When it comes to getting good Alaska road trip advice, it’s probably best to ask a local.
Soldotna’s Ranger Fox is the voice actor behind a series of guided audio tours for roadtrippers traveling between Homer and Fairbanks, a new project called Audio Tour Alaska.
“We’ll talk wildlife. We’ll talk fishing. We’ll talk history,” Fox’s voice greets listeners in one of the samples, online. “And we’ll talk about a lot of stuff in between.”
The project includes 13 hours of tape, which can be purchased in segments. It came out in its final form earlier this month.
Fox said it’s the biggest voice project he’s worked on to date. He’s been working with his voice as a freelancer since his days as a DJ for KDLL.
“And just in the last couple years I’m really starting to hit my stride on things,” Fox said.
Today, Fox works with Grant Aviation in Kenai. But said he spends his free hours doing voice work. He’s done radio ads and played parts in audio dramas. He just finished recording his first audio book, for a fantasy novel.
In January, Fox received an email from Doug Bourne, the Anchorage-based creator of the audio tours.
Bourne teaches writing courses at the University of Alaska Anchorage and was formerly a tour guide in Denali National Park.
“So writing scripts has been something I’ve been doing for years,” Bourne said. “And I just kind of landed on this audio tour project in February of last year and slowly wrote the scripts.”
Bourne’s idea was to create a set of audio tours that travelers could purchase and connect to their GPS, to sync with their location while they drove. He says he first got the idea after doing a similar tour in Maui with his wife.
“We both loved it,” he said. “We ended up driving all around the island, as much as we could, just listening to their tours. I mean, almost immediately upon hearing it, I was like, ‘I want to try and find a way to bring this to Alaska.’”
The tours he wrote include facts about national parks and local Alaska Native history, plus information about local trails.
Fox said it was important to the creators that the information in the tours would be useful for out-of-state tourists and locals, alike. And the project is giving him an excuse to explore new hiking trails.
“It did feel like I was learning a lot, myself,” he said.
After they had all the hours recorded and edited, Fox said the team went back this spring to make corrections and fix bugs. The project just wrapped in May and is now available for download, through the App Store.
Bourne said it’s an all-Alaska project. The tapes feature music from a Healy-based musician; the app designer and website developer are based in Anchorage.
He said the response has been great so far, and he’s working on marketing now.
“There’s nothing about being a tour guide and teaching writing classes at the university that prepares a person for marketing like this,” he said, laughing. “So, the marketing is a new experience. But I do have just kind of some general plans on how I would like to see it grow.”
Fox said now that they’ve covered the major routes on the road system, they’d like to add more into their audio repertoire — maybe the Alaska Highway, or roads in Southeast.
For his part, Fox said he’d like to do more voice acting work with the local community. He loves working with his voice.
“It's just really fun,” he said. “I like being goofy and making voices and stuff. And people are always really excited about the work, or whatever they're making. And so getting to contribute to that in different ways … it’s pretty cool to make something bigger than just me.”
You can find Fox’s voice, and the project, at audiotouralaska.com
