As at most 3-star hotels these days, staffing at our Drum(heller) hotel was constrained. Front-desk staff had duties other than greeting/registering guests, and were somewhere in the back. But they’d thought about the need for arrivees to get the attention of staff, and taken the opportunity to have a little fun with it. Personality rocks, especially where you don’t expect it.
Speaking of expectations, I also found a reflection where I didn’t expect one: at the Horse Thief Canyon viewpoint-and-dirt-parking-lot about 20 minutes north-ish of the Drum.
Indeed, the whole tableau was unexpected, and I have questions. Why was there an RV parked there? After two other couples left, there were no visitors unaccounted for. Was a visitor lazing about inside, having found a free place to camp? Was it there for temporary use by staff of some sort? But whose staff, and why? Similarly, who put the sea container there at some considerable effort, and what did it contain? Search-&-rescue equipment in case someone wandered into-but-not-out-of the canyon? Fold-away kiosks for tourist-info pop-ups during the summer? Specialized equipment for dirt-parking-lot maintenance?
Questions, but no answers. If I could be Premier for a day, I would introduce legislation requiring more explanatory signage: certainly for government activities and preferably for private-sector ones as well. As it is, like Blanche DuBois I must depend on the kindness of strangers. So far, those strangers seem strangely uninterested in pre-emptively answering obvious and non-accusatory questions about what they’re up to. Is that any way to help people feel like part of their community or their environment?
In this case, I have both the question and the answer.
Maybe the folks at our hotel could give whoever-needs-it a hand with their sign.
I love the location: the Horse Thief Canyon viewpoint-and-dirt-parking-lot!
Tom
Tom – When you put it like that, it sounds like a line from this country song: Third Rock from the Sun. “Truck hits a Big Boy in the Shoney’s parking lot.” 🙂
The pictured sea cargo container, field, sky, pole, and RV with startling reflection look rather like a Mondrian painting. It so much resembles art that I can see why it elicits questions. Arrangement may only be accidental, but may not be. Capturing that tension makes your photo a work of art, certainly.
Laurna – I see that Mondrian connection when you point it out (I couldn’t have called it). I wonder whether AI will provide answers for questions like these? I should try . . .
Hahaha. I did ask, and got this: “Because Horsethief Canyon is a remote, unserviced sightseeing rim with a gravel parking lot and no permanent structures, toilets, or utilities, travelers and locals have noted these temporary vehicles as an unusual fixture. There are a few highly probable reasons why they are stationed there:
Site Management & Safety Personnel: The canyon features steep, unmarked trails with no safety fences. The RV may house seasonal staff or safety monitoring personnel, while the shipping container could securely store emergency response gear, search-and-rescue equipment, or basic dirt-lot maintenance tools.”
And then my post from today was cited. It’s a wonderful world, innit? We can be our own experts.