Palmer woman celebrates 25 years of senior trips

PALMER — As someone who never traveled much while she was young, Dee Brown was willing to come out of retirement to travel the world.

For 25 years, Brown has led “Dee Tours,” a tour guiding service for seniors, as a Mat-Su Senior Services volunteer. Brown originally worked for the Palmer senior center in an administrative capacity, but retired after a few years, when carpal tunnel syndrome got the best of her.

It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, she said.

“I was enjoying (being) homebound, ’cause I had never been,” Brown said. “I’ve always worked and I’ve always been very, very, very busy.”

Old habits die hard, though, so when Brown was asked to come back as a volunteer and lead other seniors on trips, she couldn’t say no.

“(Staff members) had put out a flier to all the seniors asking what they want out of their senior center, and it was overwhelming that they would like to do some traveling,” Brown said.

For most people, she said, the tours were more about getting out of Palmer from time to time than going to any one place in particular.

Two seniors (since deceased), Brown remembered, made this clear to her.

“They both told me, ‘Don’t ever, ever quit Dee Tours, because if it weren’t for you, I’d never get out of town,’” she recalled. “They didn't care where I went, they signed up to go.”

Brown had intended to conduct tours primarily within Alaska, but it wasn’t long before a fellow senior asked if she would personally accompany her on a trip to Australia and New Zealand.

“I had just started Dee Tours and she called and asked if I could find someone to take her, ’cause she couldn’t travel by herself, and I said, ‘well, I’ll try,’” Brown recalled.

But the woman wanted the leader of Dee Tours in particular to be her guide.

“She says, ‘I’ll pay for everything if you can pay your airfare to New Zealand,’” Brown said.

Brown’s husband, now years deceased, had never been big on travel, she said, but encouraged her to go on the trip.

“He said, ‘Well, I guess you’ll never have another opportunity like that, go for it.’ So I did. And that was the start of my international travel,” she said.

Brown has since been to Mexico many times with tour groups, traveled the Rhine and Danube Rivers in Europe and visited Thailand, Panama and Italy with other seniors and on personal trips. Hawaii has also been a frequently requested destination, she said.

And it was there, on the ‘Big Island’ of Hawaii, that she had an experience she’s not likely to forget.

Brown was with one of her largest groups (about 25 people), readying for the return trip, when an Alaska Airlines ticketing agent told her their flight had been cancelled.

“So I have these 25 people to tell, ‘I’m sorry we have to go back to the hotel, the flight has been cancelled.’ And this one lady said, ‘If I die tonight, it’ll be your fault,’” Brown remembered, still seeing the woman’s wagging finger pointed at her. “We laugh about it now, but it bothered me there for a long time.”

Another time, Brown had to arrange for an emergency flight out of McCarthy for a man who thought he was having a heart attack, she said.

But she’s “never lost anybody” on a trip, and the good memories far outweigh the bad, she said.

Like when Dee Tours went to Dawson City, Yukon in 2007. Jack McQuesten (or John McQuistian — spellings vary), a 19^th-century pioneer and relative of Mat-Su senior Betty Mathews, was being honored with a monument there, so Brown decided to make a “fabulous” group trip out of it, she said.

It was not the ceremony either woman remembered, however — it was the pie.

“We were all fighting over bumbleberry pie, and you saw the last piece in the restaurant that we weren’t in, and so it was a race to get to the restaurant that had the pie left,” Brown said, speaking to Mathews. “Oh that was a fun trip.”

“It was a wonderful trip,” Mathews agreed.

Mathews couldn’t recall exactly how many Dee Tours she’d taken with Brown (it’s more than 20, she said) but one of her favorites was the annual senior berry-picking outing near Sheep Mountain Lodge.

Once again, the reason for the trip — to harvest the fruit of the land — was not the most memorable aspect.

“I don’t remember how important the berries were, the trip was (the important part),” Mathews said.

Brown said giving tours has been “exhausting but exhilarating,” and hopes Dee Tours will continue after she retires.

“Dee Tours has been so enriching,” she said. “No money could replace the reward of people being so grateful.

“And we have so much fun on these Dee Tours, probably more than we should, in some cases,” she added, asking Mathews, “isn’t that true?”

“Yeah,” Mathews answered, with a chuckle.

Getting out and about is vital to senior health, Brown said, and having someone to facilitate that is much needed.

She said anyone interested in the tours can contact Mat-Su Senior Services at 745-5454.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.