Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde

When two tour guides behave badly over the Hand of Faith Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, it ruins the moment for everyone.

My background – I am a US Army Veteran, retired history teacher and semi-retired tour guide. That is semi-retired as in “I don’t work for any company but I do lead some private tours and help some tour companies when they need an extra guide.” The fact is, if there is a tour in the greater Southwestern USA, I have probably done it at some point.

How about Las Vegas? San Francisco? Hoover Dam? Red Rock Canyon? Monument Valley? Valley of Fire? Bryce Canyon? Tombstone?

Check, check, check, check, check and more.

But as a proper tour guide I also love to travel, and hike, and otherwise enjoy the wonders, both natural and man-made, of this beautiful planet.

Erupting volcanoes? Andes mountain villages? South Korean mountain-top temples? San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Chinese New Year? Eighteen-course sushi/saki meals at a Michelin starred restaurant?

Check, check, check and more.

It is a wonder, and a curse. A wonder because as a tour guide I do get to see so much. A wonder that my experience in the travel industry lets me find great places for travel and vacation that are often off the typical tourist path.

The curse is I can be too clinical in my travels. The tour guide is new and doesn’t know her stuff as she should. The hotel isn’t as clean or as well maintained as it could be. The restaurant server is too worried about himself and not the guests at the table and service sucks.

Yet while I can be incredibly critical I can also be quite forgiving. I KNOW how it is to be leading a tour with a person with a bad attitude because he doesn’t want to be there. I KNOW what it is like when luggage gets lost or that trail ride is cancelled because of a washout. Yeah – the travel industry can be tough.

I also take tours around my home base of Las Vegas, just to see what other people do, including tours of my “competitors.” Some may call this spying but I’m really not, just seeing what others do, learning, picking up greater insight and trying to become a better tour guide. I was taking a Las Vegas walking tour that includes a walk-through of the Golden Nugget with a stop at the display of the Hand of Faith Golden Nugget – billed as the largest golden nugget found by metal detector and the largest on permanent display in the world.

My guide is just dressed in non-uniform casual. He gives a short talk about the nugget, allows those in our group a chance to take some photos. While this is going on a larger tour group fills in behind us. As our group moves away the second tour guide – an older guy wearing a cliche bush hat and uniformed shirt and shorts proclaims loudly, “Now let a REAL tour guide tell you the REAL story about the Golden Nugget!”

My tour guide grimaced and quickly moved away. The second tour guide began to rattle off his canned schtick. I held back to listen to it. Fact is he was no more correct about the Hand of Faith Golden Nugget than the first tour guide.

Understand that I am a history guy, and the Hand of Faith is something that I have done a close study on. It is a fun story. Maybe if there is enough interest I might right a blog post on it. And before you click to Wikipedia’s listing for the Hand of Faith, be warned it is shot full of inaccuracies. Be careful where you do your own research.

Here is the thing about going on tours. There are stories where ever you go. In fact every place you will ever go has a depth of history and geography and social importance that can never be properly summed up with a 2 minute story. But as tour guides that is what we have to do. Effective tour guides pick and choose the types of stories and details that will appeal to the group. Hopefully I have enough story telling skills to make it entertaining for the members of my group.

Tours can be exactly the same. For example the site tour guides at Hoover Dam have a specific script they follow. Few deviate from the script more than a word or two. It is canned because they are moving hundreds, even thousands of tourists through every hour. But then I don’t go to tours like that for the tour guide, I go on them to see and get a picture of the massive generators and to feel the dam around me as I walk through the bare rock tunnels.