Oregon
When strangers ask me how I came to work in Death Valley, I lie.
I’m not ashamed of the truth; I just know that it’s not what a family of bright-eyed tourists wants to hear over breakfast. Like a lot of parkies, my pilgrimage to the middle of nowhere…
Since my journey began, I’ve watched the sun rise and set in some of the world’s most beautiful places. Every morning, I look out my window and see some of the most amazing mountains on the planet. I sometimes think about what my life might be like had I…
The second I got home, I went online and played my own version of CoolWorks adventure roulette. Did I want a job in the national parks? Or maybe specifically a gig on the water? Did I want something in hospitality and service industry? Or did I want to return…
Since that first season I have learned to ride horses working at a dude ranch in the Sonoran desert, learned to ski at a couple of resorts, sharpened my golf game in Vermont, salmon fished the Kenai River and Resurrection Bay, explored historic Mackinac Island, lived a couple hundred…
I moved around a lot when I was a young single woman, which is where my love for road trips and new places was born. When my last chickie left the nest I remembered my dream of living the gypsy life, but with no savings I had no idea…
I was the first person to get a job from CoolWorks, and It definitely changed my life. A seasonal job blew my doors, my eyes, and my horizons wide open in the summer of ’72. That summer I found my home in Yellowstone as well as my belief in…
There is nothing quite like it, to think that someone is willing to pay you to live in some of the most ridiculously beautiful places in the world. You can walk out of your front door and only a few steps away be lost in the woods, or climb…
I am resolute that not much can beat the self-confidence, wonder, and fresh perspectives on life as a whole that only travel can bring about. Never will I be the one to say, “I wish I could have done that when I was younger”, because I’m doing it.
I…
After work, on my weekends – sometimes during breaks – I get to splash around in glacial lakes, explore caves, roam some of the most gorgeous canyons ever carved into this hard earth and sound my barbaric yawp anywhere I please. I come back to my cabin on Jackson…