Whitehorse, Yukon!

The last few days have been awesome. More time spent with great people, watching great scenery and traveling to great places! If you would have told me two months ago that I would be traveling to the yukon with some people that I didn't know previously, I would have been confused. Really confused.

The days off started with a lazy morning a few days ago. While sitting around and not doing too much, another driver letting me know that we had a bear kicking it out in bus yard. A few of us investigated, with a fire extinguisher in hand, just in case(but who are we kidding, bear vs. small fire extinguisher: Winner - Bear, loser - whoever runs slowest out of all of us). It was a cool sight, the little black bear was just wandering around, relaxed and happy with setting up camp in our area. Later that day, M + B were coming over to pick me up for our adventure to Whitehorse, YT in Canada, and its the first time I've been able to end a text messaging conversation with "Oh hey, when you get here, watch out for the bear". Alaska is good adventure!

We took off for the Yukon and took a picture at the Yukon sign, just to be funny tourists. I'm scratching my head and we both look confused because we couldn't figure out if the camera was adequately propped on the van for picture taking. Haha.... turns out it was.

Later that night we had a dinner at Earls. It was a good place. We met up with Marcus and Justin, two highway drivers, and a few more friends that were up from skagway. The 8 of us gathered to celebrate Marcus' brother's birthday. I don't know much about his brother, but he passed away a while back. Since then, Marcus' family celebrates every birthday to celebrate the time they got to spend with him. I think that's awesome.

After dinner, we headed out in our van to the top something that looked like a forest service road(or the equivalent in Canada). From there we had an awesome view of whitehorse, the cliffsides and the sunset. We ran around there for a bit and watched the colors change. Great view, great people to watch it with.

We camped that night in a weird little campground that had almost all walk in spots. We got our tents set up by midnight or so, which is good, because it started getting dark right about then. I enjoyed a bit of sleep, but then woke up when the daylight hit again at about 3:30 am. Whitehorse doesn't have the surrounding mountains that Skagway does to block light and give the slight appearance of night. Jeez.

After a little more sleep, we regathered with Marcus for breakfast, shopping at a grocery store with decent prices and selections, and concluded with a beautiful nap in the park by the river. The sun was out, it was warm and amazing. To top off our visit to "civilization", we even made a trip to starbucks and enjoyed those in the lawn again. It may have been the first day my summer has felt like summer.

"The worst winter of my life was spent working in Alaska last summer" - Anon. Good one!

Fred Meyer's Excellence

Fred Meyer is still my favorite store. Ever. Today a good example of why landed in my inbox.

The first email from Fred told me to update my rewards card info because I probably missed a reward. Whatever, I didn't care. I knew they had my correct info, so it was weird that I got the email anyway.

Within only a short bit of time, I got another email from FM. This one was an apology email, including the following message:

Oops! Sorry, we accidentally sent an email to you today
asking for you to contact us with your mailing address.
Please disregard that email and accept our apologies.

Dear Valued Customer,
Sometimes in life you push the wrong button and it seems like everyone in the world sees your mistake. We did that today when we accidentally sent to everyone on our mailing list an email with the subject line of "To receive your Rewards Rebate, send us your mailing address".

Now, I didn't care that much in the first place, but I do feel good about knowing that they're will to apologize if they screw up, instead of trying to play it off like they meant to do it. I also appreciate that the email is personal sounding and funny. Good job Fred!

Kayaking?!

What a crazy few days. This job just gets better and better all the time! Yesterday after I dropped off my yukon tour in Fraser for them to ride the train back to town, the Packer Kayak guides took me out kayaking in Lake Bernard with a group. it was a great time.

We've had some amazing days the last few weeks. Some ugly rainy ones too, like today, but it hasn't gotten too bad.

Today I'm just doing transfers, which means quick runs in town moving people from place to place. It's pretty mindless. Just pick people up, drive two blocks, drop them off. Easy, and lots of breaks. Good times.

One of our drivers yesterday saved a woman's life. She was going into cardiac arrest, and he took excellent care of her, and arranged for an ambulance to Whitehorse.

On the same day, one of the other drivers left someone behind, and the woman's husband failed to mention she was missing until the poor driver was almost to the end of the famous left behind passenger story. It was such a good story, that there was a play by play description over the radio that one of the other busses listened to. The driver held their mic to the radio to let all their passengers enjoy it. Awesome.

Camping!

After a busy week, I have a little bit of time for some quick updates. Last week, a few of us went on a last minute camping trip up to lower dewey lake. It was awesome. We left at about 10pm, which you can do in Alaska, because its still light outside. Very cool.

We stayed at a beautiful lake. Here are some pictures of it. I would write more, but I have to fix my bike and try to deposit some money into my nice new Wells Fargo account. I feel like every day off I've had up here so far has involved trying to fix my bike in some way. Ridiculous. Hopefully this time will be it!

Busy weeks!

I can't believe it's been since July 5th that I've posted anything. I just realized yesterday how busy it has been - after today I'll be down to four hours available, which essentially means that in the last 8 days I've worked 76 hours. Crazy! It doesn't even feel like it's been that many either. Weird.

I had my first Yukon tour the other day. I had a great group of people and we had a good time. That's really important, because its a 7 hour tour. Jeez. Yesterday I went back to my usual best of Skagway tour, but in the morning I did a historical tour, which ended up being a little rushed. 20 minutes at the museum, 4.5 minutes at the overlook, and then a quick trip down to the days of 98 show. Almost four weeks in, and I still love the job. Woo hoo!

I didn't believe Zach at first when he told me that I wasn't going to leave this place in September, but he's right. It'll be a really sad ending. Luckily(?) a lot of the other drivers go to BYU, and they're on semesters and will be heading out mid august, so I get to say my good byes in stages. There are a lot of great people here, and a few have already said they'll be coming through bellingham on their route home. It seems like those who drove up here didn't come from any close states though. They've been from texas, Utah, or Idaho. No one from Washington!

Even being up here, I've met some really awesome Washington people, even some in Bellingham that I didn't know of until my time up here. Really cool people. I think we'll all be seeing more of each other when we all get back. Awesome!

Ugh, no pictures. So busy. On top of that, my phone is toast again. Jeez.

Fourth of July Celebration!

After my last post, I thought I was all out of fourth/third of July Celebrations for a bit. Yesterday morning started out with a parade. It wasn't a usual parade either, the floats were all pretty funny. It was also nice that they're able to throw candy at children here. I like that. I also enjoyed a few pieces of candy.

One of the floats stands out in my head in particular. It was a large mosquito net looking thing on the back of a trailer. In a huge sign on the side it said "Tourist Trap" and had people inside of it asking silly tourist questions like "What's our elevation here?" and "where can I get my free train charm/ticket?". Oh, funny. On the back of the float, it had a sign declaring that Skagway won't be celebrating its independence until October 1st, the day all the tourists stop coming.

Our float was fantastic in spirit, but poor in design. Unfortunately, all those streamers we put on the new bus did bleed onto the new white paint. There were a ton of us riding on the trailer and in the bus. Pretty funny. Good stuff. Who D.A.T., Who D.A.T! (Disco Alaska Tours) Yeyeah.

After the parade, I participated in a little piece of history. Yesterday skagway attempted to beat the worlds largest egg toss record. I've heard anywhere from 900-1400 of us participated. Craaazy. It was fun though. And we broke the record. Awesome!

Later on in the day was the duckie derby. For $10 or so you could buy a small rubber duck and race it down pullen creek. The first one to Pullen pond won $1000. Pretty sweet. I didn't get there on time, so I didn't race one, but it was still fun.

No work today. Its my third day off this week. A little crazy, but I'll take it. It'll be good for laundry, and then I think I'm going to go hiking with some of the drivers. Nothing big, just fun stuff.

Third of July Celebration

What a night! After finishing work yesterday, our boss invited the company and all the shore ex folk, vendors, and a lot of Skagway to his house for a party and float building. We had some great food, saw a lot of drivers for the first time for a while, and started decorating our "float". The float consists of a 15 passenger van dragging a trailer with streamers and flags all over it. We also decorated one of the newer busses. Unfortunately, it started to rain last night, so hopefully those nice red streamers won't bleed all over the bus and leave some nice racing stripes.

After the party, a few of us ran back home for some warmer clothes, then drove down town to the Skagway street dance. We were there for the last hour of it. It was good to see a lot of people, especially since they're in costumes when I run into them usually.

It was a good bit of dancing and friends, and we topped it off with fireworks. We headed over to the ore dock and sat and watched the fireworks from one of the dock boat bumpers. Not a bad firework show!

All in all, a fantastic day. I think since the drivers that are here now are pretty much here for the rest of the summer, we're getting better at communicating and doing what we do(move people, and talk a little). The party, dance and fireworks made me feel like our company was family. There are a lot of quality people up here that are incredible to hang out with. I'm having a really good time.

Today is the parade, slow bike race, and egg toss. We're hoping to set a world record for the egg toss. I think we only need 250 participants or something like that. Everyone is excited about it, so it should go well!

Suspension Bridges, Rivers, and Housing

Wow! I can't believe I've been here for two and a half weeks already. It's been great so far. A lot of driving, a lot of hours, but for some reason, the mentality of coming up here to work and relax has made working so many hours not so bad. I think I came prepared to work up to 80/week, so working only 70 feels like a vacation! I even had a day or two off this week.

Yesterday I gave my first tour to the "Yukon Suspension Bridge". It was a little tough, because I had never been up to the bridge before. I'm glad I found it. Interestingly, this "Yukon" bridge isn't in the Yukon at all. I guess "British Columbia Suspension Bridge" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Anyway, the bridge was constructed in 2005. It's a pretty cool structure and visitor center they've built. The whole thing, though, is a great example of building a tourist attraction out of thin air. Of course, there is beautiful scenery, a river(tutshi) that carried gold rushers to Lake Tutshi so they could continue on to Dawson city (where one could supposedly scoop up gold and return home without breaking a sweat!), and an empty spot on the highway.


The bridge is fairly close to the famed "Log Cabin", which is the end point for the Chilkoot trail that Zach, some friends and I hope to hike sometime this month. Should be good. Tomorrow is a "transfer" day for me. All that means is that if the schedule stays the same, I won't be making any trips up the pass, or into the Yukon. Every once in a while these days are nice. Especially nice is that there is a lot of time where we need to stay with the bus places, and therefore stay on the clock. Actually, by a lot of time, I mean I probably spend more time staging places than I do actually driving. I've gotten a lot of good reading done, including knocking out one of the internship books, and being halfway done with the second. Woo hoo!

Included in this post are some pictures of my housing. In the shop house there are about 12 of us( I think?). We share a big area and kitchen. The other picture is the shop, and the mountains in the background that I wake up to everyday. Two and a half weeks in, I still consider myself lucky to be here!