Seasonal Survival #2, Your Housing

Seasonal Survival Guide

©

or How to Live and Eat and Other Mundane Stuff.

Chapter 2.

What to expect in your living quarters.

Your apartment/dorm room/shared house will have a stove and refrigerator, and a bed for you.   There will be vinyl or industrial strength, bland carpeting on the floor.  You might live in FEMA trailer, or platform tent/shack, or maybe in an old, historic building.  If you do, things will be more, um, rustic.

Camp tenders cabin at THRO.  The  4 of us survived here because we ate most of our meals outside on the covered porch out back.  There's also a public and shared 'office' on the front right.  And the public pay phone (you heard me, pay phone) was directly behind the head of our bed.  We heard lots of stuff we didn't wanna hear.  Now days they put at least 2, sometimes 3, unrelated staffers in there.  A Mission 66 cabin, by the by.

Our room.  We took 2 twin beds and shoved them together for a king bed. THRO.
And yeah, that's the whole room. Our YNP room is a shade smaller.....

Kitchen at TR.  Note the Ranch Oak Chair, and the groovy dinette set.
Both of those will set you back a pretty penny in an antique shop.  Go figure.

Your new digs will likely have some lamps, crappy sofa, kitchen table and chair.  It might have a dresser, your own closet, or a desk.  There might be a glass shower door. There are a few apartments with dishwashers. (None of ours, of course.) Most parks have full beds as standard issue.  We've always asked to have 4 twin beds.  DH and I shove 2 twins together to make a king size, and the boys each get their own.

Don't count on any of this being comfortable or good looking.  There are, however, some exceptions.
NPS must have gotten a really good deal at some time on Ranch Oak furniture.  The sofas are basically uncomfortable and often have Naugahyde covers or scratchy polyester covers.  Other apartments have boring brown/grey plaid sofas, and some have boring teal blue.  Think doctor's office furniture...... You'll need a sheet or blanket to cover them if you're picky.

Our living room and boys bedroom at THRO, ND.  Learn to love this kind of sofa. These were bunks, but neither boy was willing to sleep on the top, so we unbunked them, and had to walk around one to get to the 'office.'

Living room at YNP. 

Boys' room, YNP.

Bathroom, YNP.

Kitchen, YNP.

Back of apartment, YNP, the white trash section in our case.

BONUS!  Ranch Oak table and chairs, YNP.  Absolutely beautiful.  And ours hadn't been refinished, cigarette burned, etc.  Amazing.  If it disappears, I don't know anything about it.

Your place might have a nearby pay laundry (some are even free.  Others have solar dryers.)

Most windows have either venetian blinds or crappy roll up shades. Since I knew where I would be at YNP, I made little curtains to make it feel homier.  So much cheerier.

None of our apartments had air conditioning, but we go north for a reason. Our Acadia and Yellowstone apartments both had ceiling fans.  We purchased a window AC unit to use at Theodore Roosevelt, but only had to run it on really hot days (temp over 90, that is) and then only for a couple of hours in the afternoon.  Evenings always cooled off.  Hooray for 15% humidity.  All of our apartments had heat of some sort. At YNP, I keep a small tub of water in front of the heater because it's so dry.

DISCLAIMER!  Our YNP apartment was remodeled 2 years before we moved in, so it's much nicer than most. There are still lots of places that are just half a step above condemned trailers.  Many, many others are shared houses, efficiency apartments, and dorm rooms, usually with shared bathrooms.  Lots of them were built in 1966, for the 50th anniversary of the Park Service.


You'll need to provide your own:

Pots and pans,
Table ware,

Dishes,
Microwave.

Linens,
Shower curtain,
Bathroom rug/mat.

Books,

More books,

Computer,

Printer,

Surge protectors,
Safe extension cords,

Bike,

Cell phone
 (it will work in some places....)

in addition to expendable stuff like:

Food,

Cleaning supplies,

Clothing,
Toiletries,

Uniforms,

Office supplies
(no taking stuff from the office, you ninny.)

Things that might work:
Bring your computer router/modem on the off chance you can get DSL in your apartment.  Probably not, but maybe. We can't at YNP . We can't even get dial up, nor could we at our other apartments. 

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you allowed to plug your personal computer into the Service's system.  YOU WILL BE FIRED!!!  Not to mention, when your IT department shuts down the system to your office because you thought it would be okay to plug in--"just this once"-- the rest of your crew will tar and feather you for screwing up the system.  Someone from another division did this at Madison 4 years ago, and the rest of of were livid !!!!!!   What a moron to think that even for seconds you could use a government system for your gear!  Ninnies!! 

Your apartment may or may not be wired for a phone, for which you will make a contract with the local phone company.  We have a land line, because one of us is 72 and two of us have special needs.  A working phone is important to us.  We also let all the peeps use ours, and my boss calls our apt when he needs to get timely info to someone on the crew. 

Your place might maybe be wired for a satellite tv dish. Ours is, but again, we bring our own receiver, dish, and tripod, and have an account here in Ohio which we transfer out west.  I'm also gunna give a shout out to DISH network, because they've been very cool with us.  So far so good.   Lots of staff use Netflix for entertainment.  I load up my iTunes with tv shows for the summer, too.

I think there might be places that are wired for cable tv, but  don't know of any for sure.  Ask your supervisor after you've been hired.  And don't be surprised if your supervisor doesn't know what is or isn't in your apartment.  S/he isn't the dorm mother, after all.

And I hear there's a new invention out there called satellite radio....  our friends at the other end of our apartment row used this. 

I know I'm forgetting some stuff, so as I remember, I'll add it. 
EDIT 4/21/12~~ These are comments I've received from other rangers.  They are readable in the comment section, but I'm adding some here also.  

From Gaelyn at Grand Canyon NP:  Thank goodness I haven't shared housing since Mt St Helens, where I started my career. Wasn't bad. A Mission ranch-style with 3-bedrooms, 1-bath and huge kitchen with 2 refrigerators. We had the same furniture you've shown here and it was retired from Lukes AFB to us. Some of the housing at the North Rim that our staff gets is a tiny cabin, one-room with a bath. Less floor space than I have. They have no phone service available and cells don't work well unless you're standing on the rim. And then there's a few FEMA trailers. But we don't have as large a staff as YELL. This is why I live in a RV.  http://geogypsy.blogspot.com/

From Nina at Grant Village in YNP:  There is good cell phone service at Grant (Verizon) so I bring my laptop and aircard and am good to go.
I didn't know our kitchen table and chairs are Ranch Oak. Sweet!
We had fairly new mattresses last year, which was nice. Blinds needed a good talking to, tho.
The apt is actually not bad, and rent is reasonable. Wish there were a better stove, tho - I think it's the same one I had in my college apt in the early 70s.

Check out my early blog posts (May-Sept 2010) about getting to and living conditions in Katmai NP, AK. Crazy!  http://www.watchingforrocks.com/

From Charlene:  Ya should've seen my tent cabin in Yosemite. It had a fridge with a padlock, and two bear boxes. A wood fired stove, cold running water (you had to boil water or go to the bathrooms--a hike through the forest--to wash your dishes). The picnic table was definitely not ranch oak, though it might've been redwood (they seem to like redwood for picnic tables). It didn't have too many splinters. The "windows" opened; in other words, we rolled up the canvas. It was awesome--a Great Grey Owl (very rare in California) used to perch outside the door and hoo the night away. Oh, and there was a pay phone at the entrance station...no such thing as TV reception or cable.

Whatever happened to roughing it during a summer seasonal tour? ;-)


Next installment, how to get your crap from place to place.