Retirement faillures....

Retirement was supposed to mean sleeping in late,  exercising everyday, reading books, planning trips and catching up with friends and family. We have been doing the catching up part in a big way. The first month back in Maine, Judd had a total hip replacement--the AT (Appalachian Trail) arthritis finally caught up with him. He had a newer procedure so was up rehab-ing (apple picking, cider pressing, winterizing) in record time. A little ol' walker didn't keep him from back-at-home chores.

After spending 2 months on the road, we've explored only a little this fall--visited a vineyard run by graduates of the Walla Walla college where we were wine club members, a trip to the Roach Pond camp to feed AT hikers on their way to Mt. Katahdin, hiking the Bold Coast after a cider and cheese fest in Ellsworth, ME. We had been free of domestic chores while renting in Oregon and Washington state so now are back to the reality of all that  needs replacement, repair or preventative maintenance in a big home.

And now the holidays are upon us.  We'll get to hiking and reading real soon.

The Cellar Door - Lincolnville

Judd-- pre-op

Judd-  post-op

cider pressing

Ellsworth Cheese and Cider fest

Jasper Beach is cold in November

so this bugs me....

It happened a couple times while I was traveling and I made note, but three strikes and it's bloggable:

Judd and I were on our Alaskan Ferry up the inland passage and making friends with other voyagers.  We met a couple because they were waiting in line to board with their boat in tow where we were waiting to board with our pop-up truck camper.  Later that morning we re-met them up top so joined their cafeteria table for breakfast. After we exhausted the "where are you from" and "where are you going" pleasantries, other topics came up.  We heard that Dennis, a retired Vet, also retired from his business. He bragged that it's his VA pension which allows him to travel all year round.  His wife, Lexie, is Aleut, and returns to Juneau every summer to visit family and fish.  Dennis says to Judd, "What did you retire from? You look like a doctor." What I do doesn't come up, except Judd mentions, "she's the doctor."  Why does that still surprise people?

And a couple weeks later, in Haines Alaska, Judd chartered a bush pilot to take us over the glaciers in a 6 passenger de Havilland. Pilot Paul is telling us all about the area, the tourism, his experience, his annoying guests. He asks Judd what he does and they go off on a tangent about teaching.  Paul never really gets to what I do/did. 

And then this week, I was slated to go to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) to change my Washington license into a Maine drivers' license. It required a stack of paperwork which is usually readily available, given our filing system between two houses and a camper.  
___ birth certificate   - CHECK
___ wedding certificate  - CHECK
___ social security card - CHECK
___ passport - CHECK
___ a bill with my name and current address - WHAT??   -- It turns out I've been letting Judd pay all the utility bills at Sunrise Drive in Maine over the years.  REALLY?  So I get no credit for contributing to that?  Judd had to call up a couple places and get my name on the account so I'd have proper paperwork for the BMV.

It's a difficult transition from being the Chief of stuff to being Judd's eye candy.  I'll work on coping.

Home!

Nice camping at Esker Lakes but we looked at each other and said, “yeah, but we have our own bench on a lake.” We booked it outta Canada by 7am and made it home a little sooner than expected. We caught the boys not quite finished mopping and mowing but they must have gotten early too because it looked great. It was so sweet to be hugged by those 2 men (Kelcy and Ryley) tho’ Sheldon and Judd are pictured.  The place is so home. We took our time unpacking the little Northstar and de-camping after 7weeks on the road:

Walla Walla to Fairbanks: 5,185 miles

Fairbanks to China; 5,011 miles 

That’s 16,408.87 kilometers total! Whew!

Now to start sorting mail and visiting friends!

Peaceful Esker Lake campground

I

Peaceful 3-mile Pond, China, Maine

?embarrassed to be an American?

8/6-Banff, Alberta to Regina, Saskatchewan. 549 miles
8/7-Regina, SK to Falcon Lake, Manitoba, 452 miles
8/8-Falcon Lake, MB to Wolf River, Ontario, 387 miles
8/9-Wolf River, ON to Esker Lakes, Ontario, 500 miles
8/10-Esker Lakes, ON to Brodmont, Quebec, 502 miles

And tomorrow: 4 hours and 51 minutes to So China Maine!

We try to hit a visitor center every time we cross a Province border ( to get travel info on camping , etc) Yesterday, our last stop, happened to be at the Terry Fox memorial. This was an astonishing accidental find—a remembrance to an athlete who lost a leg to bone cancer then went on to run a marathon ADAY from the east coast to this spot in Ontario on a prosthetic leg before his cancer came back. He raised Consciousness and dollars for cancer research. It was inspiring. Really, google the Terry Fox foundation.

We try to change drivers and resupply coffee or tea (or potty) every 2-3 hours. Today the gas man at one petrol station asked where we were from. When we said we were coming from Washington, he bonded with us, saying he used to live in Vancouver and would go to Seattle for sports events.  We added we’d been all across Canada on our way home to Maine. He volunteered, “well, we don’t have mass shootings, so you’re all safe here.”  We look apologetic and embarrassed. We have to go look up current events when we get cell service every 400 kilometers. We’re horrified to hear the news.

And it’s also a bit embarrassing that when you tell a Canadian, you’re from Maine but have been traveling from Oregon to Washington to Alaska, they know where you’ve been. How many  Americans could point to the correct side of a map to identify Yukon Territories from Ontario or Saskatchewan ?

Judd and I are still studying, still embarrassed.

Using up all the last minute veggies

Alberta-Saskatchewa-Manitoba

WoW!  Once you depart the Canadian Rockies, you are pretty quickly in the flatlands.  We just drove two long car days (7- 11 hours)  from Alberta through Saskatchewan and Manitoba across fields:  sometimes flat, sometimes rolling (like Walla Walla) mostly yellow or brownscapes but occasionally greenish. We cannot tell what crops they are growing. Trans-Canadian Highway is pimpled by petrol stations and tiny towns.

Today was so happy:  no one forgot their cell phone in a washroom which was lost for a couple hours until turned into the Town Office; no one knocked a traffic sign off its pole trying to parallel park to get a pick up general delivery at the post office in a big city; no one destroyed brick tiles off a pillar in a cheap hotel-check-in-driveway; no one lost their wallet--thinking back to two hours ago where we last bought gas/coffee; no one fretted about whether there will be availability at the last campground in sight before 9pm...... NOTHING like that.  Today was SO GOOD.

Very near Regina, Canada   (rhymes with vagina)

Compare to Walla Walla, WA

Done at the Canadian Rockies

The drive between Jasper and Banff is amazing. It’s like someone took pinking shears to the skyline of the mountains. There’s a continuous zig-zag of peaks—compact folded mountains, one after the other, where the two colliding tectonic  plates fight for territory. (Different from the Alaskan ranges which were way spread out and punctuated by way bigger, often volcanic peaks.)

We  discovered , by accident, that we landed in these two National Parks (Jasper and Banff) on a 3-day Canadian weekend. The first of day in August is “Heritage Day” or Civic Day” in most Canadian provinces. It’s like trying to go camping on the 4th of July. The reservable campgrounds were all full, the hotels mostly “no vacancy” and the traffic, both car and pedestrian, was outrageous. We had to wait an hour in line for  shuttle bus because you couldn’t even park at some of the most popular lakes. It detracted a little from the glory, having just come from miles of solitude and our own, practically private, vast snow covered peaks. We both recalled a quote by John Muir in our last book. Something to the effect of, ‘if you’re  old, go now to Alaska before it changes; if you’re young and you go, it will ruin you for anywhere else.’ We think we’d appreciate the Canadian Rockies a little more in their off-season.

Doesn’t Peyto Lake remind you of my 🦊 Fox?

Town of town of Banff from Rose and the Crown rooftop patio
(A hot tip for dining from Carol and Omer’s recent trip)

Lake Louise

Athabasca Falls

Jasper National Park

We were two days in Jasper on some rainy, chilly days. Maligne Lake has a beautiful old boat house and if you can’t read that sign, it says they let a park Grizzly, Philip, hibernate there every winter. Judd and I wondered if they put down straw or old life jackets for him to nestle in. How do they know which day he’d like to sleep?.....or awake? 

Bear baiting?

Are the bears baiting us?  

Alberta Province has an unusual frequency of road side signs for trash bins.  The icon is a trashcan.  No rest room; no picnic table.   The day we decided to drive for 12 hours and arrive late and "wayside"(ie.boondock)  if there were no campgrounds available, there were no waysides.  We ended up down a 6km dirt (i.e. mud) road and the "Big Mountain Group" campground and the gate was closed.  (It WAS 9:08.)  We forgot we'd crossed a province border and Alberta is on Mountain Time not Pacific time (i.e. 9:08 not 8:08.) We boondocked at a roadside pullout (as did several others) ...muddy/rainy. We dined on our leftover asparagus dipped in guacamole and cheese and chips.  The two worst parts were:  no rules about when to turn off the neighbors' damn generator and so close to the road that every car going by sounded amplified by the surrounding mountains (like when you put your cell phone music in a salad bowl.)

Anyway, I think the intent of the "Trash Bin pull outs"  is you're supposed to potty in the nearby woods. No problem, right? Except all I've seen are "BE BEAR AWARE" instructions for the last 1000 miles. SO I figure the  bears are baiting us into the woods--like that Far Side cartoon where the dog tries to lure the cat into the dryer with a sign that says, "Free FUD."

So, I've been practicing my speech to shoo the bears away:
     "I am the Mother of FOXES!  You will back up slowly, as will I, or I shall soil myself."

Fox is my totem from my first work day in Walla Walla. I was called, as Chief of Staff, to weigh in on a difference of opinion about the Service Animal Memorandum.  Yes, service dogs (only dogs) are allowed to accompany the residential treatment patients almost anywhere (except in the kitchen.) The kitchen staff were quite distraught that there were  3 residents at the same time with three service dogs, all rather big, scary-to-some-looking dogs.  The kitchen staff didn't want to be "blamed for dog hair in the dining room." The nursing staff have no real way to assess whether a patient's dog is a "service dog" or an "I like my buddy-dog around with me" dog.  I went to meet the head nurse and together we went to the kitchen staff to assure them the dogs were allowed and they would not be blamed.  That night I had a vision (okay, a dream) that I had some work strife but had an adorable service fox which I petted and calmed myself right down. Since then, it is a private joke with Judd-- we hear about someone's service peacock on a plane, and wonder if my service-fox will be allowed. 

The 'mother of foxes' is reference to the Game of Thrones that Judd and I are listening to an audible books.

We celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary in Jasper, Alberta, CA. We splurged on a hotel vacation as we needed clean clothes and re-supply. We stayed at the Athabascan, the oldest hotel in Jasper (over 100 years old) but all re-furbished and shiny (except for all the dead mammals hanging in the lobby.)  Jasper has the best laundromat we've ever seen.   It included coin operated showers!  and a coffee bar! We walked around town and eventually the sun came out, illuminating the surrounding mountains including the snow-clad Edith Cavell.  

Judd on his way to a Ranger session on "Before Metal tools"

Edith Cavell peak presents herself at the end of a rainy/foggy day, Jasper

Liard Hot Springs

WoW!  An awesome stay at this campground. A well maintained, 0.4 mile wooden boardwalk across the bog gets you to the springs with what looks like a newly constructed changing room , toilets, sunning deck, railing-ed stairs and cubbies for your towels and dry clothes. 

It’s been cold enough ( 50s at night) and cool enough by day that a soak in 105 degree water was restorative. I braved it to the hottest incoming source of the water to stack a Rick on the cairn. We were diverted from viewing the “hanging gardens by a sign that warned, in perfect polite Canadian, “Trail closed—-a troublesome bear is in the area.” I wonder what the bear did to trouble someone. Steal their blueberries? We also saw a park ranger walking that trail above the pool. He was shouldering a thing—here’s where Judd and I debate—he says a bear-killing rifle and I say a bear shoo-ing pop-gun. Judd says, “No; they make bear spray for that.” You decide.

Reading the interpretive tableaus across the boardwalk, we learned of the Physsa—a warm water snail that lives on one place on earth—here. We are dazzled daily.

Judd, bought one fishing license, so he fished the Yukon
No Arctic grayling today

About those trees...

In my last post, I hadn’t labeled the bizarre tree pics. As if black spruce trees growing in the tundra weren’t weird enough, these trees experienced the fires 3weeks ago when we detoured our trip due to the smoke. This week we camped at Beaver Creek where campers were evacuated 3weeks, the night we chose a saloon and hotel in Whitehorse.  On a good day on the permafrost, the trees girth growth is stunted due to the long winter and frozen earth. The branches end up scrawnier than a pole-vaulter and gangly like a Seuss-ian nature picture.

This morning on our trip from British Columbia to Alberta, we saw more moose and black bear than I’ve seen in 30 years in Maine. Plus reindeer ( or caribou—we have yet to fact check the difference) and Stone sheep which look more like mountain goats. The day before we were in a bison jam.

BC has such great roadside mottos:
“Super! Natural! British Columbia!”
Or
“British Columbia—Great Northern!”
“British Columbia welcomes you!”

We also found that what we were calling Alaskan graffiti might actually be Pacific Northwestern graffiti as we found it in Canada too.  On roadside sandy edges, people write their initials or wisdom in stones. No spray paint. No gang hieroglyphics.  Cool.

OUTBOUND!

July 29 departed Alaska at Fairbanks: day zero/mile zero OUTBOUND for home!


We stopped to fish in the Yukon for Arctic Grayling. Judd even put on his waders! We didn’t catch any, but they don’t call it “catching”—they call it fishing. We were just lamenting that we’d carried our  Maine Sugarloaf sticker all the way here and hadn’t left it for fellow east coast travelers to Alaska  to find....Then, at the 11th-not-dark-yet-30-hour, we found a place to place it!!!! The border! See it? With our camper in the background? It was raining but I dried off the board with my sleeve and posted it quickly,... worried that some Canadian border Mounty would accost me. We saw moose and black bear a few times on our way through the Yukon. Plan is for British Columbia and beyond tomorrow......

I get away with stuff too—the purloined photo.

Judd discovered a place on my phone to recover recently deleted photos! Here’s the one from my near-escape from the Post guards and my retirement gift.