Trouble with working at places like visitor centers is that many of the questions (all three of them) the visitors could have figured out for themselves. The fact that they're excited to see park rangers is part of it, but I got awfully tired of answering the questions 1) where is the bathroom 2) where is the coke machine and 3) how do you get to [the top, the bottom, the canyon, the statue. . . whatever the big feature was in that vicinity of the park]. Signs are wonderful things but people rarely read them. Read ed Abbey's "Industrial Tourism" chapter (5, I think) in Desert Solitaire if you want a lucid and sharp view of the matter. Protecting the park from the visitors and the visitors from the park. The rangers get ground in the middle between those two great weights.

I really liked the walks when there were a good number of visitors to sustain a conversation and provide good questions but not so many that you had to wait for people before you could talk or move on. My favorites are always the ones with kids who have really clicked with the walk or tour and have a lot of questions all the way through. I could usually walk between tour points and answer his/her questions and then incorporate them into the talk when it suited.

SRS