I sit currently on the uppermost, open air deck while our vessel makes a planned stop and disembarks most on aboard.  3 flat screen TV screens with continuous ads for food, snacks, the Discovery souvenir store’s TShirts, stickers, furs, knives and every other conceivable item that they can sell to tourists plays continuously on the 3 screens…….

These venues with planned, canned and choreographed scripts – with someone narrating a  memorized spiel to dozens or hundreds of tourists – are precisely the things Karen and I avoid when we travel.  

At 290 tons, the Discovery 3 can carry up to 900 passengers, at $94.50 pp.   4 decks.  Not a real paddle boat, but (the third Discovery vessel) just a touristy 3 hours of “entertainment” on the Yukon River.  

Free blueberry donuts and coffee.

99.5% of the passengers aboard disembarked to see the recreated village of native Athabaskans and Gold Rush Days prospectors, with narrators wearing microphones and broadcasting their script on loudspeakers –  and I didn’t even get off the boat.  Upon disembarking, all the passengers were herded into 3 groups of about 200 tourists each for the show and tell.

Karen returned 1/2 through the onshore events at “The Village” to the boat – before anyone else – and she said it reminded her of Disneyland.  We rolled our eyes and sighed.

I wrote.

I abhor these types tourism inspired scripted tours. 

As we finally get all aboard and get underway, as I sit and write – still on the top deck – in the row behind me is a couple that sound like they are from Arkansas or Missouri – both from their accents and from the simple, untraveled way they are describing their Alaskan experiences.

We wish we were traveling, not touristing.  

As every RV campground has hookups (The Horror, The Horror) we have been to so far has been 50% empty (or full) we wish we had just done the trip on our own.  All we needed to bring that we don’t have is the Honda 2000 watt generator.  

I probably have only stayed in a RV campground 4 or 5 times before this trip.  There are numerous campgrounds in off the grid locations and the 23’ Airstream would have easily fit….but not the mega RVs that are in the RV parks.  

We almost always have one of the smallest and simplest rigs in our campgrounds.  There is a RV not far from us that has a fucking TV at their external, slide out kitchen that is streaming FOX News via their Starlink antenna.  It made me shiver.

Tomorrow the planned group activity is a tour of a caribou or reindeer ranch.  We deferred.  

Imagine coming to Alaska only to go look at domesticated Caribou in what in essence is a zoo – but with a scripted narration from your local wannabe entertainer.  Zoos are despicable to both of us.

We both want to experience Alaska differently……..and just might drop out and……….

To be continued.  Changes are  needed for both of us.

We have contracted “Group Fatigue”. We will depart the KOA campground here Fairbanks in the AM and head to Denali State Park, south and abutting Denali National Park for several days of off grid camping away from the choreographed tour.

See you in several days when we reconnect with the group.