Day 11 – Ending Location – Mount Rainier National Park

A. Packwood, WA

B. Mount Rainier National Park

     Today was the big day, the day I completed my cross-country trek. I know most of you thought I was crazy for taking the job in Mount Rainier. I also know that even more of you though I had lost it when I decided to drive there. Well to all the doubters, I did actually make in across the country without a major incident. The drive was long, but worth it. I saw more of the country then most people have. I stopped and explored things that most tourists missed.


     I got up to Paradise and the first thing I saw was the snow, it is over 25 feet deep in some places and is everywhere. I walked into Paradise Inn and immediately meet the head of Human Resources. He was nice and started me though the check in process. Once I got checked in, I was assigned my room. My roommate had gotten there last week and already started work. I didn’t meet her until later this evening.

The building I live in.

     After checking in, I got my uniform which consists of black pants, a white collared shirt, and a black apron. I finished signing all the paperwork (it felt very repetitive, mostly name, address, birthday and social security number). I started moving my stuff from my car to my new dorm room. This room happens to be half the size of my UF dorm room.

     I meet a few of the people I will be working with, and had a long talk with the park rangers about the hiking options (somewhere in the many pages of info. I read on Rainier, they lied to me, there are no Grizzly Bears in Mount Rainier). After that I went to dinner, where I meet my roommate. She seems nice and was very glad I am normal (or so she thinks). She is sophomore at University of Maine and is a sorority girl. Like me she is an out-of-state student, but she is a local to Washington.

     Later that night, I was hanging in the downstairs lounge when the power went out. Which is apparently a fairly frequent occurrence; the dorm has its own emergency generator so we at least had back-up lights to read by. As more people got off shift, I got to meet a good percentage of the Paradise Inn staff including the contingent from Singapore and the two Columbians. We spent the rest of the night talking about the differences in the three countries.