Happy mother's day!

Happy Mother's Day to everyone. I've been trying to go back and add images to previous blogs. And I've tried to go to Flickr and put them there. Our slow connection is prohibiting uploading any more than one at a time...and that usually takes about 4-5 minutes per photo. Will do our best to add photos as we go along. (Editing note: although the blog took forever because of adding the photos...and despite being oh so careful...the pictures are NOT in the order I'd put them in. The picture of Mike at the dock should be at the end and all the others should be moved up a notch. So the wording will sound odd when I mention that a picture is below or above or whatever. Blyecch!)

It's been over a week since I last blogged and I had made the commitment to self that I'd blog every 2-3 days. Broken commitment! And I apologize.

We've been here almost two weeks now. The building above is the Westmark Hotel where we are living for the summer. It's one of several different places where HAP-AY employees are staying. HAP-AY is Holland America/Princess-Alaska/Yukon. I just like the way it sounds: HAP-AY! HAP-AY! HAP-AY!

This is Skagway from the trail up to Lower Dewey Lake just east of the town looking west. There has been no way to capture the beauty of the mountains while there are clouds in the sky...which is most of the time. The snow on the mountains blends into the white/gray of the clouds and it is difficult to capture the contrast of pine trees, granite, snow and sky.

Mike started working several days ago. Unlike when he worked in Denali, there is an extensive and thorough orientation here. The Skagway first year drivers are still doing ride-alongs with drivers who have worked here in the past. In Denali, the usual maximum amount of time he got with a busload of passengers was about 20 minutes...even if he had one or two trips of 2 hours last year, it wasn't the norm.

Here in Skagway, he drives the bus but his more important role is that of the tour guide complete with facts, anecdotes, charm and otherwise making sure the passengers have a quality time on his tour. And, as the greedy wife wants to know about, earns his tips. He has ridden with several drivers now with varying degrees of knowledge and charm...all who have done this in the past.

Many of the driver guides are already here although some will arrive when their school year ends. Most of the drivers are young, male and Mormon. HPA does a lot of recruiting in Utah. These young men are universally hard working, polite and mostly don't drink...ideal employees for the cruise industry. There is a strict dress code which makes most of these men look like they must have on their missions...except now wearing blue shirts. They are a nice group of young men whose names I have trouble remembering. I have seen 4 women who are drivers, two sisters who look to be in their 60's and two women in their early 20's. There is one male driver older than Mike and the rest are all in their 20's.

There are about 45 different tours and the guides have to be able to narrate the way with history, geology and wildlife. (As many of you know, Mike is excellent at narration.) In actuality, there are only about 6 tours, but they combine them in configuration and length and each has a different name. Ride the train up the hill, take the bus down or vice versa. Go to the Red Onion Saloon and Brothel before your city tour, after your city tour or in the middle of the ride up the hill with or without the train. Et cetera.

I was able to go on an informal Ultimate Yukon Tour the other day. It was a tour just for the drivers to show them where to take photo stops, where to park their buses, more of what to say, and also a grocery trip to Whitehorse, YT. Breathtaking scenery, mountain goats. Our lunch stop was at Cariboo Crossing, a commercial enterprise including a world-renowned taxidermy museum, barbecue, sled dog demonstration and gold panning. The barbeque was the best meal we've had since we got here! The taxidermy was outstanding with many of the animals being animals dead from accident or in the case of the extinct animals, found in glacial ice. Yes, a real wooly mammoth and extinct lions and bison. Truly excellent display.

Then on to the grocery store where we had to get a loony (that's a Canadian dollar coin) to put into the grocery cart to unlock it. I looked as confused as a brick and a kindly woman helped me to unlock my cart. You get your coin back when you return the cart to the row of carts all locked together. I am continuing to be shocked by the prices. A new arrival who worked with Mike in Denali last year and lives in Tok, AK year round said she's happy with these prices...that they are similar to those in Fairbanks. Yeesh! We bought our stuff and were quite happy until we realized on the way home that our produce might be confiscated as we enter back through U.S. Customs. But we sneaked through and were able to keep our onions, tomatoes, green pepper, bananas and parsley. Whew!

Meantime I've done a little more hiking. I've gotten every geocache that isn't missing, needs to wait for the river to go down or doesn't require a 3 mile hike starting out of town. That includes the cache I got at Sturgill's Landing. This hike starts near our back door and goes up to Lower Dewey Lake and then snakes along a fairly flat ridge and back down to the shore. It's a 7 mile round trip.

Hiking along this rain forest is like living in a forest from "Lord of the Rings." Everything is moss and lichen covered and dark. Even I can trod as silently as an expert hunter because the path is pine needle covered. There is some sort of animal that makes a noise like a rhythmic deep bubble popping. We've yet to figure out this mystery animal. Eventually this hike took me down a steep rocky hill and back to the shore where again I saw a harbor seal. At the end of the hike are a few picnic tables and fire rings. The shore is littered with timbers and trees...some pretty hefty driftwood! And it was in this little shore area that I found a cache that had not been found since September 2008!

Tomorrow I start my job and I'll just be helping in the office for a few days. Believe it or not, I need to be certified to drive a van! It's an insurance thing. Most of the cruise passengers on Holland America/Princess that visit Skagway arrive in the morning and leave in the afternoon or evening. It's just a port stop. For some, however, they arrive in Skagway to either get on a bus and do a land tour of the Yukon OR arrive by bus after their Yukon land tour and get on the ship here to cruise the inland passage. Those are my customers. From what I understand, my job will be to help them make their transfer to/from their land tour. Also, I'll be selling land tours to people staying overnight at the hotel looking to take a tour. And there will also be office type work.

It's hard to say that I've been bored in such a beautiful place with all the options to hike, but I have been. Am anxious to get to work and be engaged with people. Lately I've felt like Mike's here and I've been a hanger-on...just waiting. That will come to an end this week. Our hearts remain in Arizona (and elsewhere) with family who we wish we could be with. But the beauty of this location eases that heartache somewhat.

We're in Alaska!