Washout, Rockslide, and a New Bike....

Well, life has been pretty busy for us up here in Alaska!  We have been working like crazy, herding thousands of cruise ship passengers on and off our little railroad.  A railroad that has had a rough summer.  First, about a week ago there was a track washout, which basically cancelled any trips into lake Bennett, as you can see from the picture below there is a track on the right basically where it should be (except with nothing under it) and then you can see the other side of the track way off to the left.  It's going to take crews a while to get it back to normal. 

 Luckily 95% of our tours dont get as far as this spot, so Jenn still gets to give her awesome tour over and over and over and over.  Speaking of Jenn's tour... there was a film crew in town from South Africa doing a story for the Travel Channel last week.  They rode the train and wanted a young, cute train guide to ride with them if they had any questions, well, Jenn was chosen for the job.  When she got there, she quickly realized that they wanted more than they asked for, because they filmed her the entire ride.  This included making her walk in front of the train cars over and over, as well as walking up the stairs, and down, then up and down until they got the perfect shot.  The hosts of the show also coached her on how to "act" because she was the focus of their whole ride, they could've cared less about the train or scenery.  Needless to say,

 it was

 quite the experience, Jenn in on the cusp of being world famous!!  We dont know when it's going to air, but keep an eye out, and let us know if you see it.  

Another crazy thing that happened this week was on Wed, in the middle of the day between our morning and afternoon train trips there was a major rock slide about 16 miles up the track between two tunnels.  Unfortunately we had no idea it had happened and sent 5 trains full of about 2400 passengers up the mountain.  The engineer on the first train up saw the blockage and stopped, as well as calling out for the other 4 to stop.  It was so massive that all 5 of them had to back all the way back down, and we were cancelled for about 36 hours.  The largest rock that hit the tracks was 20 feet tall and about 10 feet wide, so the section crews had to blast their way through, then repair the rails.  We have pictures of the slide, but not on computers yet, so as soon as we can find a scanner in this town we'll let ya see them.

Also this week we got a new bike!!!  By new I mean a super old, rusted out, bent wheeled, Huffy.  Which is basically perfect for what we need it for.  If you've never been here we live in a town 21 blocks long by 4 blocks wide...and the blocks are tiny.  So most of the time we are walking, but it is nice to get somewhere on the far side of town quickly.  Luckily for us, our friend Wade had an extra bike lying around and let us have it.  It runs right now, but it needs some work.  This will give Brian something to do on his day off.  Either way, check out how cool we look!!