Working at the National Parks - 1st stop Yellowstone

Working at "Hamilton Stores" which by the way opened shortly after the park was opened to the public. Mr. Hamilton asked if he could build a store by Old Faithful so the people coming to visit in Stage Coaches would have a place to replenish their drinks, etc. on the day trips to get there. We drive that distance now in 30 minutes if their are no buffalo on the road or a "bear jam" that means there is a bear close to the road and everyone stops. Eventually they built stores all over the park at major attractions. Mr. Hamilton was given a 99 year lease to run the stores & the park owns them. When we worked there in 1997 the 3rd generation was running them. The 99 year lease has run out and now they are run by a different group and are called Yellowstone General Stores. I worked at the jewelry counter by the front door. Not alot of people come to a National Park to buy jewely so we were probably the least busy of all the different things they offer. Short order food section, grocery (where my husband worked), clothing of course, photography, and probably more I can't think of right now after 10 years. Anyway, I like to talk and wanted to go to other parts of our country and work part time. That's why I was living on wheels. I would say Hi, and talk to people that came by and find out where they were from. If it was up north from Kansas (home) cool in the summer and not like Kansas hot in the summer. I would ask what they had in their area I could work at part-time like I am doing here? Those people that summer was a wealth of information for me. Sometimes it turned out while they talked they saw something in the jewelry counter they liked and I actually made a sale. I wrote all those suggestions down and when we quit and settled in Topeka, KS. after almost 10 years we still hadn't visited everywhere I had written down. We would take an extra week or two to have time to see everything from Kansas to the next place we would work. We always came back to Kansas when our weather is nice here in April & May after winter employment; September & October after the summer employment. We had 3 of our 4 kids & 7 grandchildren in Kansas we had to spoil awhile. Age 65 - 75 we found was good years to do what we did. We had worked hard our whole lives till then so it was getting harder the older we got. We've met people alot older but sometimes they are a hassard on the road. Usually the larger parks had housing & also a campground plus facilities they would provide. If there was no campground in the park for employees we would find one nearby and the minimum wages we each received payed for our spot and even bought a few groceries! The National parks rely heavily on college students & the combination of retirees & youth works well. They do the heavy lifting when merchandise comes in. We do the little things like stocking that they maybe aren't to crazy about. After all they really took this job to spend a fun summer in the park. They might go on a hiking trip and get lost and not make it back to work their shift. I'm sure it wasn't because a group of them were up partying & drinking (which is forbidden) and just didn't wake up in time. They knew us old retirees would be there on time or several minutes before we opened up in the morning so it was a good combination. The kids also seemed to respect us because we were the ages of their grandparents, not parents. If you are retired and this sounds like fun to you this is a good time to give them a call or e-mail for an application or send a resume' for summer employment. My next post will give you tourists looking for a place to vacation this summer, some ideas of things we learned after living in a park for 3 months. Most of the information I realize you can get off the Internet for anywhere you might want to go but we do have some other things that I don't think they will mention. Till next time have a good day. Jeanette