Week 75-78 Reflection October

We are still in the Yukon and we are still feeling great.

Julian is now regularly conducting his tours. One tour is called “Southern Lakes Tour,” where he drives from our location south to Carcross and then further to the British Columbia/Yukon border. Along the way, there are smaller stops and Julian shares the history of the Gold Rush in the area during the tour. Anyone interested can best google “Gold Rush Yukon.”

Another tour is the City Tour. Here he takes guests through Whitehorse, making various stops such as the local glassblowing studio, the totem pole, or the SS Klondike – a ship that used to operate on the Yukon River as a freighter. At each stop, he tells something about the history of the respective stop and the general history of Whitehorse.

Julian also conducts the Nature Walk. This takes place on the premises, where he shares with the guests the history of the area (such as the Ice Age), shares information about the flora and fauna found there, and answers all the guests’ questions.

He always talks about the history but tailored to the location. Sometimes it’s about the people during the Gold Rush, other times about the formation of nature in this area, or about sights in Whitehorse.

He receives a lot of praise from the guests because, on one hand, he has a vast amount of knowledge and can answer all questions, but on the other hand, he presents the information well and it doesn’t sound rehearsed. And the praise from the guests is worth much more to him than the payment he receives :-)

His tours will change a bit with the winter, but we will share that when the time comes.

Not much has changed for Franzi. She has adapted well to the working hours, both the late shifts in the kitchen and the split working hours on some days. She now enjoys the breaks in between and the time available for an afternoon coffee :-)

By the way, we are also busy making bread on a stick with the guests, and everyone loves it! It’s something quite different than they know, making it special for the guests. As a keepsake, Franzi writes down the recipe by hand, and the guests can take the recipe home.

It’s so cool to share our childhood memory with the guests.

What we haven’t discussed in detail yet: we are only paid when we work. Unlike what is common in Germany. So we want to work as much as possible, but we are aware that we need breaks/free days to sustain ourselves until April. We can’t take any vacation. Therefore, Franzi is happy about her 5-day week, while Julian works 6 days, but these are not always long shifts.

We spent a lovely afternoon with our boss and another colleague (both from Swabia) playing card game Binokel. We first played a few rounds with four players, then our boss unfortunately had to leave, and we continued with just three. After many rounds, the winner was decided: Franzi :-)

It has gotten quite cold now, and we had our first snow in mid-October already. It hasn’t stayed yet, but this week it snowed all night, leaving about 3 cm on the ground (which is still there). During the day, we are only occasionally in the positive single-digit temperature range, mostly close to zero and at night sometimes even in the double digits below zero. We are still waiting for a lot of snow.

However, we have already been assigned to shovel snow, so we are ready when it happens. The first shoveling shift starts from 7 to 8 AM. It will be a challenge to get up this early since we both normally sleep in longer now. Even Franzi ;-) But we will get used to it. Apparently, it doesn’t snow here all winter, as it eventually gets just too cold. So it will snow a lot for a few weeks and then stop again. The snow will remain because it is way too cold for it to melt.

Daylight is also decreasing swiftly now. On this day, the sun rises at 9:21 AM and sets at 6:05 PM. Every day we have about 5 minutes less of daylight. In the darkest period, we will only have 4 hours of daylight, and the sun will barely rise above the horizon, giving us several hours of sunrise and sunset ambiance. All the locals rave about this time. We are very excited.

This time, we want to share a little bit of our knowledge about Yukon with you:

About 48,000 people live in the Yukon, 35,000 of them in Whitehorse.

We had to look up the size of Yukon, but we were astonished: Yukon is 30% larger than Germany. Baden-Württemberg would fit into Yukon more than 13 times.

This already clearly shows how remote Yukon is and that outside Whitehorse there’s nothing but nature and a few small settlements.

Whitehorse is on the same latitude as Oslo. However, due to the warm Gulf Stream, it is significantly warmer in Oslo in winter than in Whitehorse. In Yukon, the average winter temperature is -20 degrees. However, -30 degrees are not uncommon, and last year was a very cold winter with temperatures going down to -50 degrees. Due to the extremely dry air, the cold feels quite different than in Europe (we will experience that ourselves in the coming months).

Also, the healthcare system here is of course different. While there are doctors and a hospital, not all departments are covered by far. So, for example, if you need to see a specialist, your health insurance might fly you to Vancouver for free to have a doctor’s appointment. In the case of a serious accident, it is also completely normal to be flown by helicopter to Vancouver. We hope to avoid any of these scenarios.

We have, however, had a small experience with the government healthcare system: Julian had a minor work accident and had to go to the hospital. Just to be allowed inside, you have to pay 800 CAD. This fee does not cover the treatment or the doctor. And we had to wait 5 hours until the doctor came, and after 7 hours we were back outside. Since it was a work accident, we luckily didn’t have to pay anything; the resort’s insurance covers that.

Thankfully, we also have an international health insurance that should normally step in. This is, by the way, twice as expensive for Canada as it was before.

We have one more piece of news: we have sold our camper! We kept the truck. We had a water damage in the camper, and after visiting a camper workshop, it was clear that the repair would be too expensive for us. Since people here generally build and repair a lot themselves, we decided to list the camper for a small price for a hobbyist. And it actually worked, and we managed to sell the camper. We will lose some money on it, but for us, that was the best solution. Now we need something new to continue traveling next year. Presumably, it won’t be a camper anymore since the selection here is not large or good.

That’s it for now; the next blog post will be at the end of November. We will also address the concept that the resort runs on, as it is not a classic hotel.