Tourist Traps

Since travel is down, I might as well write about tourist traps and how to avoid them.  There are places that I've been that left me underwhelmed -or it could just be that they failed to live up to the hype.  I thought Alaska would be that way.  Parts were touristy and I'm glad we didn't take a big cruise ship tour.  That said, I found parts of Alaska to be touristy and other parts to be completely off-the-charts wild.  Yukon Territory was even bolder.  Ever read Jack London's The Call of the Wild?  Yeah, heading up to Yukon Territory from Skagway, Alaska is a trip.  Hitting the road in a large 1990's Chevy with 170k miles, I was given advice from Alaskans such as "If your vehicle breaks down, hitchhike."  It's truly a different world out there.

Considering the mess with COVID-19, I'm glad that I experienced Alaska.  While parts can be touristy, it's too big of a place to be a tourist trap.  Likewise, the same could be said of Yukon -perhaps even more so.  We saw some tourists from Switzerland.  Actually, most tourists who weren't on cruise ships were either from Silicon Valley or Europe.  Well, that and places like Montana and Nebraska.  And what was touristy?  Well, if you see tour buses and cruise ships, you know.

Finally, I heard they moved the bus from Into the Wild.  Now that was never supposed to be a tour bus:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a32935542/into-the-wild-bus-removed/

I read Jon Krakauer's book years ago.  For me, it's a more contemporary and relevant story than JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.  As if that weren't enough, the film based on the book is also superb in it's own right.  At least for me, that's a rarity when the film holds its own with the book.  You see Kristen Stewart before Twilight.  Among others, her acting is superb.  More importantly, you see the kinds of folks who end up in Alaska.  It's a different world up there.