Packing for Nothing

Well. If you've been watching the news, I'm sure you know about all the craziness with Congress not agreeing on a budget. After having continuing resolution after continuing resolution, finally it came down to if there wasn't a budget by last Friday, the government would shut down. And everything the news was saying implied that there really wouldn't be an agreement by then so a shut down looked likely. All NCCC teams were told that if the government shut down on Friday, we all needed to leave and come back to Denver on Saturday morning. So on Friday, in accordance with instructions from both Vaughn and our project supervisor, we packed up our entire campsite. This included everything. People's personal stuff and tents, the kitchen tent the park service provided for us, and all the kitchen equipment from both campus and the park service. This also apparently included my team cooking and eating as much food as possible so it wouldn't be wasted. The plan was to pack up everything, sleep in the maintenance garage, then hit the road as early as possible Saturday morning. It snowed a little on Friday morning, then just stayed cold and really windy for the rest of the day. While no one actually wanted a shut down, people sort of got into road trip mode and started getting used to the idea of spending a few days in Denver, sleeping in a hotel on Saturday night on the way back, and just having a break from camping and the icky weather we've been having. I have to admit I was feeling the same way. (And the theory was that if there was a shut down, it wouldn't be for very long, and we'd all go back to our projects when the government was up and running again, so we probably wouldn't even miss that much work at our projects.) I had to spend some time in town Friday evening finding a hotel for our trip back. After calling 12 hotels and having them either be too expensive or sold out, #13 was a miracle. It would have been far too expensive, but it just happened to be the general manager who I was talking to, and she brought the room prices down about $35 each after we got to talking and I explained the situation. (It helped that she just had a huge group of 25 rooms for several days cancel on her.) She asked what my budget was, and then just said she could make that work. And it would have been pretty nice too, with a hot breakfast that sounded really good and I think a pool and hot tub and everything. If you ever find yourself needing to spend the night in Moab, UT, you should look into staying at La Quinta. So after I made this amazing hotel deal, I went back to the camp site feeling all victorious and excited to tell my team about it. As soon as I got out of the van, my Corps Members told me that Obama came on the radio and said that they had agreed on a budget. I called Vaughn, and he confirmed that yes there was a budget and no we weren't going anywhere. Well let me tell you, my team wasn't happy. They were completely exhausted and cranky from packing everything up and they were really looking forward to a break in Denver and getting to see friends and everything. Most of us went downtown to get some food then we went back and slept in the garage. ...And then woke up Saturday morning to fairly heavy snow with about 6-8 inches on the ground already. My poor team. Obviously, no one wanted to go set up camp again in all that snow, so I called my project supervisor and he said we could just stay in the garage all weekend and set up on Monday. Whew. The main problem now is that everyone packed for just spending one night in a hotel and then being back in Denver, so most of our stuff is buried in the back of our cargo truck and no one wants to dig anything out. So for example, I'm pretty sure no one has showered since at least Friday (Thursday for me) because our towels are packed away. Well, actually, several of them got a hotel room last night, so I would hope they showered there. I want a shower too! So yeah. I think morale might still be a little low. But we're hanging in there. At least the weather is supposed to be better this week. Still fairly cold at night, but nice and sunny during the day. And I think we might be done with that stupid walkway at Wupatki. That thing was really draining people's energy because it was pretty frustrating. So things are looking up!