Day by Day Drama

It's been suggested that living up here in Alaska is like living in a reality show. It would be pretty entertaining to have a camera crew filming all the crap that goes down here, but since I have no access to that, I will narrate as best I can. I will try to write down all the craziness that goes on here in the isolated town of Skagway in the Discover Alaska Tours company.

To start, Thursday (yesterday) wasn't nearly as bad as some days. I did an Experience the Yukon & Suspension Bridge tour. It's interesting how if I feel my group is low energy I'm low energy. Like Wednesday, my group was awesome! I cracked tons of jokes and they LOVED me. My group this time though was low-key and I was a little out of it for reasons I won't share here, but it turned out to be an ok day. Because I was a little spaced out I didn't give as good of a tour as usual, and thankfully that didn't really affect my tips at all. Drama-wise though...lets see... I had an Austrian lady on board who felt that the whole tour revolved around her and her comfort level. We hadn't even left Skagway yet, when she comes up to me and tells me it's too cold. So I turned the A/C down. Later she kept asking all these stupid questions including the all famous "What's the elevation here?". Then while driving home she comes up and says that the open roof hatch (opened to cool off the bus) is too windy and how would she go about closing it? The only thing that made up for it was that she did tip me (I never expect much from the Europeans because it's not in their culture to tip), so that was nice.

Oh and I almost got in an accident too. We were getting close to Skagway, it had been a beautiful day by Skaggers' standards, but that afternoon the White Pass had become extremely foggy to the point where I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. So I'm going along the road and right where the Canadian-US border is I see some faint tail lights so I slow down but almost not soon enough. This car in front of me slams on their brakes right where it says "Welcome to the US" and I slammed on my brakes! Luckily, I was able to stop but with barely 5 feet between our bumpers!! I was actually shaking afterwards! Not to brag, but my pax are always impressed by my driving skills. That same day I had impressed a few by my being able to make tight U-turns and some of them were even applauding me! I'm not gonna lie, it does feel good.

On a lighter note, we did get to see a bear!! We had just passed the Yukon sign and came around a bend where we saw the bear and then two cubs tumbled out of the brush as well!! Unfortunately I didn't get to photograph them, but it was awesome because it's been forever since I've seen wildlife WITH passengers!! I did almost hit a bear the other day. I was deadheading (means driving with no pax) to Carcross for a Bennett Adventure and we'd already seen one bear. I just passed Lake Tutshi, my friend Bethany was driving in front of me and this black bear decides to cross the highway between us. I saw him come onto the road and I hit the brakes. Fortunately he crossed pretty fast and I was still about 20 feet away when he got to the other side of the road, but it was still scary. Although I have thought that if I ever killed something cool (like a bear, moose, lynx, fox or coyote) I would take it to Caribou Crossing and have them skin it for me so I could have the pelt to use on my tour. Morbid I know.

So that's what went down yesterday. I have the day off today so no drama, but tomorrow's another day.