One of weirdest (and yet, relieving) days of the year when you work in a resort like Sunriver is the day after Labor Day. Typically, it marks the day after Summer, the day after the last major tourist season until ski season kicks in (which won’t be for a couple months). The day after everybody has gone home, and it’s just us locals again. I just went to the small grocery store here to get some caffeine, and the constant hum of noisy kids, loud-mouth tourists and elevator music was replaced with eery silence. During the Summer, this small but full service store would be packed to the gills, have all checkouts running with lines, and I walk in there today to find employees outnumbering customers. There was one checkstand open, no lines, coworkers just chatting with each other, glad they survived another Summer. Other employees were dismantling, cleaning, and repairing shelves that had been all but destroyed by the summer onslaught. The parking lots around the area are nearly empty, being filled mostly with locals, vendors and real estate agents.
It’s just quiet. And it’s kind of nice. Eery, but nice.
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I spent a couple summers working at a large conference center in Cannon Beach, and I remember that feeling. When all the guests left between conferences, it got dead. It was also a pain because the nearby businesses all had much more limited hours.