It’s a strange atmosphere here this week, frantically busy even as the tourist season is shutting down. We’re hosting the road crew paving Front Street, so the motel is bursting at the seams while the RV park is eerily empty. Nights are cool and days are sunny.  People are leaving in droves by RV, helicopter, motorcycle, truck, car, even horse. No one’s left by garbage truck yet, though. Points if you get the joke/reference on that last one. 🙂

Dawson is quickly shutting down. My favourite restaurants are closed, including the ice cream parlour. It’s very sad to go into town on a sunny afternoon and not be able to get a cone of Rolo ice cream to eat while I watch the ferry go back and forth across the Yukon!

At work, the staffing calendar marks Saturday as my last day, with a big frowning face with tears running down its cheeks; the manager’s attempt at making me feel guilty even though I stayed three months longer than planned!!! I’ve had four jobs since I left last year. One failed miserably, one was tolerable, and two were winners. I have high hopes for my winter on Vancouver Island.

I still have some preparations to make, but for some reason detrenchment this time around is feeling very easy.

Today, I took advantage of the manager’s very generous offer of the industrial washers to wash all my bedding. While that was tumbling around, I cleaned the ‘bedroom’, getting rid of a mountain of books and magazines, dusting, vacuuming, mopping up water on the sills with my Bissell carpet cleaner (for which I have discovered another purpose), and getting rid of the curtains seeing as I discovered that the window-side of them was mouldy!!! I’ll do without proper curtains for now seeing as a complete makeover of that area is in order this winter. The cats were delighted with the new open space and spent the afternoon spread out on their blanket enjoying the 180 degree view of the park.

The generator is probably fixed; a fresh tank of fuel will confirm this. I’m ecstatic!!! Learning how to do proper maintenance on this thing is making me eager to learn how to do the oil changes on my vehicles as well.

The next big RV chore on my list is to flush out my water system with chlorine and then fill the onboard tank completely seeing as I hate the water in Watson Lake. 🙂 It’s pretty bad here (overly chlorinated) but that’s better than the iron-rich water down south that stains everything!

Inside, I’m doing a major cleaning and purging so I can take advantage of the Free Store. I already have a huge bag of clothing and sundry items to take there. I’ve been donating extra books to the RV park book exchange seeing as I’ve made full use of it this summer.

Sunday, I’ll pull out when I pull out. I hope to get to Whitehorse, but I won’t push myself. I’ve been working six hours a day seven days a week and I’m beat. I might make it to just shy of Whitehorse on Sunday, allowing me to get into the city early enough Monday to run errands and be on my way again. There won’t be another decent grocery store until Prince George, so it would be wise to stock up especially since I’ll be in Watson Lake a couple of weeks.

My bank account is much too lean for the journey ahead, but I will make do. Things will be so different next year when I leave Vancouver Island knowing just when my next pay cheque will be. I can finally budget properly.

This new life of mine is slowly coming together. My Klondike summer might be drawing to a close, but a new adventure is not far ahead and this satisfies me greatly.