In January 2019, MacNeil Lyons was four years into Yellowstone Insight, the guide service he founded in 2015 to bring visitors through Yellowstone National Park for wildlife, photography and history tours.

The federal government had shut down a few weeks earlier, on Dec. 22, and much to Lyons’ delight the feds had opted to keep the gates open to Yellowstone. His team kept filling guided trips but soon realized that since park employees were furloughed, no one was working to keep the park clean.

“It was a mess because there were no essential employees,” Lyons said. “Guide companies were cleaning the restrooms and picking up trash and taking the trash out, because there were no maintenance employees doing that bit of the business. But yet we were out there every day, utilizing the faciliti

See Full Page