with the zoom lens.    They just took their time strolling through the willows.  The momma would stay ahead of them most of the time, but they were never far behind her.  I'm glad Bud took the picture -  his hands were more steady than mine - be still my heart!!   It was a fabulous sight!!

We saw a beautiful bald eagle soaring above the Snake river - too high for us to capture on film, but he was gorgeous.  We also saw pelicans and a Trumpeteer Swan. 

There are a few more pictures of the Tetons I'm adding, too.  Believe me when I say I have so many beautiful pictures it is hard to choose just a few.

We bought our bear spray today - planned to buy before we saw the bear family - but it was a sure sign to us we need it.

We are going back out to Moose, WY this evening.  We saw a beautiful meadow yesterday and was told that Moose frequent it early every morning and about 6-8pm in the evening.  Hope tomorrow we have moose pictures to share.

Journaling the dream

I enjoy journaling - even when nothing special is happening.  But for this particular event in our lives I thought it might be fun to share some of our adventures and thoughts with our friends and relatives.  Hope it won't be too boring - but the intent of the blog is to record thoughts, facts and pictures surrounding this special time in our lives.

We left our home on July 2, 2011 and started west.  After spending  Saturday with Greg and Sunday with Bud's sister in Paris, we started in earnest our trip to Wyoming.  We had very good traveling weather and all of our accomodations on the road were very comfortable. 

We had one bump in the road in Missouri as we were traveling north on I-29.  We were heading toward Lincoln, NE when we were detoured off the road near Nebraska City, Iowa because of flooding.  (see picture).  We had to travel about 100 miles out of our way before we could head toward Lincoln again, but it was a beautiful drive and we were grateful that the road and weather were good. 

We stayed Tuesday night in Laramie, WY and Wednesday night in Pinedale, Wy. 

We are in Jackson, WY now and are really enjoying the cooler days/nights.  We will be here for 4 days then we head into Yellowstone.  This is the first year we have visited this area so early and are very surprised at all the snow that remains on the mountains.

All the news around here is about the tragic bear attack in Yellowstone.  Of course, we always have our bear spray when we are out and about in Yellowstone, but this year it is more important than ever.  Everyone involved in tourism around the area says that the bears are more prevalent this year than in the past because of the late winter snows and the lack of berry production in the highlands.  That is driving the bears closer to inhabited areas in search for food.

We are taking these few days to acclimate to the higher altitude and thinner air.  Today we went to Teton Village and walked around.  There is no flat land there, so we were challenged to move onward and upward.  Took lots of pictures. Here are a few of them.  Hope everyone will enjoy them.