During the ongoing partial government shutdown, Zack Frank, a furloughed National Park Service employee, is striving to create one video per day. Today he takes to Acadia National Park, the first place in America to experience the sunrise of a new day.

I sat on the top of a slope, the bright orange, plastic sled firmly beneath me. My senses felt overloaded, confused, not only by the spectacularly beautiful scenery surrounding White Sands National Monument but also the conflicting memories the desert evokes. I planned to sled down one of the bright white dunes, decked out in a winter coat, hat, and scarf - evoking winter. Yet I planned to sled on sand, reminding me of summer, the beach, my hometown in Florida. Kicking my legs forward, I began to move, faster and faster and faster as the white hills sped by me. Joy bubbled up, erupting in a high-pitched squeal reminiscent of my childhood.

I don’t know about you, but I’m so disgusted by the slimy sleazy sludge oozing out of Washington and the White House these days that I hardly bother to read accounts of it even in Traveler because there’s no way to escape the latest political twists, turns and tweets trying to distract us all from what’s really happening behind the curtain. I’m feeling a lot like one of my daughters probably felt a long time ago when, after a day that didn’t go well, she climbed onto my lap, snuggled in and asked, “Will you tell me a happy story?”

A collaboration in Florida has formed to keep national parks there open and clean.