Visitors and neighbors

(Delayed blog for June 3)

Sandy put together a grand feast for the Norris Neighborhood tonight ... two spaghettis, two salads, French bread, fresh asparagus, watermelon and sopapilla cheesecake. There were a dozen or more of us ... maintenance workers, rangers and volunteers, including campground hosts ... ranging in age from about 22 to upper 70s. It was a great get-together, with people from all sorts of places and all sorts of backgrounds. 

I enjoyed discussing the future of the NPS and of interpretation with the young people, though recalling seeing Halemaumau Crater when it was a quarter-mile deep and Kilauea Iki when it was fountaining 1300 feet high ... before their parents were born ... did remind me of my age. 

‘Twas a chilly day at the museum ... sunny, but with a cold wind blowing strongly from the west. Visitation is still low, less than 150 a day. Interesting folks, though - Aussies, English, Germans, Austrians, Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Albertans, as well as a scattering of states. 

The family from Taiwan included a woman who is a professor of psychiatry, just completing a year-long teaching and training program at UC-Berkeley. She and her husband and son were doing a tour of parks before returning to Taiwan, and the boy (about 10) was reveling in the Junior Ranger programs in each park. He was thrilled when I took the ranger hat off the bison skull’s horn and let him have his picture taken with it on!

The Aussie couple were from New South Wales, familiar with Moss Vale, where my great-grandfather’s brother settled when the three brothers left England (the third went to Langley, in the Vancouver area of British Columbia). They were doing a grand tour of the sort Americans did in the 1950s and 60s ... 20 parks in 30 days sort of thing. They said it cost so much to get here, they were going to cram everything into the trip they could!