With the passing of Memorial Day weekend, we are officially into tourist season. Tourist season for us goes from Memorial Day to Labor Day. I always tell anyone who wants to visit, that they need to avoid this time. Can you still come and have a good time? Yes, but you will have to have a lot of patience. With crowds and with traffic. The store is relatively quiet until around 10:30 AM and we get slammed by tourists until we close. The floor managers also have a hard time closing the doors at closing time. Tourists think that we should stay open and pay everyone until they decide they are ready to quit shopping. Delaware North will not pay overtime and the floor managers close all doors but the center door and basically stop people from coming in. Tourists get upset, but there is nothing we can do about it. In about two weeks we will be expanding our open times from 9 to 6, to 8 to 8. We also hope to get new employees next week to be able to cover the hours, without working overtime. The grocery side will be getting one new worker next week and my boss indicated that I will be teaching the person the ropes. The sad part is I found out today that my co-worker Scott lost his mother today. I think he is heading home and I do not know if he will be back or not. I talked to him yesterday about his mother Betty and he indicated it was day-to-day. I told him I would be praying for Betty and his family. Life goes on even when you are here working. There is nothing we can do but just head home and be with family. That is what is important.
The pine marten update is yes he is still with us in the store. I had to clean up his poop this week and I am now getting a little tired of the critter. The basic rule of all animals is you don't poop in your own house.
Tomorrow I will be hiking around the RV park and the hill behind us. It is because there has been a mother grizzly and her two cubs hanging around there. I am hoping to get close enough to get some pictures, but not close enough to get eaten.
My first day off this week I decided to go visit Virginia City and Nevada City. They were old gold mining towns with a lot of interesting history. The best part of visiting these places is the drive there. You see to get there you travel through the Madison River valley. Mountains on one side and the river on the other. I always stop at the river to hike a little and to soak in the river. It is a beautiful place to travel through and just to stop and admire God's creation. Virginia City is a working town with a lot of historical buildings to go through. The place has a history that deals with the gold mining in the area. The place was once highlighted on the program Unsolved Mysteries. The program dealt with the robbers and the vigilantes that captured them. The mystery was that the sheriff was part of the robbers and he stated he could lead them to the gold if they let him go, but they just hung him for his crimes and the rest of the robbers. The mystery was that no gold was found and it could still be out there. I doubt it myself, but people love mysteries. Nevada City is a ghost town that you can walk through. There are some great buildings in the town that are well preserved. The place also has been used in several movies, including Lonesome Dove. I also visited the town of Ennis Montana and liked their park that bordered the Madison. It was a good walk.
As I came back from Virginia City I stopped at Earthquake Lake. A long time ago a 7.2 earthquake hit the area and killed several people and changed the landscape. The earthquake hit in the middle of the night and several campers were drowned by a wall of water that came through. Several others were killed by an avalanche that created a 100mph wind to whip through the area. It is a strange area and very eerie when you think about the people still buried under the rubble or at the bottom of the lake created by the earthquake.
That is about all for the week. I am keeping busy and this week I got in 83,245 steps. Which is roughly 39 miles of walking in the store.
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| The Earthquake results |
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| The Earthquake results |
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| Earthquake Lake where bodies are buried |
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