Confirming that I have one of the more interesting jobs in law enforcement, I am spending my holiday in this national park watching a picket line of protesters exercising their Constitutional right to air their views in public as their union is striking against our transportation contractor. Regardless of one's views on unions you can't help but appreciate the ability to do that on July 4...yesterday while doing the same thing my staff and I also dealt with missing backpackers, a domestic disturbance in a dorm, two dogs running loose, and an illegal guiding investigation.
We'll rotate through the posts at the various protest locations and the cookout at our tiny housing area, take the other emegencies as they come, watch the smoke in the air from our wildland fires, hope that no one is hurt or lost, and maybe later my wife and I will go up on a short flight over the park after our strikers pack it in for the evening. No beer at the cookout just in case. I'll swing by our airstrip near the visitor center a couple times and see if there are interesting planes and people visiting, yesterday someone had landed a Glastar and a RV7 on the gravel along with the usual visiting Cessnas and Pipers.
It is 8:30 am here and I am standing by just watching things - I'm sure that my fellow citizens have more plans for me today than I've yet considered. Happy Independence Day!
