March 20, 2011 by Rae

A Sinuous Drive to Florence, OR

Oy. I was not ready for today’s drive at all! It was barely one hundred kilometres, but very sinuous, with several steep grades, only a handful of passing lanes, and no where to pull over and let the very long and impatient column of vehicles behind me pass. I got one honk and too many one-fingered salutes to count today.

What I saw of the scenery when I wasn’t white knuckling was breathtaking, with impossibly tall trees dripping with moss; not the kind you see in Georgia (Spanish) but rather that lush emerald stuff usually found on rock outcroppings. Can we say DAMP?!

I am staying at the Three Rivers Casino until Wednesday or Thursday. After that, it’ll be time to head back to Canada. I’m going through the Rockies, so I want to give myself plenty of snow-days to make the trek.

The casino allows for up to seven nights of parking on a slightly sloped well-marked RV lot. I joined the player’s club (free) and got ten dollars in free slot, which I turned into about forty-five minutes of fun in the penny slots.

My mother is concerned about my being on the coast, what with everything that has been going on in the Pacific, and I believe those concerns are justified. I am keeping a close watch on weather conditions and keeping the rig ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I was able to park with a fully charged battery and 1.5 to 3 amps coming all afternoon. I love having solar!

September 11, 2010 by Rae

Sunshine From Inuvik

I don’t believe in coincidences and today was a perfect example of why.

I was offered the morning off from work and took it to catch up on things at home. This made it possible for me to have an earlier lunch than usual, which put me at the café just in time to run into friends I made in Inuvik who were just going through town for the day. We had lunch together then met up at Gerties tonight for drinks.

Needless to say, it’s been a great day!

July 26, 2010 by Rae

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Beer

One of the dancers from Gerties commented on my post where I shared pictures from one of the shows and asked for copies of the photos.

Tonight, I finally burned them to a disc and dropped them off at the casino for her. Since I was there, I figured I might as well have dinner and bought a slice of pizza, a big chocolate chip cookie, and a glass of Yukon Gold. There is just something about the combination of the sweet cookie with the slightly spicy beer! I’ve gone to Gerties quite late on occasion just for a midnight snack of a cookie and beer, sometimes going for chocolate chip and sometimes for macadamia. Doing so is a nice change from all that ice cream. 🙂

I didn’t hang out long since I need to be up early tomorrow. The next couple of days aren’t going to go as planned. I was supposed to be off again tomorrow afternoon through to Thursday morning, but the manager took off for Whitehorse and I’m covering for her. This means I have to be in the office for 9:30 tomorrow and Wednesday mornings! I’m quite happy with the arrangement; the extra responsibility will be just what I need to shake up my routine a bit. Plus, I’m looking forward to getting a pineapple!!!

June 10, 2010 by Rae

Of All the Campgrounds in All the Towns in All the North, They Walked into Mine

Today wasn’t a good day. I was tired, cranky, and grumpy from working every day for four weeks solid and I just wanted to be done with my day since I have most of tomorrow off. I’d just started the evening shift and was taking a reservation over the phone when I heard someone walk into the office. I turned around and my foul mood lifted as a big grin formed itself at the sight of someone I’d been hoping would make it to Dawson, but whom I never expected to see again: my roommate at the hostel in Tofino!!!

Unfortunately, she spent three days looking for me and is leaving tomorrow, but we still had a chance to go out tonight and catch up on where our last four months of travel have taken us. It was surreal to be sitting at Gerties with this gal I chatted with into the wee hours of the morning while overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

She went off to wash her car and next thing I knew some folks were coming to renew their stay. “Last name’s Church.” I felt a tingle and fumbled for their check-in card. It said Mike Church. I asked “Are you THE Mike Church?” They needed a bit more to say yay or nay, so I looked at his wife and said “Are you Terri?” Yes, indeed. I had the awesome pleasure of not only meeting Mike and Terri Church tonight, but also of making a complete fool of myself (according to a colleague) fawning over their wonderful book about RVing the north! 😀

I’d made plans with my friends G&F to meet them at Gerties tonight since they leave town tomorrow, but my heart hadn’t really been into it until M walked through that door and brightened my night. I’m not sure how it happened, but it wound up being a whole gang of us going to Gerties; two friends from Australia, G&F who are Chinese studying in Canada, J who is from Halifax, and M who is from Austria. I joked that had J not come, I would have had to use my French-Canadian accent to blend in with the other accents. 😀 We spent about an hour and a half talking and joking over drinks. I was ravenous so I decided to try the vegetarian lasagna, which was a very good deal at $12.95 since the generous portion included Caesar salad and garlic toast.

It seems that bad days have no shortage of good moments, or, perhaps, that good days can be infused with bad moments. 🙂

June 2, 2010 by Rae

Pictures from Diamond Tooth Gerties!

I brought my camera to town tonight in hopes of getting a shot of some of the stars staying in town, but it was for naught. I had to settle for Owen Wilson brushing by me too quickly for me to get a picture. Ah, sucks to be me. 😀

After that excitement and a pint, my friends and I headed over to Gerties where I got some decent shots for once!

These are from the 10:30 show. The lady in orange is ‘Gertie’, but not the one I normally rave about. This is the first time I’ve met ‘the other Gertie’, who takes over on Amy’s nights off. She was quite good, but I feel disloyal saying too many nice things about her. 😀

The pics are from various moments in the show. You can see the swirly, multi-coloured skirts and kicking legs in the first few shots as well as some of the tap dancing routine. One of the highlights of the show is when they bring a male audience on stage and make him do a little song and dance. In this case, it was “There was a farmer who had a dog and poker was his name-o. P-O-K-E-R!” with the guy having to play a variety of instruments in tune. As a reward, he was inducted into the coveted Order of the Garter. The guy walking around the audience is ‘Spencer Doorman’, who is ‘discovered’ by Gertie in the 8:30 show.