Supporting Women in the Travel Industry and Male Dominated Occupations

Host Dan Blanchard joins two avid female travelers who have both succeeded in male-dominated travel and maritime occupations, who also happen to be part of his family. Both females and minorities are making inroads into previously exclusive male-dominated fields and are excelling. Join Captain Dan Blanchard, his daughter Captain Denee Blanchard and his life partner and long-time outdoor guide and expedition leader, Megan Moran for an informative and enthusiastic episode. Listen in on everything from what is happening behind the scenes to what it took to succeed in their positions and more hilarious travel tales.

Get inspired. Small boats. Small groups. Small footprint.

Find more at UnCruise.com 
Contact the team at pr@uncruise.com 

Follow No Ordinary Adventure and UnCruise Adventures:
YouTube: UnCruise Adventures
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UnCruise
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnCruise

Want to know more or want to leave us a voice mail for the podcast? Leave us a message here: https://www.speakpipe.com/noordinaryadventur

Transcript

0:03

Hey adventures Welcome to the no ordinary adventurer podcast, a place we call home for adventure and the conversations you want to have. We bring you inspiration stories from the field and talk with adventure travelers and industry experts from around the world. This is a place to fill your heart and head with travel knowledge. Now, your host Dan Blanchard, a lifelong Mariner traveler and CEO of UnCruise Adventures, a small boat adventure company defining the UN in UnCruise. Let's get started. Alright, this is Captain Dan Blanchard with no ordinary adventurer. And today I'd like to introduce you to two women in travel two very successful ladies who have come through the ranks to great places and travel. One of them my daughter, Denae Blanchard, the captain of the Spartan quest, and the other my life mate, mega Moran, who's an expedition leader, Adventurer extraordinare is even doing something different with COVID-19. Being a sales representative, and today is a special treat because I'm on mast and I'm not masked with my family. I've got my daughter, Denae Blanchard, and my life partner, Megan Moran with me today, who are both very successful women in their fields in travel. And today, we want to dive into how they got there, where they're headed. And all the things that make travel such a wonderful environment for women of all cultures to be involved in. I'd like to start out ladies by saying it's kind of cool to have my family here. Likewise, yeah, I never quite imagined doing a podcast with with those that I love so dearly. But you two are both very successful in the fields that you've ventured into. I thought Dene, we'd start out with you. You are the captain of the vessel support request, can you tell us a little bit about how you came to be the captain of the Spartan quest and what that path look like? Yeah, long and slow. Starting off here, when we were American Safari cruises about 15 years ago, and I was a steward, I thought it was gonna be a summer job that was aboard the safari spirit vessels. And then after a couple years of doing that, I thought, gosh, that looks kind of cool. Maybe I'll think about getting my captain's license and moved over to the deck side of things and progressed my way up from there, into all the different deck positions, and finally up to the captain position about five years ago. So what were some of the hurdles that you saw along the way or experienced to getting to that point of being a captain was it still wasn't very common to have women's captains? Yeah, that's certainly true. I mean, there's plenty of amazing women that have come before me in this industry. But I think, unfortunately, a lot of women and myself included have self doubt issues. And, you know, certainly being a captain in a male dominated industry brings up those kind of concerns within oneself. You know, so that's, that was difficult to overcome, and still is, you know, I think it's still something that I deal with, and a lot of women deal with, but you know, you just keep plugging away and running yourself that you can still be as good as everybody else. So tell me about the doubt. Because I know you I realize that you felt that at times, but I mean, what we all have doubt in this, some of us overcome it. Some of us don't, in different areas of our life. But how did you overcome doubt, personally, when it relates to you stepping into the position of Master of a small ship, as having other people believe in you as a huge part of it, for me having approval from people in the industry that were my supervisors, people that had worked with me for a really long time. Tim Voss is one of those people. Roger four is one of those people. Winston war is one of those people Shawn Mansky, these are all captains that our company and having people like that say, No, you can do it, and you'll be fine. And you're gonna make it happen. That really was the extra push that I needed. And, and still love to hear, you know, when people are like how you're still doing. Good. That's one way of overcoming it. And then besides that is just practice, practice, practice, practice. And the less you screw up, the more you you know, solidify within yourself that you are being successful. And you'll have screw ups but you know, the more successful you are, the more successful you'll do, indeed, what's not like from a guest perspective, because you're running and you've run other boats for us, but with the Spartan quest, the story quest is a very intimate 22 passengers You're what nine crew, I think tank crew, and it's a higher end vessel. So you get sometimes a clientele that maybe isn't used to having a female captain. Is that true? Yeah, I mean, it's certainly true. And it was true. Also, when I was made and, you know, positions I was in before I was captain. And you know, there are most people, the vast majority of people are stoked, like, Oh, wow. You know, Captain Great. certainly had some old school type folks that are like, huh, really, you know, kind of raised eyebrows sort of thing? Don't you worry about it. Okay. All right. All taken care of you. But yeah, I mean, I think by the end of the trip, I've never failed to bring anybody around. It's always ended. Well, yeah, that's true. Well, it's interesting. I think the small ship industry has been particularly good about bringing women and minorities into positions in the company. I think that I remember, when you were younger, this sort of band in early 90s. When banky Crosby and Lee Ryan, it were the first two captains, I worked with the females what's happened with either boss and be the first son industry to bring captains into those positions? But do you see, I guess what I'm asking is, do you see that in other areas of shipping? In other words, are there female captains outside of the small ship and cruise industry? There certainly are, but to a lesser extent, I mean, the the case of worn tubs or larger vessels is very, very different from the small cruise industry. I mean, I, I haven't personally worked in those industries. But knowing people who have there are far fewer women or those kind of vessels than there are in the small passenger vessel cruise industry. What do you suppose that suitcase? i My best guess is that it's that kind of good old boys club on vessels like that. But again, I haven't been there. So I can't say firsthand, but that kind of seems to be the thing I've heard kind of entrenched. Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. And you know, I mean, ideally, it was all this, it's, to me, it's even a shame that we have to talk about gender. Frankly, I don't love that anybody says, Wow, female captain. Not only is it a little bit irritating, but it also shows where we're at. We're not quite there yet. Just the society, the society. We're doing better? What I mean, I'm here. Great. That's awesome. There are other women here. But as a society, I don't I don't see why we even have to bring that up. I think it would be great if people just came on board and said, Wow, nice to meet you, Captain. Not Wow, a woman. Because that's very telling. So you know, of course, I'm happy to be here and happy to be chatting about it, and happy to be part of this amazing industry. But yeah, as a society. And culturally, I would love for all of us to get better at that. But of course, there have to be women in the industry to pave that path first. And I'm certainly not that person. There have been amazing women before me. But you know, we've got to just keep on truckin. And until it becomes a norm that's so normal that we don't even have to talk about. Yeah, sure. True. So can you have the opportunity? Or maybe you've had a younger women that have worked under you? Maybe they're a steward, like you were that have kind of come to you and say, How do I get there? I mean, you what kind of advice would you offer somebody that's younger getting into the industry that might want to achieve the level of success that you've had? Yeah, sure. I mean, I, there's a couple ways of doing it, as you know, one is going through an academy and you can spend four years getting your license and going to a Maritime Academy to get on board and the depth side of things. Or you can do the hotspot method, which is what I did. Yes. Everybody goes up the chain. So the chain comes through the halls, take your anchor, being your anchor, then the chain chain connecting to that, pulling it aboard, and the Haas pipe is what guides that whole thing through. So coming up the Haas pipe is you know, coming up the ranks from the bottom all the way up. So that is the method that I took. And it takes a lot longer than four years typically. But you know, you definitely get hands on experience like you never would in the academy academies do a wonderful amount of teaching on a very broad spectrum of subjects. But the the hands on experience is certainly more limited than you'll get in four or five years in the industry. So I would say pick them up and think of you're going to get into the an entry level position in the industry like a deckhand and work your way up. Or if an academy bite you the route you want to go. That's good information. If you haven't anybody started follow that route. I have had a couple of women work their way up and the last two chief mates I've had have been women and I really enjoyed working with both of them. Amy Martin and Sharif Yes. Gosh, whether they're friends of ours as well. Yeah, that has People are great teammates and wonderful ladies to work with and intelligent and wonderful. So yeah, they will just keep on plugging. Yeah. So in addition to your summertime jobs, we're kind of the master of a small ship. This winter with COVID, you're taking on kind of different roles. Tell us what you're doing that UnCruise Adventures these days, who knows? Everything, anything, kind of whatever needs to be maintaining the entire fleet that's kind of over here in the corner of the west wall, and fisherman's terminal Seattle, just looking after our vessels that are all hunkered down for the winter, and making sure they're safe and secure as stores and such through, but also doing maintenance plans and training plans. And you know, just forming different agendas for the company to progress. Yeah, so you have what I understand, talking to you and to our Vice President of Operations, Bruce, you've been working on what I would call and what you all kind of termed that just a change in the way we manage but a revolutionary change. Can you tell us about that at all? And what that means? Yeah, I mean, we'll certainly see how it plays out as we tweak it and form it into what we want it to be. But the idea being that there's a bit more decentralization in our company, meaning we have a smaller office, and more autonomy for the vessel. So ideally, we're going to have really incredible key players as captains aboard our vessels that can orchestrate everything from that level onboard the ship much more than previously and having less support in the office. So captains would be taking on more things like learning the food and beverage program all the way to, you know, making sure shipyards are ready to go and set up a year in advance and everything in between. Yeah, so essentially, it sounds like where you would take a captain or what we call our vessel leadership team, which includes the captain expedition leader, the hotel manager, the engineer, and they, for the most part, come on full time. But they're their winter project is really all the preparation for the summer. And then they execute that work during the summer, in essence, is that that idea? Yeah, exactly. So you spend your fall and part of the winter potentially planning and then make it all happen in the spring and summer as we do the best time for Alaska? Yeah, well, I find that intriguing one, because, you know, it kind of means that each boat is kind of its own business profit center being managed that way. But also, I think, even though that there's by bringing on that group of managers and leaders on a full time full year basis, it's really the same cost, but it's much more efficient and much more ownership compared to a managed from the office mentality, which we had for a few years. Yeah, absolutely. And that's certainly the idea we're going with good. Well, thanks for all your work with the team. I know that you guys have been exhausted me meetings, and in talking and talking and talking, which is hard sometimes when you're a person of action, but it appears to be really coming down to some fruitful decisions. Yeah, I think so I'm pretty excited to see that changes. Oh, good show. Well, today, we're going to switch over to a friend of yours that you've had now for a few years, seconds to be exact. But you imagine, it just seemed like you two are like this little team running around operations, very similar minded women, Megan comes to us, of course, from the expedition department as an expedition leader. And maybe maybe we switch over to you and talk a little bit about, you know, here again, we have a very strong woman in a very strong position on the boat. I mean, the expedition leader next to the captain is really the one that runs the show, in the view of the guests, his company in many, many ways. Tell us a little bit about how you got into that area of Expedition because you're not only an expedition leader, but during the winter, you take calls as a sales agent, which is kind of a crazy max. So tell us how did you get to this place? So when I was graduating from college, my younger brother and sister had done trips with a company called moondance adventures. These are three week long adventure trips where you went backpacking, whitewater rafting, rock climbing, those types of things. And my brother became an instructor for it during college. So right when I graduated from college, my brother was like, I think he really liked this. And I didn't even backpacking once. I mean, I had never done any of that stuff. Really. I mean, I've been outside a lot and hiking but as you say, I think you'd really like this job. So I applied and they gave me the job because my brother works there pretty much. That's why I didn't really have any other qualifications except for that I know how to like do with people and I had a lot of experience outside doing stuff. So I again thought that would be a summer job right after college COVID Summer time job, and we're now 23 years after that, and I'm still doing the same job, not the same. But I ended up working for that company for off and on for 12 years taking teenagers on three week trips where we go backpacking, like I said, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, we did some international trips, we do volunteer work. And so I worked with I'm all over the world. I also plan so their trips, so they sent me to Australia to plan a trip to them. I plan to learn new tricks in Ecuador, or Peru and those types of things pretty quickly, right after college right after college truly leading these trips. Yeah, yeah, leaving land based trips, right. I had no idea that there were adventure boats. And then my, my work took me internationally. And I worked in a couple different countries as a guy doing different things for international schools, and stuff like that. So I worked in China for a year guiding. And then I was in South Africa guiding, doing environmental education on the beach with kids. And I was looking for change from South Africa. And I was on an email serve list or outdoor jobs. And the day that I was just looking when I wanted to get out of there, Papa UnCruise Adventures. I was like, Hey, I've been to Alaska. What are these adventure boats, I didn't even know it was the rainforest down at temperate rainforest in southeast Alaska, because I had been glaciers in Denali in that whole area before. So I didn't really know that much about the region. So it's my first introduction, that there were boats. So I applied and got the job and started off as an expedition guide, and did that for a summer too. And then I became the expedition leader running the show. And I've done that for about 40 years. And so what would you say were the challenges for you starting out with your moon dance experience, experience leading youth all around curled? I mean, it must have been really challenging, being a woman going into foreign countries that don't necessarily or didn't at that time necessarily see women as leaders of groups, necessarily, what do you see that are experienced? We never had any experience that have been treated any different as a woman in in the guiding industry. I say that in the types of guidance that I do, and especially on the boats, you tend to see a lot more female guides, and a lot more female expedition leaders. I think that the males who are getting really into the expedition field, you see more of like mountaineer guides, like when you go to Mount Rainier, you know, it might be a team of five guys on parole or something, you know, that's where the balance is more off in the expedition world, like adventurer guiding, like with the trips that I did with a teenager. So it's always a man and a woman leading the trips. Yeah, I didn't really find much of a difference being a woman in those trips, abroad or anything. Yeah. So even even in foreign countries, that wasn't much of an issue. Yeah. If you were to give advice to a college student, or a woman, about, you know, your career and maybe the dumb following in your tracks, what would be some of the advice you'd give to get them to the point where they would be a leader of leaders, where you are now as an expedition leader? Yeah. Well, that's actually been one of my favorite things all along. It's really mentoring. I love that aspects of working with teenagers when I was with with when I was with moondance adventures, and I would encourage students at that point, just to make them a more worthy citizen. My biggest question was, study abroad, study abroad, study abroad, not in Europe, study abroad somewhere else. And because it gives you the confidence, and it changes your perspective entirely. So for younger students, I've always told them, Go study abroad, go somewhere different and get out and do really big, long, extended backpacking trips, though they bite those getting high school kids just in life to move no more adventurous direction in life. So their life takes on a different type of adventure because I studied abroad and Paul, and once I have that experience, everything else change after that. So for young people, I do tell them that and then I've also mentored a lot of stewards. For example, in our company, there's a lot of movement within our company. As Rene said, she started the stewardess now a captain and that happens a lot of Stewart's who want to be guides, we get that a lot. And for them, the most important thing that I tell them to start with is to go get your wilderness first responder, which is the 10 day medical training course that I think everyone should just get in life. If you go outside and spend any time outside. It is a pretty essential thing because a lot of confidence in how to handle any medical situation you could be outdoors and Something that is required for most outdoor jobs. So that's a really nice place to start to get that experience. And then just trying to even if you can volunteer or get jobs locally getting things for your getting used to taking people out and interpreting the wild world for them. So a lot of the times in towns you'd like volunteer to work with the park system, or you could get a job doing some sort of guiding, we're always looking for people who either have a really strong background in guiding or really strong background in science. So depending on what your interest is to really dive into those, and then just get a lot of experience in that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's important. What you mentioned earlier, and I think I understand but you mentioned Europe, particularly as not, yeah, what why do you say don't don't spend this world traveling Europe go to other places? Well, because I, I find that especially for the Study Abroad here, because for study abroad, let's just say you're like studying abroad in like England, where everybody speaks English, and you're like, in London, and it's just not that different, you know, my dad have an accent. And you might get a tube and says subways, but everyone's so different about that, you know, you're going to go to pubs, and you're going to drink, and you're going to do all the same things that you would do anywhere, I'm sure if you're studying Spanish, like going to Spain be the place to go study abroad. But when you study abroad, somewhere that is so completely different from what you're used to, then it just opens your mind so much to the world. So for example, staying abroad in Nepal, I'm 21 years old, I'm living in Nepal for a year I had to do a homestay with a family, when there's four different families living in the house, then all the husbands are all in other countries working to make money and all these women are living, we're living together, and they're taking care of the kids in this communal way. And they're sleeping. It was just amazing to me, I never seen you know, I come from little Grosse Pointe, Michigan and like my, my go to life there, and then to go out and just see how people live. And it just changes your perspective, so much more. So going anywhere in Asia or Southeast Asia, you know, I always recommend those types of things. Now, you've had a big shift, because you've been working as an expedition leader, like I say, is kind of the it's really the focal point of the boat, as far as small ships go. But during the winter here recently just changed, change things up. You've been helping build out some leadership plans with the day as far as how the picture might look down the road, but you've also taken on a whole new role. Tell us about that. Yeah, well, I've just been helping out in sales, and which has been really fun for me, because people are calling and just want are interested in booking trips. And I now have worked on almost all our upsells I say I'm sorry, sorry, winter in the winter, in Costa Rica. Pantalon, generally, and I have some work on the river, and I work in Alaska, and I've done all the trips. So it's really fun to have that type of perspective to tell clients about real world what it's like. And so I'm just having a lot of fun helping people plan, the trip that best suits them and finding out what it is that they're looking for. And then really matching them up with the personality. So when you answer to the phone, is it Megan, expedition leader? No. But do they find out when I tell them? I normally do. That's the response to? Oh, it's so nice to hear from somebody that actually spent so much time on the boats, or are you gonna be on the boat with me? Are you gonna be later? Well, I see you and tell them all Yes. The chances of getting a chance to see you and today is actually pretty high. Yeah, we never sail together. Oh, yeah. Never still together. But I'm speaking the fact that you're on different boats. And yeah, it's opportunities. Good, of course, opportunity to see us and you know, it's always good to well, this is really interesting. And I find that the switch of jobs that you've taken on this winter, and this is all doing a COVID and we're Chris, we're in our own bubble here. That's why I wrote out masks. We're kind of a family bubble. So looking at your own crystal balls, and trying to see what the future looks like a year or two down the road. for you in your workplace and this kind of thing. Junaid you have a you have a view of what post COVID is going to look like and what are you looking forward to your own career and advancement, this kind of thing? Yeah, you know, I mean, in terms of ceiling post COVID. I think one of the beauties of what we do is that we're not going to big ports. We're not having gateways chock full of people that work on loading and offloading and overflowing these little towns and cities, we just go out on the boats out into nature, we send you off in a kayak, or we hike in small groups on trails where no one else is. We're just out there by ourselves. And that's how I want it to be in my own life right now, I don't like being big groups of people, I wouldn't expect anyone else to want that. So I think that's a really aspect of what we already inherently do. So that part of it isn't going to change. And that's only going to be a benefit. And in terms of myself, yeah, I see me do this, because it's very cool. What we do is very unique, and, you know, we'll have to change some things in the future to adjust to the post COVID world, but certainly not insurmountable, including certainly do it and are in some really amazing opportunities, a travel to our clients and amazing places, as we always do, and stay safe while doing so. Oh, that's awesome. It is kind of true. I mean, the fact that we do this hub and spoke out in the wilderness where the boat anchors up and every everybody goes off from that it's definitely not going into ports and no lines and all this kind of thing. Good. Points me. Everybody, what do you think about the future and they live with in post COVID? World? Yeah. Well, you know, as an expedition leader, it's really hard once you come to UnCruise, to really think there hasn't been anything else. I've been in this industry for 23 years, as a guide, and I've had that UnCruise for six years. And it's kind of as an expedition leader, there's nowhere else I want to go. I mean, it's, it's really the perfect job in the industry. For someone who likes to have a lot of, I have a lot of independence and choice and making traces out there of what we do, which I love, because I feel like it's my backyard. So it's just such a great job. It's hard to imagine doing anything else. I have really been enjoying getting into sales and reservation. So it'll be interesting to see if I, if I still do that, if I incorporate that in in the future. You know, who knows? So for me in the industry, definitely, this is sort of, I can't even I don't even know what a job in the industry that's better than being an exhibition leader on our boats is, but post COVID I mean, you know, this all sounds weird, but I kind of like wait. I mean, I don't like you know, word of mouth all the time. But this is kind of the kind of life that we like, I like going outside the library for hikes. I like to read things in nature. I like going for walks, I don't really do things that have crowds in them in general. So I don't really it hasn't really changed day to day life that much. So ladies, before we close here, type of adventure travel experience may have you've had that just sticks with you in your mind, whether it be just something crazy fun, or that just spoke to you in a deeper way back in your startup. Oh, I've got so many. But one that comes to mind is I was working in China as we were doing programs with students that were at international schools, they would do these week long programs called week without walls. So I was somewhere off in the country doing a program with kids and there was two Chinese. Our assistants are Chinese assistants, myself and another American guy and the four of us were trading taking the train back from northern China to where we were living in Shenzhen 32 hours on trains. And we had to change train several times. So we're about five hours into this train trip. And they say we have a 15 minute break. So Megan being the Energizer Bunny that I am, goes and I go off the train and I start running up the stairs to get some exercise monitor charging. So I'm grinding the stairs and I'm at the top of the stairs and the train starts to leave. And this is like 10 minutes into the break. So I run after the train, I grab onto the train. Then the little Chinese woman comes behind me and rips me off the train. And we fall back and everyone just stands there staring at me and I'm sitting there in just my clothes, no phone, no password, no money. I don't speak Chinese. And I am not in a big city. I am some little town standing on the platform. No one speaks. No one speaks English. So everyone's just looking at me. So they ushered me into this small office and I just sit in there for like 45 minutes just doing nothing. And then someone hands me a phone and there's a woman speaking English on the other end of the phone and she's like, can you tell me what happened? And I told her and she was like, Don't worry. We will get you money to get you a hotel for the night. I was like, I don't want to hotel for the night, I want to get home, I only want to meet up with my friends on the train. So hours and hours and hours of all this talk going on. And so finally they came to me and they're like, Okay, you need to get on this bullet training. And you need to change here, here, here, here. And if your train original training is delayed by 10 minutes, that you'll meet up with your training time hours down the track, and so no one's looking at the whole thing. So I get off the train. And then I have someone escort me to the next train. And they'd be like, hand me off to them, and they put me where I'm supposed to go. And then another stop, they pulled me off the train, and they put me back on the next train. And my friends caught the train delayed. And it was really crazy. And so there was a huge thing that Latin that went on about it. And what came out of it was they changed the policy on the trains of policy in China was changed because of me that if they say 15 minutes, they have to stick with 15 minutes, because I've heard doesn't speak Chinese. Right. So they're making an announcement or the speaker, you know, we're gonna leave sooner. But now I can understand that I changed the Chinese Korean policy. And there you go. It was crazy. Yeah. Imagine what my friends are doing on the train. Well, they're limping out on a train with me that they want to call the station until I've been missing for 45 minutes. So they kept making these announcements. They can refer to change train five megahertz, or five mega reports are five. So telling my friends this story month, like two months later on the other side of China, and they had come to visit me in China. We're in a hostel. There's a Russian couple there. I'm telling the story. And they go, Oh, you're making from car five. Train. We kept wondering what happened to me. Oh, yeah. That's a great story. Maybe next time we'll share our story about a bit by real vampire. Maybe. Maybe next time. Great story. Thank you. Yeah. So today, I know you travel a lot. I travel with you a lot. Tell me or a treasure or some of your treasured travel stories? Yeah, it's hard to pick a favorite. But in terms of once I've done with you Gosh, that kayak we did from Randall down to Ketchikan a few years back. Awesome. We so we spent what was about six days kayaking 90 miles or so. And boy, was more than that. Yeah. I don't know. Something like that. But yeah, we packed up our kayaks in wrangle after one of the big celebrations there and set off on a beautiful sunshiny paddle for you know, six days or so down to Ketchikan and we just had amazing weather stopped on these amazing may 1. And I remember, you know, we always talked about how great the weather is. We had a sunshine the entire trip, and it was in the 70s. I mean, I'm not for sure on this, but that had to have had at least a little bit to do with Alaska awakening to do with Alaska trip and for years after that. We were like Man, this why aren't we up here more and earlier? Yeah. And I mean, what a really cool experience. And I do remember it was the first morning that we had camped overnight and it was the first morning we were getting into our kayaks not from a dock and we were in about to about a foot and a half super loaded down kayak right because we're on day one. So all the food, all the water all the stuff really heavy. And I'm in my extra tough boots kind of wobbling my kayak out into the water and I clearly did not practice getting in and out of my kayak very well and I just flipped that thing right over a shallow water soaked all my stuff so everything before I remember it, like I was so upset and you were just like, well, we're just gonna stop eat lunch here. And we're just mistaken that all your stuff that I have some really bad. Yeah, so idiotic mistakes we make. And we learned our lesson because we never did that. I never did that after that memorable trip for sure. And a lot of stories that I've shared a lot about that trip. I remember one thing that we ended up on this little island where the land otters had, they go up in a nest and the top of the island and as we went over the top of this little island, it was just covered in shells and there are landmarks holes everywhere. And of course we had great whale experiences and we had a sea lions after our kayaks. Yeah. I don't know if I ever even Won't you about that night that we were with the otters? So I urge you remember them sounding like cats all night long. They were. Yeah, so I don't know if it woke you up or not, but they all went along. Maybe you've heard this too. I don't know if you've ever heard of landowners making like a cat sound on cat sound. Yeah. And all night long. I was sitting in the tent, like, What is that noise that is creeping me out. I had one bar of service on my cell phone. So I was texting my partner. And I'm like, I can't look anything up because I don't have enough service. But will you please look up? Daughter's sound like has because this is weird. And they're keeping articles online about it. I think it's just the Otters you're fine. It was very weird. Well, of course, it was certainly season. And we were in brown and black bear territory. Yeah. So we were being super cognizant of air activity. And so that probably been added on to the lead. Is this weird mowing going on was a great adventure to anyone I certainly will cherish all my life. Yeah. Well, this is, this has been really good. Ladies. Thank you. And in closing, I think I would like you to try and speak to young women that are out there, and how you would encourage them to be part of the change. Alright. You want to start I would say for women trying to get into this industry. Don't forget that you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. You just got to put your nose to the grindstone, keep on trying and keep on proving your worth. And you can absolutely make it happen. Good words. I would say from my point, if you are looking into getting into the expedition, we're all first of all, get out there and do all the things go hiking, go kayaking, figure out how to do all this stuff on your own. Spend a lot of time in the outdoors. Get your rotors first responder and become a competent Outdoors Woman for yourself. Not only for work, but just to make you a better person to for the enjoyment of being out there. I always like to say to is when you look at a job posting you might think I'm not right for that job. But if you want it at all, and if you think you're even a little bit right, don't pay attention to all the things are asking about the job apply for anyways. You never know what's gonna happen if you can get that interview. I found out really well. Thanks everybody for listening in. This has been, I think a really great time to talk with my family about women in travel and success they've had appreciate you being here today. And we look forward to coming on again with no ordinary adventure. And until then, thank you very much, ladies. Thank you Thanks for listening to no ordinary adventure sharing locally harvested stories about adventure. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review tell a friend and help spread the word we are a community of nature lovers, intrepid travelers and outdoor adventurers mostly from the comfort of a small boat and we want to spread our love of this fascinating planet. That's it for this episode. Now get inside