A group of tourists was held under armed guard for hours at Yellowstone National Park last week after the federal government shut down.
As Massachusetts’s Eagle Tribune reports, when a group of four dozen tourists disembarked their bus in the park to photograph a herd of bison, an armed ranger arrived on the scene and ordered them to get back on the bus, telling them they were not allowed to “recreate.”
After an argument between the ranger and the tour guide, the bus continued on to the Old Faithful Inn, which is located adjacently to the Old Faithful geyser. But barricades had been erected around the site of the geyser, and the seniors were locked inside the hotel while armed rangers guarded the door.
According to one guest, Pat Vaillancourt, the treatment the group received was so awful that some of the foreign guests, who had limited English, said they wouldn’t return to the United States.
“They looked like Hulk Hogans, armed. They told us you can’t go outside,” Vaillancourt said. “Some of the Asians who were on the tour said, ‘Oh my God, are we under arrest?’ They felt like they were criminals.”
When the bus was allowed to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive to leave the park, it was not permitted to stop at a private, in-park dude ranch that had a restroom. According to Vaillancourt, the dude ranch had been warned that its license to operate would be revoked if it allowed the bus to stop.
Via Weasel Zippers.