"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