Casinos

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Backroads of Dawson

My friend Nathalie is currently in vacation mode with a lot of time off AND she has a 4×4, high clearance vehicle perfect for driving on washboard routes. So, she has been very content over the past two days to show me some of the far reaches of the Dawson area that she discovered over the course of her winter here.

Our adventure started last night, with a bit of a tangent. We went out just before 9 and spent so long trying to decide what we wanted for dinner that our only inexpensive option wound up being the casino. The dining choices in summer-time Dawson are incredible! We didn’t realise just how big the variety is until we started the whole “Greek?” “Nah. Italian?” “Nah. Fish and chips?” routine. We wound up getting pizza at the casino and then sharing a veggie dog from the hot dog cart. 🙂

We left Gerties just before the 10:30 show because we were in a talkative mood. Nathalie suggested we hop on the ferry so she could show me the location of west Dawson and Sunnydale, two neighbours on the other side of the Yukon River where homes are 100% self-sufficient. She and I are sort of interested in buying property in the area and have pretty much narrowed our options to west Dawson, so we also spent some time looking for and at empty lots.

West Dawson feels like a remote suburb–houses are fairly close together but there is quite a bit of tree coverage for privacy. Sunnydale, though, is isolated. Roads are maintained in west Dawson so folks can go to town in their vehicles in the winter via the ice bridge, but Sunnydale residents rely on snowmobiles and dog sleds. There are a few businesses on that side of the river, including a kennel and the Top of the World golf course, but otherwise it’s still almost pristine wilderness.

Let me pause here to get back to the buying property topic since I know that raised a few eyebrows. I’m entertaining the idea of buying a small chunk of property that I won’t need to build on just to have a physical address of my own to firmly establish my ties to Canada and Yukon. I would like for it to be RV accessible so that I could use it as an RV pad. I started to think about this last year, and the idea continues to grow on me. If I choose to buy in Dawson, the time to do so is now as prices are starting to sky rocket. This is still very much a project written in sand.

Today, we were going to go gold panning again, but decided instead to check out the gold fields route. I will come back to this route in greater detail when we go again since today was really a scouting mission with no time for pictures. As a teaser, I will say that this route has you climb up so high above the Dawson valley that rivers were still choked with ice and there was several feet of snow in places even though the mercury was at over 30 degrees!

I can’t get over how big this country is, country in terms of the wilderness expanses. There is just green as far as you can see with a swath of golden road cutting through it. I have to say it–it’s like driving on the yellow brick road through the Emerald City!

We’d been driving for over an hour when I started to get concerned about returning to work on time. The landscape was always the same and we hadn’t seemed to make any progress, so I was happy when Nathalie recognized a landmark and told me we were 45 minutes out, giving us an at home ETA that would give me a half hour to spare.

Throughout our drive, Nathalie shared her tales of life in winter Dawson and told me about a really colourful local character. I may come back to him if I get to meet him and he agrees to give me a formal interview. He officially made life in Dawson feel like a novel. 😀

In other news, the weather is HOT and DRY and SMOKY. The fire season is almost a month early this year and it promises to be a bad one. Anyone heading north better keep on top of road closures. A very bad fire just west of Tok closed the road between Tok and Fairbanks and nearly took out a full community. Meanwhile on the 40km up the Dempster highway a huge fire broke out today and will most likely close down that road within a few days. Interestingly enough, it’s the same customers who complain that we’re in a territory-wide fire ban (What, no fire pits?! You guys suck!) who also complain that there is poor visibility on the Top of the World and Dempster Highways. *shakes head*

It’s been a couple of full days and I can’t believe that we’re about to roar into June!

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A Very Full Day

I don’t know what it is about the long sultry summer days of the Klondike, but I seem to wedge twice as much into a day as would seem feasible. So, today:

A Ferry of My Own!

I was out at Gertie’s a little bit later than I should have been last night, so this morning’s awakening at 9:20AM by my iPod Touch alarm clock was a tad brutal. I’d promised friends across the river that I’d help them move back to Bonanza, so I was up and at ’em in minutes. In fact, I was at the hostel with the car nearly packed within a half hour, including a short wait on the ferry. Not bad!

We had to wait for the ferry to cross back, less than ten minutes. I had the ferry to myself, which was kind of cool. I would have thought that they would wait to load up, but nope. They take the passengers who are there, or at least as many as they can fit, and then they cross. Back and forth, all day, every day. What a service!

Once back at the motel, I checked them in, dumped their luggage, grabbed some toast, gulped down coffee at the office and started my day.

Beds and Bundles!

Housekeeping was shorthanded this morning, so I spent an hour stripping beds and then running linens and towels up to the rooms. I needed to be back at the office for noon, which enabled me to discover that I can make two beds in fifteen minutes. I’ll have to look up my record for last summer and see if that’s good or bad. 😀

Back in the office, it was the usual zaniness. During quiet moments, I continued to make little bundles out of our check in cards in preparation for inputting into our computer system. I designed and implemented a new database this week, so I have a huge backlog to go through. I don’t mind since I love data entry AND I’m doing it on a Mac! Yes! We’ve got a Mac in the office this year and I can do 90% of my work on it! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

I was relieved at quarter past two and headed home to play with my iPod some more.

iPod Breakthrough!

After getting in a little work at my contract (subject of a future post), I decided to focus on the iPod and try to get more ebooks on it. I put together a few semi-related pages and came up with a way to connect the iPod to my cellular connection! This finally gave me full iPod use, limited only by my bandwidth restrictions. I was given a huge cd filled with tons and tons and tons of wonderful ebooks and I transferred a few of them to the iPod. Then, I discovered that you can actually bookmark and annotate books in the Stanza app. Amazon Kindle? Pfft.

Oz!

I went back to work at quarter past five and it was the usual zaniness until a customer checked in with a bunch of dogs and the manager decided to adopt one. Well, she’s trying him out tonight on a trial basis, but they’ve bonded, so I know he’s staying. 🙂 Somehow in the middle of this, she and I agreed to coparent him this summer, so I sort of have a dog now! He’s a Jack Russell, the only breed I have any experience with since that’s what I had growing up, and we named him Oz! I will be taking pictures soon. 🙂

The Night Is Young!

It’s presently 8:40, dinner’s in the oven (chicken and lasagna), laundry’s in the washer, I have work to do, I want to play some more with my iPod settings, and I want to finish the short story ebook I’ve started.

Just another day in paradise and I’m lovin’ it! 😀

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Gabfest at the Sluicebox Lounge

I was invited out last night, but had too much on my plate. So, tonight, I called the person to see if the offer still stood. Yes!

We started off the night at Gerties, then we drove to the home of one of her new friends so she could introduce us. By the time we were passing Bonanza, it was only 9:30, so we decided to go back into town for another drink.

Since we were in chat mode, going back to Gerties didn’t make sense. Bombay Peggy’s, the cozy pub, would have been nice, but it was jam packed. The next nearest bar was the Sluicebox Lounge at the El Dorado hotel, a block away.

It was a charmless place, unless you consider 70s decor and formica tables ‘charming’, but it was clean, open, and reasonably quiet. A pint was a full seventy-five cents less than at Gerties!

The gal I was with is a French national who has been in Canada for several years. We met briefly last fall as she was moving in. Imagine what sort of courage it must take, even after spending a year in Whitehorse, to pack up for a remote location like Dawson in the winter!

She had both positive and negative things to say about winter in Dawson and seemed to have generally found the experience to be pleasant and worthwhile. A part of me wants to try it, just once, but another part of me knows that she doesn’t do well in a world of constant twilight and inclement weather.

Her winter gave her a chance to get to know the Dawson establishments that stay open late into the fall and even through the winter. I ribbed her about how casually she led me to the Sluicebox Lounge when I know that the gal I met last fall wouldn’t have imagined herself in such an establishment. It just goes to show how a place can slowly mould you into the kind of person it needs you to be to survive there. She hasn’t changed, she still doesn’t drink, but she’s comfortable in locales she never was comfortable in before. I experienced a similar transformation during my month in Scotland.

It turned out to be a fun night and I’m glad I found a more quiet place than Gerties to go to when I’m in a chatty mood!

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Pre-Season Fun at Gerties

Last night was the first set of can-can shows at Gerties, kicking off the summer season. I went with a gang from work, including a gal who grew up in Dawson but is now from Nova Scotia, and whose mother used to have the contract to make all the dresses for Gerties shows.

This year, there are two new dancers, but ‘Gertie’ herself is the same. I was thrilled to see this because the singer/actress was born for the part and is an excellent host.

The shows and costumes were comparable to last year, but the songs were different. The song I remember best from last year was ‘Anything Goes’ (from Indiana Jones) and this year’s most memorable is ‘Moon River’ (from Breakfast at Tiffany’s).

There is something about that ‘Gold Rush’ music that sends a shiver down my spine. Combine that with the colourful swirling skirts and the mile-long legs kicking sky high and I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting bored with Gerties any time soon!

I tried to take some pics and video, as I did last year, but I don’t have the equipment to take pictures in the dark. There are some good ones on the Diamond Tooth Gerties site.

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Spinning Fruit

Tonight, one of my friends invited me to go to Gertie’s. I’m going tomorrow for the pre-season opening show and had some work to do, so I said I would ‘think about it, but to save me a spot.’

I finished what I was working on an headed over an hour later. Another friend was there as well as an RV park guest (my neighbour, in fact), and we spent some time gabbing over drinks and pizza. Finally, I decided to go try $5 worth of luck in the penny slot machine that paid me back last time I was at Gertie’s.

I fed the machine my bill and selected ‘maximum bet’, which was 45 cents. The machine spun. And spun again. And again. I was a bit bewildered, assuming that it was broken. The guy next to me laughed and explained that I kept on winning free spins! Someone said that I had ‘won big for that machine’ and that didn’t register; I was just too amused by the spinning bars, fruits, and diamonds. That was enough fun for the night and as the machines spun I hit the ‘cash out’ button so that I could get back $4 and play the other 55 cents.

Next thing I knew, there was a casino employee by my side handing me one of those big cups that hold coins and tokens for the slot machines. Seconds later, the machine starting spitting out tokens at me. *clang, clang, clang, clang, clang* I’d had this happen to me at the penny slots in Vegas, but there I was being paid in quarters. This machine was paying me in tokens worth $1 each. It finally stopped with my container about half-full.

I hurried over to the cash out booth and while the machine there calculated my gains, I applied for my free season pass.

Care to guess how much I ended up making on my 45 cent bet?

I walked away from the teller with $67, meaning that I came out of Gertie’s tonight with $62 more than I’d walked in with! Not bad for penny slots!

It’s rare for me to gamble, even on penny slots, so I’m pretty sure I’ve exhausted my luck for life! 😀