I’m leaving Dawson in no more than exactly two weeks from now as I’m expected back at Nugget City around the 23rd.

I’d hinted last spring that by September I would have a major decision to make regarding Watson Lake, and that decision was made months ago. I was so fortunate this summer to get adopted by two wonderful hotel/RV park/restaurant complexes that have made my decision to use the Yukon as my homebase so easy. But when you live on site, you need a place to go to to unwind. Watson Lake really doesn’t have much to offer in that regard; no good restaurants, no cozy pubs, no entertainment. It’s ugly, poor, and crime ridden. Dawson is the complete opposite. Watson Lake is a place to stay, Dawson is a place to live. If the two towns were even remotely comparable, the decision of which to use as a homebase would have been gut wrenching rather than easy to make.

Depending on the weather at Nugget City and the amount of work there, I’ll stay anywhere from two to three weeks as I’m expected in Campbell River on October 23rd. I’m hoping to take a slightly different route south and to spend a day or two in Vancouver, but the pace to Campbell River will definitely not be leisurely.

I look forward to my new adventures, but, darn it, it’s tougher than I would ever have imagined to say goodbye to the Klondike.

Here are some tips to be a better RV park guest:

1) If there is a big pink sign on the door that the office closes at say, 8, and you walk in at 8:10, don’t act all huffy that the camphost won’t let you surf for a half hour and be grateful that she allows you a few minutes to send off an ‘important’ email;

2) If checking in as a group, have one person per rig go into the office to register. If you go in en mass and start talking amongst yourselves (especially in a foreign language) and keep on interrupting the check in process to ask the host questions she said she would answer after everyone was checked in don’t get huffy if the check in process is slow and/or she forgets to give you the code for the wireless internet and/or she asks you the same question more than once;

3) Don’t shoot the messenger informing you that the internet is down. Shoot the idiot who crashed the system by trying to download a massive file;

4) If the camphost is counting money, please do her a favour and let her finish, especially if you plan to launch into a tirade about the internet.

5) If you are in, say, the men’s washroom and there is a knock at the door, answer. If you don’t, you have no business yelling at the female camphost who assumed there was no one in the room since no one answered the knock, and entered to make sure the facilities were clean and the toilet paper topped up.

There, I feel better. 😀

This should be our last ‘busy’ weekend of the season. It’s a long weekend called ‘Discovery Days’ to honour the 1896 discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek, without which there would have been no gold rush and no Dawson as we know and love it today.

The motel was fully booked for the whole weekend, so last night I ‘hung out’ at the office until most of the stragglers had come in. Normally, I would put keys in the door of the reserved rooms and put a list on a white board of who goes where. But when we are booked solid we are concerned about people ‘stealing’ rooms, so if at all possible, someone hangs out in the office until pretty late. Since I work the evening shift and start at a civilized hour, I was happy to stay late yesterday, finishing at 12:15AM, and then coming in an hour later than scheduled this morning (noon!).

Normally, the office ‘closes’ at 8, at which time I cash out and do the night audit, while remaining available for late check-ins and people needing change, and then I lock up at 9. Yesterday, there was a steady stream of people and phone calls until 11:45. I cashed out at midnight, once a lull set in. I couldn’t imagine staying that late at the office if it wasn’t busy, but the time flew by yesterday!

Tonight was much less manic and I got out at 9:30 since most of the people who booked in yesterday are staying the full weekend. I can’t even begin to count the number of calls I got enquiring about room availability. We’re full, town is full, and the Klondike Lodge 40km down the highway is also full. The nearest available rooms are in Tok or Whitehorse! We are doing steady business of people sleeping in their car or in a tent!

The season will start to wind down on Monday. Sometime early next week, I need to move to a site closer to the office because I will be taking the emergency phone home next weekend overnight and the signal doesn’t reach my present site. I would have had to move in a couple of weeks anyway as we will start to shut down sites and mine was on the list.

June passed so slowly, but the rest of the summer has flown by and I am shocked by how much I didn’t do that I had planned on doing! Hopefully, I can squeeze in one more mini road trip before I begin the long journey south to my winter home.

Crazy as these weekends can be, they are fun, too, and time goes by very quickly!