How it all started...

Thanks to Mike Leavenworth!

Less than 24 hours from now, I will drive away from my home. On May 23, I will report for a seasonal job in Yellowstone National Park. In between, I plan to visit cousins in my hometown, revisit a vacation spot, and make some new discoveries.

Few people do things like this at my particular age. Most either have their adventure before starting their career, or wait until they retire. Fate and the economy had other plans for me, however. I'd been working as a meeting planner for a government contractor until last October. Cutbacks to government meetings started with the GSA Scandal in the spring of 2012, and my company had no meetings for me to plan. I was laid off, along with a handful of other employees.

My company wasn't the only one affected, so there were few openings in my field. Associations have also been cutting back on events. Government employees have had difficulties getting approval for travel, so attendance is down everywhere. Things only got worse when sequestration in 2013.

When the expiration of my unemployment  benefits loomed, I figured, "It'll be summer – I can get a seasonal job". Then I started thinking about our trip to Yellowstone in October 2011. The 2 1/2 days we spent there were awesome. We would've stayed longer, but a snowstorm hit. From that point on, you could only access the park with snow tires or chains. But with a rental car, that just wasn't feasible. So we drove on, to checking out a number of other National Parks & Monuments. It was quite a successful trip, all in all. But still, Yellowstone felt unfinished.

Back in March, I looked up the Xanterra website. As the concessionaire for many of the western National Parks, they run the hotels and lodges and restaurants and many of the tours and activities. That means there lots of jobs to choose from. I applied for three, the maximum number allowed: Residence Coordinator, Activities Sales, and something to do with reservations.

My preferences were in that order. Since Residence Coordinator involves management of housing, it ties in with a facet of event planning. It's one of the few jobs that comes with a single room, and sounded enjoyable. I think I would've been good at selling Activities, since it's the sort of thing I enjoy doing myself. My enthusiasm for Reservations would've been more limited. A person with a history of camping and staying in youth hotels probably would upsell hotel rooms convincingly.

Gratifyingly, I was contacted for all three positions. After a phone interview, I agreed to be the Residence Coordinator for the Lake area. Since then, I've been engaged in increasingly urgent preparations.