Revisited: The US government shutdown

Federal workers demanded an end to the US government shutdown, which has furloughed 350,000 federal workers, impeded several government services, stopped the federal tax agency from processing tax refunds, and shut down parks, museums and monuments nationwide .

Hundreds of US veterans and Tea Party supporters descended on the US capitol on Sunday to protest the shuttered national monuments. They took down barricades around the World War II memorial on the National Mall before they marched on to the gates of the White House.

As the Oct. 17 deadline approaches to increase the federal debt limit and avoid default, other demonstrators hold the Tea Party reponsible for the current impasse. Tea Party hardliners remain defiant.

An end to the shutdown is not in sight, so this US government statistician spends some of his free time weeding an evidently long neglected garden outside his home. He is one of many federal workers furloughed in the first US government shutdown in 17 years.

Good news for visitors: the Statue of Liberty reopened on Sunday to tourists for the first time since falling victim to the shutdown. American and foreign tourists thronged Battery Park, happy to have the chance to visit one of the most iconic monuments in the United States.

Zion National Park in Utah also reopened temporarily to salvage some of the lucrative tourist trade. The Obama administration had allowed states to fund a limited reopening of some national parks, including the Grand Canyon. Hundreds of national parks and monuments have been closed and local communities have been hit hard by the shutdown.

While the current president grapples with the US fiscal crisis, visitors to South Dakota can, at least temporarily, once again marvel at the huge majestic heads of four former US presidents carved into Mount Rushmore's granite face. Here, too, the state provided funds to reopen a famous landmark, completed in the late 1930s.

Despite the reopening of a few key monuments, the shutdown continues to leave perplexed visitors before shuttered gates at many tourist attractions across the country. In the capital, meanwhile, a clever local tourism board is trying to help visitors re-think their planned US trip and find destinations more off the beaten track that they might not have had "on their radar."