The Progressing Summer

Well, I'm pretty used to the whole "driving a bus and entertaining people" thing. The summer has gone well so far and I am enjoying my work. I have been on three Copper River tours so far and two of them included a Kenai extension where we stay on the Kenai peninsula for a day with our guests.

One of the poems I have memorized is The Cremation of Sam McGee, by Robert Service. The guests love hearing the poem and are always impressed. The weather in Alaska is cool and cloudy, every once in a while we get a bit of rain.

Work has been pretty much the same for me, you may see it exciting or interesting but it has become routine for me so it isn't quite as worth recounting, since you can get the gist of my work experience from previous blog posts.

"Are you old enough to drive this bus?"

Memorial Day

For Memorial Day, we decided to float down the Chena (long E) River. I told mom, and she freaked out, I told her how safe and slow the river was and that calmed her nerves. Then she heard about Nathan’s crazy white water river trip and promptly forgot how safe and slow the river was that I was floating down, and that she had already talked to me since I had floated down the river, so she began praying for me again (thanks mom). Well we floated about two city blocks on the river and it took us two hours. We bought Queen size mattresses from Fred Meyer and Robin (from the singles branch) and I shared a mattress.  If we started to get to the outside of the river on a bend, we would have to start paddling to get back to the middle of the river where it actually flows, otherwise we would be stuck in the stagnant water. It was lots of fun, and it gave me a good chance to start my summer tan.

My First Copper Tour

Every Copper River Tour starts in Denali so to get to Denali I did a Denali tour the day before. I took Guests in Fairbanks to do a local excursion and then after that I picked them up and drove them the two and a half hours to Denali. On the way, I gave a good little tour and they thanked me kindly as they got off my coach.

That night I slept in Healy, 15 minutes from Denali, in employee housing. We got to eat in the EDR Employee Dinning Room, and we used the Wi-Fi that they had available in the lodge.

The next morning we drove back into Denali, picked up our Copper River guests, and headed down the Parks Highway, onto the Denali Highway, over to the Richardson Highway, and on to The Copper Princess Lodge. My tour was an escorted tour. When we have tour directors with Princess tours, they are supposed to do all the talking and we just drive. However, my escort, Debora, was new and she did not feel comfortable yet with the material so she just handled logistics and kept the people happy by talking with them. So, I took care of all the narration of tour material. I was happy to, because if didn’t remember something, it wasn’t a big deal be cause everything I was doing was above an beyond their expectations. The first day I just pitched in little things here and there and Debora would keep praising me for all my knowledge and help.

The second day (June 3, my birthday) of the trip was an optional excursion to Valdez. I took guests that were from not only my coach, but also a whole array of guests that were staying at the hotel. It was a two hour trip there and I didn’t say much because there wasn’t much to talk about and I didn’t want to talk about generic things because I didn’t want to repeat other people’s material that the guests would have already heard or were going to here. In Valdez, we all went on a glacial tour. We went to see the Columbia Glacier, but there was so much floating ice in front of it that we couldn’t get very close to it and it was hazy so we couldn’t see it from where we were. However, that’s ok, we saw lots of glacial ice and some sea otters, dolphins, and whales (Humpback and Minky).

On the way back from Valdez I totally ran over a porcupine. Porcupines are very dumb, as it was waddling across the road it almost got hit by a truck coming in the other direction and then it sees me coming and it continues right into my lane. Well, I wasn’t about to swerve a bus with 40 guests on board so I just smoked the guy and the four guests sitting right behind me saw the whole thing just gasped as I ran right over it. However, I’m sure they were glad I didn’t flip the bus trying to avoid it. I didn’t hit it with my 2 front tires but who knows about the back 6, or how he faired with the low hanging transmission casing and oil pan in the back.

On Saturday, I drove my guests across the Glenn Highway and into Anchorage for lunch and I narrated the whole drive and used all my knowledge since I figured my tour director wasn’t going to say anything any way. Latter that day, we dropped our guests at the cruse ship in Whittier and they all tipped me. The way tips work out with escorted princess tours, is that they tip the escort and then she gives me a standard amount based on number of people and days of the trip, but if you get along real well they will let the guests tip you too and she will tip you as well. I suppose all the guests realized how well I did, and who knows if they tipped her but they all tipped me and when I dropped my escort off in Anchorage, she tipped me too. Therefore, I was happy she didn’t talk much because it really paid off for me.

The next day we deadheaded back to Fairbanks from Anchorage, that along drive in a motor coach but hey, I got to listen to the radio when I had reception, only like a third of the time. I finished the day off by going and having fun with some of the girls in the ward.

  

 Just a moose I found in the woods

 A wicked old snow machine

 My living accommodations in Alaska

 An ice burg from the Columbia Glacier

  

A chunk of glacial ice they fished out of the water

Tours

In order to prepare to give tours we have been shadowing tours that more experienced employees are giving. In some cases, I have learned a lot. In other cases, these opportunities were just confidence builders; yea maybe they are a little rusty.

So far, I have been doing a lot of city shuttle runs, airport duty, and museum shuttles. However, yesterday I did do an official tour and my preparation paid off. On all my other duties, I would always give quickie tours so I could practice talking to people and practice my presentations even though it was not required. Yesterday I gave a tour and it all worked out great, I had a lot of fun and it was exciting to find that I’m not too bad at it. Some people asked me how I knew so much of if I was reading from something. Maybe they thought my driving was so bad because I must have been trying to read, or something. Any way I got many tips and it was fun to interact so much with the guests.

On June 1, I will be starting my first highway tour, it is really exciting but I still have plenty of preparing to do. I need to practice handling so many things at a time and remembering all the aspects of logistics.

Alaska has been very warm lately. It seamed like the winter cold lingered and one day I woke up and it was 80-degree summer weather. I thought I would never get to wear my shorts and sandals but at last, summer is here. Weather has forecasted worm temperatures with rain for the next week or so.

Familiarization trips rock!

Familiarization trips rock!

So lately, we have just been getting paid to drive around in a bus and see the sights. Oh and learn all the logistics, turns, and tour material.

Wednesday

We kicked off our adventure by going to the El Dorado Gold Mine. At the gold mine, the tourists get a little train ride into the permafrost cave that is frosted over all year long. Then they get a sluice box mining demonstration. Then they turn the old folks loose in the gold panning troughs to mine for their own gold. They give them a bag of dirt and guarantee the guests that they can find at least eight flakes of gold and if not they can get another bag of dirt. The dirt they give them naturally has gold in it but they always spice it up a little just to make the guests happy.

After the El Dorado Gold mine we, Copper River guides headed out to the Copper River. Because the Denali highway is still closed, we had to come down the Richardson highway, which is not the way we would normally come with guests. We bordered the Tanana River, then passed through the Rainbow Mountains in the Alaska Mountain range and followed the Alaska Pipeline until we reached the Copper River where we spent the night.

Thursday

The Copper River is so named for the Kennecott Copper Mines near by. There are all kinds of fun things to see in at the Copper River area but we headed down to the port of Valdez the next morning to see where the Alaska Pipeline came into the port and where it fills up the oil tankers. To get to Valdez we went through the Thompson pass in the Chugach Mountain Range, we passed the Worthington Glacier and saw Bridal Veil Falls, and the Horsetail Waterfall. While in Valdez, we saw a bunch of bald eagles; a guy was feeding them fish and they were swooping down and grabbing them and flying off with them. I’m not too sure of the legality of what he was doing but it was supper cool and I got a bunch of pictures.

Friday

That same day we headed back to the Copper River lodge to spend the night again and the next morning we headed off to Kenai. We drove across the Glenn highway paralleling the Chugach mountain range to Anchorage and then we drove through town to get a good idea of what we were supposed to do in Anchorage for the day with our guests.

On the way to Anchorage on the Glenn highway, we passed through Palmer. Palmer is a quaint little town that has rather good weather and looks like Utah. It has up scale houses and a bunch of white people. Palmer was started when the government promised 102 families passage to Alaska, and farms, houses and barns when they got there. When they arrived, there were no such houses or barns and about half of the families turned around and headed for home. The other stuck it out and created the little village of Palmer. In Palmer, the world records for carrots, cabbage, and pumpkins are held. The vegetables grow so well because of the long days of photosynthesis, temperate weather, and rich soil from the glacial silt.    

After Anchorage, we drove down the Seward highway to Whittier where the cruise ships are and where we drop off our guests. To get to Whittier we had to go through a single lane tunnel that goes right through the heart of a mountain to get to the bay on the other side where the cruise ships dock. I got the chance to drive through the Whittier tunnel. The tunnel is long and straight and from the moment you enter you can see the light at the other end so of course every time we got through the tunnel the tour director on board or us will make a real cheesy joke about going to the light at the end of the tunnel.

After coming back out of the Whittier tunnel, we continued down the Seward highway on the Kenai Peninsula. The road we traveled down is located in a huge U shaped valley that had been carved out of the mountains by a glacier ten thousand years ago. The Kenai Peninsula is supper beautiful. The spruce trees are much larger, everything is greener, and there are tons of glaciers in the mountains on ether side of the road. After some time driving, we arrived at the Kenai Princess lodge, which is just absolutely beautiful, and the rooms they give us are large and spacious. Of course, these rooms are just for the guests during the season and we will be living in the driver’s housing but they are letting us chill the night in the nice hotel rooms since the season hasn’t started yet.   

Tomorrow we will be driving back through Anchorage and all the way up the Parks highway to Denali and grab the train from Denali to Fairbanks so we can get the experience that the guests will be getting on their cruise.

During the trip, we were each assigned topics to talk about for ten minutes minimum. I was assigned Salmon, fishing laws, clear vs. silt water, fish farms, hatcheries, cost recovery fishing, streams and rivers, dip net fishing, native vs. non-native fishing and hunting laws, commercial fishing vessels, and types and cycles of Salmon. I did great researching my topics and talking about them. I ended up going on for a half hour on my subjects, it was great practice, and I have tons more material to learn.

On our trip, so far we have seen moose, caribou, lynx, snow shoe hairs, dale sheep, bald eagles, and all kinds of vegetation and birds. Animal sightings have been good and the days have been supper clear so we had all the visibility we needed to see the distant mountains and glaciers. 

         

Me chillin’ on the bus.

Me in front of the Rainbow Mountains (so named for the many minerals that are 

seen along the side of the mountain) in the Alaska Mountain Range.

A distant shot of the Worthington Glacier

The Horsetail falls 

The port of Valdez

A huge wooden carving in Valdez

A Bald Eagle swooping down and grabbing a fish, it is not in 

it’s normal colors yet because it is still a juvenile.

Eagle just hanging out waiting for a free hand-out

Swooping upward after grabbing a fish

A low pass

Coming in to nab a fish

A closer look at the Worthington Glacier

The ice fields of Mattanuska Glacier

 The Kenai river about 100 feet from the Kenai Princess Lodge

        

The Huge Cedar cabin at the Kenai Princess Lodge

Travis Chillen’ next to the wood stove

The first hotel room I have ever been in with a couch

Old Man's Beard growing off the spruce trees at the Kenai Lodge

Supper crunchy pine cones at the Kenai Lodge that are

very gratifying to step on, even more so than crisp leaves

The Land of the Mid-night sun

 Saturday was a big day for the company; it was called division day. The entire Fairbanks division was out and mobile. We had about eight groups of four coaches each that drove all around town getting us familiarized with routs and duties at each station. I got to drive my own bus by my self and follow our little group around. The exercise was to get us used to the locations with other motor coaches so it would be more like the circumstances during the season with lots of motor coach traffic. It also allowed a crew to get into the “yard” the motor coach parking lot behind our offices and sweep all the gravel out from the winter. The best part of the day was that we worked many hours and got overtime on the clock.

During the week we had lots of tour practice. We were each given parts of the city tour that we had to learn and then present to our co-workers and we gave each other tips on how to improve our manner and style. The most beneficial aspect was the practice we got from actually having to do it.

On a public speaking note, Travis and I were asked to give talks for Mothers day. Our talks went very well and we were very pleased with how the turned out. It gave Travis and I an opportunity to be known in the ward and for people to get to know our names. This was probably the most free time we would have all season so it was the best time for us to give talks. Besides it gave me the opportunity to get some girls’ phone numbers, there does happen to be some BYU girls home for the summer, so we should have lots of fun.

Today we had mechanical training. We learned how to change tires on a bus, how to work some of the more obscure controls we have on the bus. How to trouble shoot simple items and how to address very detailed items we could find in our daily vehicle inspections. We also learned how to change belts on our engines and how to fuel the coaches in our facilities and what to do incase of leaks and spills.   

This evening we had vendor night. All the vendors we work with came and gave presentations of what their company does for the tourists and the gave us all kinds of food, free bees and hand outs. They all encourage us to come on free excursions during the beginning of the summer on trips when they have free room so that we get to know what they do and can help them promote their trips to the guests. The trick now is coordinating our schedules and fitting in an excursion that they will have room for us to do.

Things are really fun and I have my studying cut out for me. It is easy to miss out on sleep since it doesn’t get dark till 12 and it gets light at about 5 right now, and the problem is only getting worse. But in another light, it is always bright out side so you can go to sleep when ever you want because conditions won’t get much better no matter how long you wait. 

Fairbanks

Training, Tests, Tours and Trips. Things are finally really picking up. After a few training sessions, Travis and I became familiar with the motor coaches in Fairbanks. All the other guys have come up from Utah as well and we have moved into our apartment.

The first step for Travis and I was to get road tested by our division so that they knew for sure that we could drive a bus and hadn't just gotten our licenses on a fluke. After passing our road tests they gave us keys to the coaches. One key opens all the Princess coaches and another for all the Holland America coaches.

On Monday we took a familiarization trip to the Chena Hot Springs, a tourist destination for many, that we will be taking our guests to in the evenings. The Chena Hot Springs gets its power from a small geothermal power generator and uses its power for their restaurant, hotel facilities, ice museum, and green house. The also have an out-doors hot spring that is supplied by water from the hot spring.

In their green house they grow all the vegetables and herbs they need for their restaurant. During the winter they use a variety of special colored lights to help the plants grow since the sun could on shine for a couple hours of the day. They built the green house because vegetables are so expensive to import from the lower 48. However, even with vegetable cost cutting measures, they still charge an insane amount for a salad in the restaurant, so I decided I wasn't really that hungry since they didn't volunteer to feed us while we were there.

The Ice museum they have is year round. They keep it at 20 degrees but the ice still manages to shrink due to sublimation (the conversion of solid straight to gas). In the ice museum, a husband and wife, world class ice sculpting team, works full time constantly refurbishing their sculptures and making new exhibits. When they aren't working on the museum they are making martini glasses of ice for guests to use to sip their alcohol. In the museum they have a life size sculpture of two knights on horseback jousting, a samurai, venus, an igloo, and a xylophone. The xylophone is located in side of he igloo which provides for some very interesting acoustics when played. The xylophone is made completely of ice and is tuned perfectly to key. Also in the museum, are a couple of themed rooms where guest can spend the night in exchange for the deed to their house. The museum also has a bar and bar stools that are topped with caribou hide (the most insulating fur, with more hairs per square inch than any other animal). After a long hard day in -40 degree weather someone could come into the ice museum to warm up and kick back with a couple of hard ones, anything virgin would just freeze to your glass.

The Chena Hot Springs gets the majority of their guests durning the summer and dead of winter. Only the Japanese tourists come for the winter. The hot springs during the winter produce so much steam that you can only see a couple of feet in front of you, a perfect set up for playing hide-and-go-seek. Girls like to play with their wet hair in the hot springs too, when they lift it out of the water it freezes quickly in the 40 below air and becomes hard instantly. The Japanese tourists love to come during the winter because they believe it good luck to conceive under the northern lights, you don't want to run into a pair of them while playing hide-and-go-seek.

We have also become familiarized with the city tours. We take people downtown and tell the story of Fairbanks and point out and explain historical sites. Around town we take people to the trans-Alaska pipe line, the riverboat discovery, the El Dorado gold mine and the no. 8 gold dredge. We pick up and drop off people at the airport, train station and a variety of hotels around town.

I have to go now but I will try to continue this in the evening.
Stay tuned.
    

Fairbanks Alaska

Friday

As I flew into Fairbanks, I could see the frozen rivers and dead vegetation that covered the flat land. It looked so cold. South of Fairbanks there is 100 miles of marsh and bog that stretches down to the Alaska Mountain range. Most of it is still frozen, but it is beginning to melt. After I got out of the plane, I caught the shuttle to the company hotel. Travis had already checked in that morning and left his stuff to go exploring. The weather really isn’t that cold, it was about 45 degrees and I was able to get away with a light jacket. Travis later showed up with food from Fred Myer, a local grocery store, so we didn’t have to eat at the super expensive hotel restaurant.

Saturday

Travis and I began walking into town, our hotel is on the outskirt of town and we are not very near to many places. We visited UAF, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It is the oldest largest university in Alaska, I think anyone educated wants to get out of Alaska. We tried finding used bikes for sale on campus but we could hardly find anyone, since they all sleep until 2pm on Saturdays.

We headed to an outdoors store and looked at their bikes but they were super expensive, we also caught the bus to Play it Again Sports, but their bikes were pretty expensive too. We ended up buying bikes at Wal-Mart; they had the best bike for our buck. Now armed with bicycles we were armed for some real adventure, and Travis was no longer subject to my super strong mission walking legs, but I was now at the mercy of Travis’ merciless biking legs.

We putted around town and found the stake center. The missionaries were there, getting ready for a baptism and they told us were to find the institute and what time singles ward met. 

We headed home and picked up our backpacks and rode down to the Fred Myer so we could stock up on non-perishable food that we could eat without heating, mostly sandwich stuff. We keep a little refrigerator going with the hotel ice machine, it’s great, ice is unlimited.

People in Alaska are mostly the trucker type that you would see in the mid west. Most are white and many have tattoos. We often see Indian type people who look like Samoans or Asians.

The snow is still melting and since the ground is still quite frozen, the water doesn’t go into the ground very easily and there are lots of little lakes and ponds and puddles. Only about the top 6 feet of permafrost ground melts, which also inhibits the trees from sinking roots very deep, so non of the trees are as big as they could be like in south east Alaska and Washington.

Sunday

We rode our bikes to church; it was only about 15 minutes away. Elder Gledhill from the Placentia Stake is in the singles branch as a missionary. He was very happy to see me, he says he hasn’t seen anyone from Orange County during his entire mission. The singles branch is relatively small; there were only about 50 people. Guys already out number girls and as more drivers show up for the summer, the problem will only worsen. 

The First Counselor’s daughter, Kiana, invited us to her house for Easter Dinner. We were very glad we had a place to eat real food, instead of hotel sandwiches for Easter Dinner. The Maines family is way cool, the are related to like half the stake and in their family they have many cousins and friends that are single and our age, so it was fun getting to know everyone and socializing.

Monday

We rode to work to check the place out and get a little tour of where we will be working. The seasonal training is starting off slow and doesn’t really pick up until next week so we will have plenty of time to study manuals and books about Alaska and it’s history. Travis and I visited the information center and went through the museum and its informational kiosks and booths that talked about the history of Fairbanks, the gold rush and the Indian that occupy the area.

We also visited the start/finish line for the Yukon Quest dog sled race in downtown Fairbanks. We talked to the lady at the counter in the gift shop and pestered her with all our dog sled questions. She being a musher herself, with no other customers to attend gladly entertained our queries, and told us all she knew about being a musher and building a dog sled team. Travis related everything she would tell us about training her dogs to his triathlon experience and she fed off his sports enthusiasm and went on to tell us more and more about the proper feeding and training of sled dogs.

After Travis quenched his sports/exercise passion, we visited Pioneer Park where many of the original pioneer cabins have been relocated to create a little tourist park with activities to do in each cabin. Each cabin has a little gift shop or restaurant to sell their overpriced tourist nick knacks that the golden generation loves to spend their 401K plans on. One of the cabins has a 40 degree below freezer where people can dress up in Eskimo pants and jackets and go into and have their picture taken. The old people just love stuff like that.

After our full day of tourism, we went to FHE with some of the people in the ward. Our FHE activity was a picture scavenger hunt at UAF. After FHE we had root beer floats and talked. One of the girls at FHE is from Nome, Alaska, and she was telling us how it never gets above 50 or 60 degrees in the summer and their houses are built on stilts so that they don’t melt the permafrost and destroy the foundation for their own homes.

(For economists only)

I was trying to ask about what they export to be able to be able to pay for all their imported food. She didn’t know much about economics and was convinced that they all make money for food by working at the gas station, hospital and things like that. I was trying to help her understand that you could just all work serving each other and still import food without getting money from exports to pay for the imports. She wasn’t really getting what I was talking about, but after a bit more of talking about her city Nome, it became clear that they got all their money from the government to pay for the food. The Indians in the near by villages have their allotment of money and they quickly spend it on food and alcohol, thus propelling the little economy of Nome. Other Government facilities, the hospital, jail and safe house also pump government money into the population’s pockets so that they can continue servicing the drunk Indians and buy their food. (All quite interesting from my view point)    

Tuesday

Today we went into work, visited with some more people, and found out our schedule for team driving to get to know some of the different coaches we will be driving here in Fairbanks. Also to day we spent a good amount of time going over tour material and reading up on Alaska history. Tonight we have a guest speaker that will be talking on the Alaska pipeline. It should be lots of fun.

I’ll keep you all posted on our going-ons here in Fairbanks. If you have any questions about Alaska and such, feel free to ask and I will address them in my next update.