Bret Hobbs' Adventure in Retirement: May 2023

It has been a relatively quiet week building up to Memorial Day weekend. I can tell the number of tourists is increasing because we are having more families with kids each day. There have been several foreign tourists and communicating with them is always a funny adventure. One day I had a very pleasant french woman come up to me and asked for some medical help. She could not speak English very well and we communicated slowly and used the cell phone to explain pictures and such. What she wanted was help with a bad case of diarrhea. It was a very amusing 15 minutes I can tell you. I also had another young french woman come and asked me about boiling water. It seems she had a baby and had baby formula but needed a way to boil water to mix the formula. I was very disappointed that I could not help her as we did not sell any containers that could boil water in. The two cases are the exception to the communication rule, as most of the time when I ask foreign tourists if they need any help finding anything, they just smile and nod and walk right on by. I was discussing this with Ron, my boss, it seems that about 1/3 or the tourists we are getting are from India. I think that is strange and Ron thinks that the amount of people from India visiting is unusual also. The thing about those from India is their diet. I get questions every day from them about our yogurt. It seems that they can only eat yogurt that is plain. I consider vanilla yogurt as plain yogurt, but they cannot eat that according to their diet restrictions and religious beliefs. On my first day off I traveled north to go over the Beartooth mountains. I stopped at the gas station to clean my window, as I did not need any gas. As I was cleaning my window a couple from India approached me and asked for help. The wife indicated that they were driving a rental car and did not know what gasoline to use. They were at a pump that had both gasoline and diesel. I looked at their gas filler tank and indicated that the car needs gasoline and 87 octane. The wife thanked me and the husband put the hose head in the filler area and pressed the 87 octane. I then had to tell them that they needed to pay first. The wife laughed and thanked me again. I would have felt really bad if they put diesel in the tank.

For all you interested in our friendly neighborhood pine marten, well he is still eating our groceries and pretty much owning the place at night. This week though I did get a shock from him. I was getting some stock from the storage area and low and behold he appeared in front of me. I jumped back, but he was just courious as to what I was doing in his feeding zone. I managed to get some pictures and a video of him darting in and out of the storage area. I called Ron, my supervisor, over and he tried to get him to come out for him. The pine marten managed to climb on top of the shelf and almost jumped on the top of Ron's head. Which I would have enjoyed filming.

In preparation for summer there have been a few new people hired, but most of them will be working the lower general store close to us. In fact a few of our employees will be moving to there to work. We did add a cook and a floor supervisor and my friend George Shabes is supposed to be coming to work on the 5th. I still do not know if we have enough added personnel to open longer hours without paying overtime to people. We will see if we expand our hours or not. The rest of the area seems to be having hiring issues like us and their hours of operation are about the same as ours. Also after 6PM there is not very many places to eat. The Old Faithful Inn serves dinner but you have to have a reservation. I do not know if the Snow Lodge requires a reservation or not, but many tourists have complained about places not open to get food. I tell all my friends who want to visit to get their supply of food at Wal-Mart and not rely on spending money here for food. You can save a lot of money that way for sure.

On my day off I decided to head over the Beartooth mountains and into Red Lodge Montana and then to Cody Wyoming and then back into the park. I wanted to see the mountains while snow was still on them and I was hoping to see some animals. I was not disappointed, as I had a bear sighting when I was approaching Canton. The reason this sighting was special was because I found the bear. I have been here 7 years and have never found a bear first. Most of the time I come upon a group of people who are viewing a bear and I join in. This is the first time I spotted a bear and no one else was around. I got some pictures and videos of the grizzly. Before long I was joined by others who wanted to see what I was looking and videoing. I told them this was my bear and I named him Myron. :) I left the area with a smile on my face because that was one special sighting. On my way through the park, to get out through the North East entrance, I saw many bison, elk, and a very nice coyote. When I left the park I managed to glimpse two moose walking on a ledge above the road. The top of Beartooth was full of snow but was also full of snowboarders and skiers. There was not many places to pull over at the top because they were taking all the parking spaces. I still got some good pictures and enjoyed my time at the top. It was around 49 degrees with a 25 mph wind blowing. Because I work in a refrigerator and freezer part of the day, the temps did not bother me. I drove across the top of the mountain and entered Montana, as most of the trip out of the park was in Wyoming. I went down to Red Lodge and found it packed with tourists, as it was Memorial Day weekend. I filled up with gas and drove through the town to see if they had fixed the flood areas from last year. The flood damage was still visible. They have a lot of work to do to shore up the road next to the river and to demolish those houses and businesses that were destroyed. I am glad the tourist are there in force as the town is special to me. I left Red Lodge and headed to Cody, so I could enter the park on the east entrance. Cody was relatively crowded and was easy to travel through. I stopped at the local McDonald's to get a tea. I see that they raised the prices again. The old dollar drinks are now a dollar sixty. I left Cody and headed into the park. I was looking for bear all through there as it is a good place to spot the bear coming out of the Shoshone River and into the hills. I did not see any bear but when I entered the park I did see three bighorn sheep. I followed them down the road getting a few pictures until the father bighorn made a few moves that told me he was going to ram my truck. I got the message and went wide left around him and his family. I could imagine what dents that guy could put into my truck if he got mad at me.

That is about all for this week. Business is really picking up and I think our store had an $81,000 sale day yesterday. We are just getting started with this tourist season. So I am sure my steps will be increasing and my patience with the tourists will be tested. I am keeping step stats and this past week I had 87,391 steps. Which equates to roughly 41 miles of walking in the store. My legs are getting stronger, but they do enjoy being put up in bed at night. Take care you all and have a great Memorial Day weekend. Thanks for reading.