8/26 We suspected that this was going to happen, but we didn’t know when. Business at the store has been terrible these past few weeks for a number of reasons.
– The pandemic started off as the main reason, but as summer arrived, there was a great increase in the number of visitors. July had over 950,000.
– Our little store was overshadowed by the larger one that was near Old Faithful. No one wanted to out of their way to come down and preferred to stand in line to wait to get into the upper store.
– There was a construction crisis on the bridge that lead to our store and it was closed for structural reasons. We lost most of our traffic.
– A fire started at the Lone Star geyser and the road was closed from Old Faithful to West Thumb. Hardly anyone showed up this past week.

I was planning to leave early for my next job and had given my notice, but the closing date is earlier than I was planning to leave. This is a very sad occasion. My last day here is September 6th and I will have to move on. I regret not keeping up with the blog because I had so many stories to tell. Maybe down the road, I’ll catch up. This was an amazing experience and I met some great people whom I will miss. I thank my employer for this great opportunity and will let you know my next adventure soon.