Yet it’s 89 degrees out there. 
For many parts of the US, Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer. Here in upstate NY all the summer visitors to our little tourist town have gone home we’ll have a few stragglers here and there until Columbus Day. After that it’s all over with until Memorial Day weekend. It’s funny on Labor Day Monday the change is immediately visible, the grocery store goes from being packed all day to virtually empty except for the locals, traffic through town is cut in more than half, there are no sirens wailing through town on weekend evenings. As Summer turns into fall and winter creeps in the changes do not come as fast. By the beginning of November the town becomes virtually empty after 5 PM, stores close earlier, traffic trickles to virtually nonexistent by 7 PM, there are no cars parked (presumably by people going out to party whom car pool to bigger towns) in the parking lot across the street at 1 AM thus there is no car doors slamming or cars peeling out in the middle of the night which is nice.
Funny thing is when I was a teenager I would almost dread Labor Day weekend as afterwards my town was like a ghost town and I’d be out of work as a DJ as the bars closed for the winter. No money plus no new people to meet and hang out with was and still is a drag but as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to realize and even enjoy the peaceful winters. Getting from point A to Point B is a helluva lot easier traffic even during rush hour (if it can even be called that) is light. I feel much safer walking around town where there are no sidewalks as most of the people passing me are local and know the intricacies of the tight curves the roads have and know to slow down around them unlike a majority of our tourists whom it appears have never seen an open road and think it’s okay just to put the petal to the metal. Our small town stores go back to being small town stores which customer service is always great. The big stores no longer have hundreds of customers squeezed into only 4 or 5 checkout lines.
Yes, as winter creeps in it’s quieter, easier to get around, and generally a better life it sometimes seems as if even the pace of life slows down after Labor Day. As winter creeps in it’s easier for me to stay inside and get work done on my ever expanding lists of websites to maintain and create content for as I cannot stand the cold. Perhaps that’s the worst part of winter, the cold if it weren’t for that I’d love it.
So tell me: Small tourist town life cannot be all that different around the world? Do you enjoy the tourist boom or the local down time more?
