Home on the Range

Not being gainfully employed keeps me busy! I've had a great time since I've been home. I was able to go home to visit my nephews and spend good quality time with them. I helped my friend, Donna, with her garage sale and my mom spent last Monday through Thursday morning with me. During that time we tiled my front entrance and helped an aunt get settled into a nursing home.

Today was my first day of part-time employment. I worked a half day at a local Christian school subbing junior high science today, and I'll do the same tomorrow. Monday I have an interview with the North Kansas City School District for a sub position, so wish me luck. And, yes, I do want to do it!

Tonight I'm working with a destination management company on an event in the jazz district, and I'm already scheduled to work with them again later this month. It looks like things will be rolling in shortly, which is fine by me!

I'll continue to look for tour jobs, and if I get anything this fall, it's more likely to fill in for someone. I'll be able to solidify more jobs in January when I travel to San Diego for the ITMI symposium. There I'll be able to interview with a number of tour operators and hopefully get myself scheduled for the year.

Me and Chase

Working on the floor. It seemed to take forever since the original subfloor had a million staple nails in it spaced about an inch apart. It was not meant to come up! Now the next person that tries get this tile up will think the same thing ...

Using the wet saw in the dark!

Voila!

Donna and I working hard at the garage sale.

There's no place like home

I'm back in Missouri, and I'm glad to be back. After a long, and out-of-the-way trip from Anchorage to Kansas City, I was greeted at the airport by Mom, Levi and Wyatt. It was so great to see them all! When I got home, much to my surprise, I had a house full of family and friends waiting. It was wonderful to see everyone! No matter if Missouri is hotter now than I've experienced all summer, family and friends make it worth it.



The following day I got quite a surprise as well. I had an interview for a substitute teaching position. When I pulled out of my driveway, I heard a loud pop. I ran over a bolt in my drive, so I called AAA and the tow man followed me to the filling station to have my tire plugged. I ended up having my interview on Wednesday, and I'm now on the sub list.



When I left Alaska, the termination dust or first snow had fallen on the mountain tops and fall had nearly ended.



Here's the front of the wonderful Cordova Square Apartments where I spent my time while in Anchorage in a cozy one bedroom/two bath with 14 of my other dear tour directors! I'm loving having my house to myself!

Pretty rainbows

After having my camera for a couple years, I've figured out that the little movie camera icon on it means it has a video function. Here's a brief video of rainbows as we were making our last ride into Anchorage on Sept. 16.

Sherry, Eric, me, Janis, Jamie and Diane at the Princess Lodge
Fall colors are amazing in Denali!
Sockeye salmon swimming upstream near Portage Lake
Massive kite flying at Delaney Park in Anchorage
Statendam ship's Lido Deck. The roof opens up to reveal the mountains and have the open air around the pool.

The days are numbered! I head home Sept. 17, and I'm very excited. I just ended a tour and have one more remaining. My next tour picks up on the ship Sunday, ends Thursday, I do an exit interview Friday, deadhead home on Saturday from Fairbanks and fly home at 2 a.m. on the 17th.

My last tour was interesting. I had nice enough people, but they ere all pooped out from the ship. I had a guy helicoptered to Anchorage because of cardiac issues, and then I had a few others get sick through out the stay ...

I can't wait to see you all!

Scared spitless ... but alive!

Everyone knows how amazingly graceful I am ... Also, my family knows what happened when I learned to ride a bike ... (I couldn't steer the stupd thing) Well, two other tour directors, Scott and Diane, decided they were going to rent scooters from the Harley store in Denali. How hard could it be, right?

We went to the bike store, got a brief lesson, and were told that anyone could ride these things. We began on the George Parks Highway toward the park. It was incredibly scary since there were very fast cars, and we were only going 30-40 miles per hour. I was last in line and when I began to turn into the park, I was trying to slow down and turn. My feet touched the ground and my legs flew about, but I kept control of the scooter. It seemed that my scooter had stiff steering and veered to the left.

We went 13 miles into the park, stopping at Savage River, just before public vehicles can't go any further. Mt. McKinley was out and very beautiful during the ride. After we got out of the park, we went toward Cantwell, but didn't find much. We turned around after the McKinely Villages. We then drove back toward the Chalets, drove up the switchbacks toward the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain to the Grand Denali Lodge. Again with the massive curves/turns, braking and accelerating ... not my forte.

It was about 9 p.m. at this point - we started at 5:30 - and we decided to drive up the steep hill to the Crow's Nest restaurant for a wonderful bleu cheese burger. This hill has major speed bumps and ditches that nearly made me bottom out.

We got back on the road around a quarter till 10 p.m. and decided to drive out to a bridge where the train crosses. We went there and drove back. On the way back my scooters balance got worse, and it's actually getting dark here. We had to where our sunglasses for protection, so it was getting hard to see.

After gripping the handles of my scooter for dear life for five hours, I was done. I gladly turned in my key, felt good about overcoming a fear and not becooming a grease spot on the pavement. Celebrate the small victories!

P.S. I have no clue why this is underlining everything!

People are Leaving!

A lot of the tour directors are beginning to go home so they can start school. This makes it hard because it gets me thinking about home. I miss you all very much and I can't wait to see you.

Levi, Wyatt and Chase - I'm sending big hugs and kisses your way! Mwaaa!

My 28th birthday was spent in Denali on the Tundra Wilderness Tour. It was great! I lost count on how many bears I saw. I know it was over a dozen. One of the bears was in a river bed feeding on a caribou carcass. I don't have pictures of it because I could only see it through binoculars.











Don't I look older here? I'm 28 ... closer and closer to the dreaded 30 ...










This caribou got close to the bus. The antlers on this thing were massive and it still had its velvet on.




This is the Sourdough Cabins the tour directors stay at while working in Denali. They have two double beds, a shower that spits water and gets more on the floor of the bathroom that the person in the shower. And the water smells like sulfur. Other than that, they're great. The water is my only complaint there. It's almost like I'm at summer camp when I stay there.

I took a motor coach up to Denali while deadheading to Fairbanks, and on the way we stopped in Talkeetna for a potty break. This is the town the television program Northern Exposure was based off of. The show began taping here, but the actors complained that it was too cold so they moved production down to Roslyn, Wash. It is a tiny, quirky town! They have all kinds of odd festivals that go on including the Moose Dropping, Mountain Momma and Wilderness Woman festivals to name a few. (I tried uploading the pic, but the connection is too slow ...)

Update ... I wrote this a couple days ago in Fairbanks. I arrived in Denali around noon, and my day is now complete. My tour - a tour 16 - is going well. It goes to prove my theory that land first people are happier!