Work

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Not in the Yukon Any More

My time in the Yukon employment market has spoiled me. I’m no longer in a place where jobs can be had just for the asking!

I spent a good part of the day handing out resumés to various businesses and no one was officially hiring. Some even refused to take my resumé.

The focus today was to get feelers for a part-time retail job to just get some income in while I work the market for administrative contracts.

I’m not sure any of my leg work will pan out, but I did get to explore a little bit of Campbell River and find all the important businesses, like Save-on-Foods, the CIBC, Shopper’s Drugmart, Zellers, and Canadian Tire. I also handed out resumés to businesses within walking distance of my homebase and I have to say that pounding the pavement with the smell of the surf in your nostrils isn’t bad at all. 🙂

Today was another incredibly beautiful and non-Octobery day. I even sat outside with the laptop and job-search materials for a time, occasionally looking up to the sea for inspiration.

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Flight From Nugget City

Leaving Nugget City as suddenly as I did ahead of the major dip in weather was a wise decision brought on by the not-so-wise decision I made last fall to stay at the RV park in Oliver. Whadya know, the gal can learn from her mistakes.

The owners were very understanding of my decision and paid me promptly. By the time my water hose was thawed and I’d taken on water and dumped my tanks it was close to 2PM. It was a beautiful, clear day; perfect driving conditions.

I decided to head south via route 37, the Stewart-Cassiar Highway. I’d heard mixed reviews about this road, with some people saying that it is a muddy, rutty mess while others claimed that it had much improved over the years. What finally made me decide to take it is that the Alaska Highway would have taken me more east than south and over high mountain passes while the Cassiar was almost a straight shot south, bettering my chances of finding improved weather conditions after only a few hours of driving:

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I hadn’t driven more than 5KM when I crossed over into British Columbia for the final time this year. As I stood there, between the signs on each side of the highway welcoming travelers to BC and the Yukon, I faced my adopted territory and thought of McArthur, vowing that I would return. 😀

The first section of the Cassiar was very scary. It was narrow, slippery, and steeply uphill. One particularly nasty incline made me consider turning back, but I’d done enough research to know that the worst was behind me. After, there were a lot of hairpin turns, but it was smooth going. The landscape was a kaleidoscope of emerald pine and amber poplar, snowy peaks and rocky hills. I could not stop gasping at the sheer humbling beauty of it all.

All the literature about the Cassiar and many signs along it state that it is unlawful to overnight anywhere but in established campgrounds. The only reason for this that I could find is that there is a concern about bears. I’m told that ‘everyone’ ignores the rules and boondocks on the Cassiar, but I decided to at least try to be legal. It was easy the first night since the Milepost mentioned a Lions Club campground with unserviced RV spots just south of Dease Lake on the Tanzilla River, roughly 200km from Nugget City.  It sounded idyllic and the 10$ per site was a price I felt comfortable paying to avoid having the RCMP possibly ticket me.

The campground was indeed very beautiful, with sites tucked in between trees along a roaring river, but to call the sites RV spots was really stretching it. I would say that Miranda at 31′ was the absolute biggest RV I’d recommend trying to squeeze in there, and I only found one site wide enough for her. Moreover, the back-in only sites aren’t even remotely level.

I unhooked and then tried to manoeuvre Miranda into spot number four. Even though the site was super wide, I could not get her into it because of trees on the opposite side of the laneway. I noticed a clearing ahead and decide to turn around and approach the site from the other direction. This worked like a charm and Miranda slid in fairly easily.

This is where I came up with an idea that is really going to help me with my backing up. I’m going to get some bright flagging tape to tie around items I want to avoid. I notice that when I’m backing up I have a hard time identifying in a mirror the objects I’m trying to avoid, and my relation to them, especially if the objects are trees and there are a lot of them.

Once Miranda was tucked away, I tried to get her level, but failed since her muddy tires kept sliding off the the levelers when I tried to put her on more than two. The fridge was level enough, so I didn’t push it. I was only there for a night after all.

I spent a quiet evening reading a fantastic book I picked up at the Dawson dump called Parrot Pie for Breakfast. It is an anthology of first hand accounts of pioneer life written by women from the early 1600’s to the mid-1900’s in places all over the British Empire, from Burma to Sierra Leone, Canada to Australia. This book occupied several evenings after my departure from Nugget City.

I made chicken, potatoes, and veggies for dinner and used a new toy I picked up during my last shopping trip at the Dawson thrift store, a vegetable steamer. It’s one of those things I couldn’t justify spending 10$ on but thought would come in handy if I ever found one cheap. I used it to cook frozen veggies and it was the ideal method, rendering them nice and crisp.

Miranda history was made that night. I checked her useless sensors just for fun and for the first time, the grey and black tanks read empty!

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This could be a pic for one of those cheesy Go RVing ads :)

This could be a pic for one of those cheesy Go RVing ads 🙂

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Miranda and Pommette tucked into site number 4 at the Tanzilla River Lions Club campground

Miranda and Pommette tucked into site number 4 at the Tanzilla River Lions Club campground

the Tanzilla River on a snowy (but not cold!) morning

the Tanzilla River on a snowy (but not cold!) morning

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trying to show just how not level Miranda was that night

trying to show just how not level Miranda was that night

the Tanzilla Lions Club campground

the Tanzilla Lions Club campground

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Quick Update as I Boondock My Way Across British Columbia

Very quick update!

I am posting from Prince George. (Les, if you’re reading this, I won’t be stopping in on this trip, thanks!) I can’t do justice to the last four days with a free Starbucks wi-fi connection, so details will have to wait. 🙂

I am now at my third day of boondocking and will be boondocking again tonight, with no hardship whatsoever. I have plenty of battery juice, heat, running water, a fully charged laptop, and plenty of reading material. And I’m not even running the genset! I just solved my battery charging issues from the spring; more on that in my next post.

As for the genset, it probably needs a new fuel filter seeing as no fuel whatsoever is getting into it but it runs fine when I inject gasoline directly into the carburetor. I’m going to go price one at Canadian Tire this morning, but if it’s expensive, I won’t bother for this trip seeing as I’m not in dire need of the extra power.

My decision to take the Cassiar Highway was one of the best I have made in my thirteen months on the road. More about that will follow. 🙂

Unfortunately, the weather being what it was in Nugget City, I didn’t make nearly as much money as I would have liked, so I’m in a real rush to get to Campbell River and a new job. I’m therefore doing long days of driving and provided Croft says it’s okay ( 🙂 ), I might be there at the end of this week!

Long days and cold nights not withstanding, these have been my absolute best days on the road so far, bar none, just because I’m finally living my dream of a self-contained life. If only I could have my own internet, but I’m now back in ‘civilization’ and my Starbucks account gives me two hours free DAILY at their hotspots so I can at least check in periodically. 🙂

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Rain and Sleet, Oh My!

This morning was the first time that the sound of rain was music to my ears upon awakening at Nugget City!

I was at the house by nine and spent about an hour and a half doing the plaster work. I returned to Nugget City after to get some cleaning products so I could wash down the walls before painting. Once that was done, there was nothing to do but wait for the plaster to dry so I could sand it, so I headed home for a leisurely hour-long lunch.

Since I’d cranked up the heat in the room, the plaster was dry enough for a second coat when I returned. I sanded a bit and applied the second coat. That done, I painted the two walls that hadn’t needed any plastering. What a difference a fresh coat of paint makes! The colour is a bit of an apple green and very lovely, if a tad retro, against the orange curtains. I think it looks great!

Tomorrow, I will go sand the plaster on the two other walls, wipe them down, and finish painting the room. I have at least enough green to do one coat, but I hope to squeeze a second coat out of that gallon. I’m also going to bring some glossy white to do the trim and a few touch ups in the bathroom. Time is of the essence, so the owner decided to have me paint right away instead of priming first, especially since this paint job is just a stop gap measure until the room is properly renovated.

Painting with that lovely green shade is making me eager to apply a brush to Miranda’s walls. Soon, soon… 🙂

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A Change of Pace

Today, I finished the posts in the front and then started some weeding in the RV park. Tomorrow morning and all of Tuesday I will be indoors!!! The owners have a house a few minutes away from Nugget City which they rent out. One of the rooms in that house is awful, with filthy carpeting and poorly patched walls. New tenants are about to move in, so my job is to make that room a bit prettier than it is by patching the walls properly and then painting. Once that’s done, new carpet will be installed.

So, tomorrow morning I will head over there and patch, then I will come back here to finish the staff stairs (forgot to take a picture of those!). Once that’s all done, the patching compound should be dry and I’ll be able to go sand. Tuesday, it’s painting time. I think it will be nice to paint with a pretty green after so many projects involving yellowish or semi-transparent stains, boring white, and the really hideous mushroom coloured stuff that looks surprisingly decent on the staff stairs.

I am irked, however, that this project has come up when the weather is finally clearing! Why couldn’t that room have needed to be painted when it was snowing on Monday?! Ah, timing sure can suck sometimes. 🙂

One thing that will be nice about being indoors is that I can bring my iPod and speaker dock and have music. I don’t like to work with my iPod and headphones because I’m worried I will get paint on it. Using the dock outdoors is not an option seeing as I doubt anyone here will like what I consider to be perfect painting music. So, it will be a real treat to not paint in silence!

Thank goodness I’m so busy because the Itch has come upon me and I can’t wait to get on the road. But I’m making decent money here, so another week or so won’t kill me. 🙂