We are all dressed up and have nowhere to go. We arrived at Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO) on Monday, September 30. Originally we were scheduled to arrive on October 1, but with the impending government shut down, we thought it would be best to arrive when folks are still working. That was the right decision. Staff worked for a half day on the first of October, but then went home. At least we got our spot, settled in, got keys, and had a tour of the immediate grounds.

Because the park is closed, we are not permitted to go anywhere on park property other than where we are currently living. No vistas to overlook. No trails to hike. No roads to travel. No bike paths to traverse. No stopping anywhere to look at the plants. This place is shut down and locked up tight. Petrified wood? Painted Desert? Route 66? Fossils? Ancient pueblos? We haven’t seen any of those things. As far as we know the brochures listing and picturing these things may have been a hoax and all the pictures Photo Shopped in. The final insult to our grandiose plans for volunteering is the word that the volunteers may be asked to leave next week if the shut down continues. This place may always remain a mystery to us.

The RV sites for volunteers are located at the visitor center complex. There is room for about 6 RV’s. The sites have 50-amp service and, of course, full hookups. There is a cement pad with a nice aluminum picnic table. Right now there is one other volunteer couple from TX. This is their second tour of volunteering here and have been here since August. They are scheduled to end their gig the third week of October, and they will definitely vacate the area if we have to move off the property next week. (We are planning to go to a private campground in the area and wait out the shutdown with the intent of coming back and finishing our volunteer commitment.) Anyway, it is good to have veteran volunteers around to show us the ropes, but there are only so many ropes to show.

The visitor center complex has, in addition to the VC, a Fred Harvey restaurant and geedonk shop, the park maintenance garage and facility, all administrative and program offices, and permanent houses as well as trailers. Part of the complex was built as a school for staff and surrounding communities during the 1960’s; so, there are lots of buildings. There is one other volunteer living in one of the units and plenty of resident staff. In addition this complex houses a Highway Patrol district office. We are well protected and have lots of other humans around even though we can almost see the end of the world from where we are situated.

In fact, I got a better view of the end of the world when I was up on top of our RV. I’m trying to get our satellite TV antenna to give us a signal. It has taken 3 days of Shannon on the phone connected with technical reps from Dish Network and Wyngard (antenna) to finally get a signal. And, it was a comment by our volunteer neighbor that he needs to turn on his over-the-air antenna booster to get satellite signal that finally saved the day for us. We have also concluded that something is wrong in the wall between the antenna and the jack where we plug in our receiver because the only way we can get a signal is to bypass this route and run an external cable from the antenna through our side window to our receiver. That’s what you see me doing. At least we do have access to TV. We do have cell phone coverage, and we can use our Verizon hot-spot gizmo to connect to the internet.

TV, internet, phone. Life can’t get any better than that. We are also consoled by our RVing friends that having problems as we encountered is the norm for RVing. You’re not RVing if you’re not confronted with things that go wrong or seriously different than the instructions and expectations. I guess we have arrived.