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Hi. I’m Ben Benton from Flagstaff, Arizona. I believe that you will enjoy my daily journal from Winter Park, Colorado, Ski Resort during spring break 2000. I left downtown Flagstaff Sunday morning, March 19 with my skis, duffle, laptop computer, and portable 4-person spa, and ended up at Snoasis, a lodge midway up the mountain in Winter Park. My journal will continue through the end of March. You’ll read about Winter Park Ski Resort, Snoasis, Sunspot Lodge, the great people who work here, and anything else I can think of to write about. I’m the author of “National Park Employment Data,” a guide to working in national parks, which is available for purchase on my web site at www.gorp.com/nped/. I’ve been working in national parks and ski areas off and on for over twenty years. Because I want the data in my book to always be fresh, I continually test the concepts, employers, and tips that I provide. I first worked at Winter Park in the late 70s while I was a student at Arizona State University. |
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Sunday, March 26, 2000 Glenwood Springs to Flagstaff I awoke in a luxurious king bed in the Glenwood Ramada and made my way to the breakfast buffet. It was OK, considering that they only offer it on Saturday and Sunday. Canned fruit cocktail on a $7 spread is a little tacky, though. Gas was overpriced in Glenwood Springs and I had enough to drive to Grand Junction, so off I went. Grand Junction’s stations have price fixing (every station in town charged $1.599 without exception), so I bought only enough gasoline to get me to Moab, Utah, which has a Maverik station. I calculated the mileage to Moab and estimated the gas remaining in my tank and decided that $5 would get me to Moab. Maverik is a company in Wyoming that claims to be the largest independent gas retailer in the West. The Maverik station in Flagstaff consistently sells for five to ten cents lower than the majors. In Moab, the Maverik gas was $1.559 cash or $1.579 credit. By paying cash, I saved 26 cents. By blowing off Grand Junction, I saved another 26 cents. Big deal. When gasoline goes up, say 50 cents like it has in the last year, you really notice it. But the two and four cent variations between stations in a city don’t make enough of a difference to amount to anything. At the McDonald’s in Moab, I won a free cheeseburger in the new McDonald’s Monopoly game. I saved the game piece and claimed the prize for supper in Kayenta, Arizona. It’s intriguing that the world’s largest hamburger chain would start an instant prize game called Monopoly and nobody notices the irony of it all. While price fixing in gasoline doesn’t make a lot of difference, bed taxes really do. The state tax on my room in Glenwood Springs was $1.05, or 1.5 percent, while the city bed tax was $5.08, or 7.25 percent. If the Ramada stays full, they would be collecting a quarter million dollars per year just for the city. The 36 hotels, motels, and B&Bs in Glenwood are collecting
over $2 million for the city from travelers who receive nothing
in return. Doc Holliday, who is buried in Glenwood Springs, would
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