Our First Few Weeks at Yellowstone

Rich and I are excited to share our initial experiences at Yellowstone National Park!

We are working for Delaware North who runs eleven General Stores in the Park. We arrived on May 23^rd for our orientation in a snowstorm! After orientation we headed to out to our store, taking a longer way around due to snow related road closures. We arrived to the dorm area/employee campground and were able to meet most of our co-workers.

Friday May 24^th our store, which is located at Tower Fall, opened to visitors and we were both thrown into training and learning on the job. I am a cashier and Rich is a working in the fountain. The fountain consists of ice cream as well as hot dogs and bison brats for food. The store carries a lot of merchandise like apparel, mugs, toys, souvenirs and grocery items.

The Tower Fall Store is in the northeast section of the park. This year our area has had a lot of bears in the area. We have had one in the campground/dorm area. We have also had several animal sightings at the store which has been a lot of fun. The animal sightings at the store have included:

• Bisen
• Bears – we have had multiple sightings of 2 mama bears with 2 cubs
• Black wolf
• Badger
• Bighorn sheep
• Deer

Talking animals….Overall the wildlife sightings have been incredible! I think it helped that we arrived when it was still a little cold and the animals were more active. Our animal list so far:

• Bison (although we never saw the white baby bison)
• Black bears
• Grizzly bear and grizzly bear with a cub
• Moose – 2 right outside the park near Cooke City and the other just inside the northeast entrance
• Elk
• Antelope (also referred to as Pronghorn)
• Marmot (with the cutest little face)
• Coyote
• Big horn sheep with babies
• Red fox
• Ground squirrels (these look and act like a prairie dog)

Exciting News for Rich!

After a few weeks, Rich was asked to be the Lead in the Fountain area and now has been promoted to Supervisor! He is super fortunate to have a great team including 4 young women from Taiwan.

Check out the sticker we had made to highlight our adventures here. If you would like one please send us a note at orders@defiancetools.com and we will mail you one. But hurry – we only have a limited amount.

If you want to see more images feel free to check out our Yellowstone page on our website by visiting HERE!

Signing off for now – we will share more again soon. 

Happy from Yellowstone,

Zoe’