Our tour started yesterday in Valdez, an historically important coastal town that among other things, is a popular port for cruise ships. Valdez is not very far from the site of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. We drove a couple of hours on the Richardson Highway (Route 4 on Google Maps) up to Copper Center, a small town near the enormous Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. It is the second largest national park on the planet. Only Northeast Greenland National Park is larger than Wrangell-St. Elias.  And not just a little larger, almost 19 times larger, and larger than all but 29 countries.

My guests stayed at the Copper River Princess Lodge for two nights.  Princess Lodges, along with its motor-coach and railcar fleets (Princess Rail), makes up the land operations for Princess Cruises' "cruise-tours" in Alaska, giving guests a combined land and sea experience. 

I slept in driver housing across the property, an adjunct of employee housing for the ~85 employees who are based in Copper. This lodge is the most remote of the five Princess lodges, so the group of employees bond and do everything together as there is little choice. 

With 40 guests on board, we got an early start on our 10.5 hour drive today towards our accommodations at the Denali Princess Lodge in Denali Park.  My day on the clock began at 5:35 am, pre-tripping the coach, then loading their luggage, and departing at 7:20. We made 14 stops, which is something I love to give the guests, figuring they came all this way, might as well stop and get off the coach to enjoy the view. Some driver-guides would do the same trip and stop twice. I always shut down the motor, sometimes enjoying the sound of a waterfall, or a flowing glacier-fed river, mostly just the silence of Alaska. 

There are so few roads in Alaska that they all have names, and most are named after US Army officers from the gold rush era. From Valdez to Fairbanks is the Richardson Highway, and from Fairbanks down to Denali is the Parks Highway. The main road layout is a capital A, with Fairbanks at the apex, and two horizontal bars, or roads, the Glenn Highway at the bottom, and the Denali Highway (100 miles of gravel) above that. We used to drive across the Denali Highway, which was super, so remote there is no cell service, and no retail. The only place to stop for lunch either didn't want to provide it any longer, or wanted too much money, so now we drive further up to Fairbanks, then back southwest to Denali. 

Yesterday when I picked them up in Valdez we saw a black bear, the 10th one I've seen in seven years. Today we saw a mama moose and her calf. People often expect to see far more wildlife, and they do, but inside Denali National Park, where only Teamsters drive. They get three times the pay we receive, which means they almost never quit, which means they are excellent at their job, driving the same 43 mile road, often laden with wildlife, every day. 

It is a fun challenge to make that long trip of 10.5 hours to Denali a great experience. Stopping 14 times helps a lot. But some days when the views and weather are poor that number drops. Narration, relaying interesting things about the place, telling stories, and giving some poems also helps. We also show a video by NPR about the Alaska pipeline, telling that story more from the people side than from the nuts and bolts. We follow its route until turning southwest in Fairbanks. It travels 900 miles from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean, to Valdez, which is the northernmost ice-free port. We stop two, sometimes three times to see different aspects of this gargantuan project. One is where it crosses the Denali Fault. 420 miles of the route the pipe is above ground due to permafrost. Designed for 25 years of use, it's currently in year 47, and flowing at the rate of 488,000 barrels every day.

Where to stop, how long to stay, what to say in narration, when to give a poem, what do we have time for, that is the biggest one ... I'll make a 100 decisions in a day like this, and every one is made with the goal of enhancing the experience for those sitting behind me.

I dropped my guests off at the hotel at 5:40 pm, just in time for a quartet to make their excursions at 6; two doing zip-lining, two doing midnight-golfing. All forty were from the US, but for a pair from Switzerland, a lady from The Netherlands, and a pair from Australia.  I'd be off the clock at 7:45 pm, a good day done, and keen for the first food of the day, just making it before the EDR, the Employee Dining Room, closed at 8.

I bid farewell to my guests here in Denali, and while they toured Denali National Park, I took another group back north to Fairbanks. The original group will take a train to another lodge for a couple nights, and likely a different motor coach to Anchorage before flying home.   

There are a great many variations of route and itinerary. Another common one I drive, I am with the same group for five or six days, where they stay two nights at each of the five Princess lodges. That tour includes a Tour Director, which adds yet another layer of complexity to my job, but most are quite good and we form a team. 

In closing, I'd like to say that it would be my honor to have you come along someday and be my guest on our coach tour through the Alaskan wilderness.