Surprise of the week!

This last Saturday I had some surprise visitors come to Skagway!  I was on my way to the dock for a morning tour and on the way there, I get a call over the radio from one of my co-workers informing me that he had a couple folks with him who really wanted to see me.  He was in town at the train depot and I was on the dock, so he told me he’d drive them over to meet me.  I asked him if he had a hint as to who it is I should be looking for; his response was ”they like horses”.  They like horses?!  This proves to be of no help to me.  I raced over toward the end of the dock and about 20 feet ahead, my eyes caught view of a couple people waving at me.  As I got closer, their faces came into focus….lo and behold, it was my Great Uncle Larry and Aunt Ina!   They had driven all the way up here from Zillah, WA.  The trip wasn’t specifically made for me.  They were (and still are) road-tripping up to Alaska, planning to spend the rest of July up here, and they decided to make a pit stop in Skagway and surprise me.  No one knew they were coming except my grandparents and even they only knew about them coming to AK but not of their special plans to make a stop in Skagway.  The stop definitely took them off the beaten path adding a couple hundred miles to their trip, but I’m so glad though they chose that detour.  It was so refreshing and encouraging seeing more familiar faces in town.  We made plans to meet up in the afternoon after I was done with my tour at the RV park where they were staying.  We played canasta in the motorhome of their friends Larry and JoEllen with whom they were traveling…they fed me a bunch of homemade peanut butter cookies…we ate dinner together at the Red Onion Saloon here in town…and we even piggybacked onto a tour of the historic brothel which is located upstairs in the RO.  It was a fabulous surprise and a perfect ending to a long and tiring week.  Thanks so much, Uncle Larry and Aunt Ina, for making my week!! 

I also discovered another surprise a couple mornings ago, one not near as exciting and worth bragging about as the last surprise.  I was doing some errands on one of my breaks and noticed out of the corner of my eye a little white blob, a white blob that I later pinpointed as being a mini pile of bird poop resting atop the edge of my sleeve.   

 

Go figure I’m in my work shirt IN the middle of a tour when all this happens.  What’s worse is I had been walking around for about 45 minutes; thus I had no idea how long my new fecal friend had been showing itself.  I immediately rushed back to my bus, checked the mirror, and was relieved to find my hair (I checked that first), clothing, and the rest of my body untouched.  Since I didn’t have time to go home and change, I tried hard to wipe off the doo with a paper towel.  That, however, only worked to successfully transform the decoration from a 3-D mini poo pile to a 2-dimension gray smudge.  So then I resorted to rolling up the bottom of my sleeve.  Thankfully that concealed the evidence enough to get me through the remainder of my tour.  Still, I couldn’t help feeling thoroughly disgusted the rest of the day.  For the record, bird poop does not wipe off of royal blue colored cotton fabric very well…just in case you were wondering.

Making other news headlines in Skagway: today’s weather reaching an amazing 70 degrees!  We’ve got blue skies for miles and amazing mountain and glacier views to show off.  On the hottest day of the week, I am doing a tour in an un air-conditioned bus.  My poor pax, all 32 of them, spent most of their morning fanning themselves and drinking lots of fluids.  They’re at lunch right now enjoying the sun and a nice cool breeze while I am at home reapplying deodorant and dabbing off sweatmarks.  After I get off around 3:00, I hope to spend the later part of the afternoon laying out and getting some color on my skin.  I kid you not, all my white friends are passing me up with their tans.  The only color I have to show is that on my left arm, the driver arm.  I have a fashionable watch band line to compliment as well. 

When I have a couple days off this weekend (FINALLY, two days off in a row!), it is my goal to get more blogging done.  I had every intention of being a consistent blogger this summer but sadly, I haven’t been the greatest.  It’s too difficult sometimes to write a substantial recap of my day when I’ve driven 150 some miles and been with passengers for 8 hours straight and on the clock for 12-14.  Hopefully I can make up for lost time and make a better go of this throughout my last two months here. 

Speaking of which, can you believe I’ve been here two months already?  Sooner than we know I’ll be back in the Pacific Northwest.  I had the sweetest couple on my bus yesterday from Stanwood.  They were my weekly my taste of home.  Conversation quickly revealed that we knew a lot of the same people.  And why wouldn’t we?  It’s Skagit County after all!  We discussed the current weather, real estate development in and around the valley (he was a contractor), and cute little Gretchen’s kitchen store in downtown Mount Vernon where she worked for 6 years.  The exchange left me with vivid images in my mind of 1st Street and the Food Co-Op, beautiful Camano Island, and my dear colleagues at Peoples Bank.   

Hope Thursday is treating you all well.  Wherever you are, enjoy the gift of another day and know I am doing the same in little Skagway, AK. 

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