(Glacier National Park/Sara Bailey)

Located in Flathead County and Glacier County Mont., the park encompasses over 1 million acres and has over 2 million visitors yearly.  

What does everyday work at Glacier entail? What do you do on a daily basis?

It varies, we do guided hikes, evening programs, give tours and staff the visitor center.

How did you first hear about the furlough?  How were you told you are not coming to work tomorrow?

We got an email a few days ago from our superintendent saying it might happen and then we got another one saying just be aware. We got an email yesterday that said if we were shutdown that we would have an all employee meeting this morning.

What did you go over in the meeting?

We went over the procedures, like we could come in this morning and have four hours to close things up– our office and those sorts of things– so just kinda going over procedures for closing up the park.

What does this furlough mean for Glacier National Park?

Glacier is shutdown, the park had already slowed down quite a bit, cause it's getting colder here and things have slowed down. But education programs have stopped. There was supposed to be an education program tomorrow with kids, and we're not doing that. We're kind of in limbo, because we don't really know what's going to happen.  It could be another day or it could be another two weeks. We're all pretty frustrated here and we just really don't know what's going on. 

How did this furlough affect you personally?

Since I have an internship, it's not funded by the park; it's funded by the Glacier Natural History Association, so I'm actually not affected by it. I'm not working, but it's not cutting my pay.  But all the other employees are not being paid whether they're working or not.

Since you didn't work today, what have you been doing?

Not too much.  Whenever I have a day off, I usually go hiking, but we can't go into the park so we've just been kinda hanging out today, and watching the news.  

Reach Staff Reporter Michael Nystrom here.