Signs of Season End

It's time for most seasonal functions to end. There are closures of the lodges and visitors centers at the park locations, and many of the activities within the parks are ending this weekend. In about one week, it will be like a ghost town in the areas that were overflowing with visitors. The temperatures are rapidly dropping to fall norms and the trees are losing their leaves. This is the time of the year when the bears are eating everything they can to fatten up for the winter and there are warnings everywhere in the parks to be aware of the bears. Nature is fascinating.

Even though our lodge is not selling out this week, we are getting a huge number of walk-ins and it actually makes for busier nights for us. I mentioned before that there is more work involved in checking in a person that has no reservation than for those that are scheduled arrivals. A guest's information is already in the system for a reservation, but we have to gather all that information at the front desk with a walk-in. Last night we had 33 walk-ins. While looking at the figures last night for the lodge performance compared to a year ago, we are far ahead of last year's numbers. We finished August ahead by 366 guests versus the same month last year, and we are ahead by 165 through last night for September.

While looking outside from our window this morning it looks like the cooler weather has slowed the grass growth - good news. If there is any negative to staying in the RV park for free, it's the lawn maintenance that we are responsible to perform. Josie will argue that it is good exercise for us, but I still think that our relatively small area in the overall RV park is nothing that the paid workers couldn't handle as part of their duties to keep the rest of the park mowed. Besides, we have to walk clear across the park to the maintenance shed to pick up, and return, the mower and weed-eater each time. Oh, well.

This is our final full week of work and today is our "Tuesday". Before we know it, we will be hitching up and be on our way...