A murder?

posted June 30

We left Beaumont Campground and for 587 kilometers meandered along the Skeena river amidst the Canadian Cascade Mountains—the really tall ones still snow-streaked, possibly glacier-streaked but it was hard to tell. Drive-by pics out the window do not do it justice. We reconfigured our truck dashboard to metrics so we know when the posted speed limit is 100km it doesn’t mean 100 mph and we can just match the speed to the limit. It’s still shocking to say we’re going to drive 587 anything in one day, but it does go quicker than miles.

We had stopped at a Safeway along the way for re-supply so planned halibut and corn for dinner. Also using your ATM card at the Montreal Bank and a British Columbia State Liquor store costs you a 7am phone call from your Washington bank to confirm the card-user is intentionally shopping in Canada. 

We’re very happy with our little camper.  It takes us about 8 min to set up and the bed is already made with flannel sheets and our Pendleton wool blanket. If, in the morning, we want to travel somewhere to see a sight, i.e. cannery museum in Prince Edward or Cowpuccino in Prince Rupert, it takes us about 8 minutes to pop down. That evening, Judd was surprised that I would exit the camper calmly with two glasses of wine and tell him ”there’s an alarm going off in there.”  I guess I figured “the fridge is open” alarm isn’t as alarming as “the camper is on fire” alarm should be. At the new campground, Prudhomme Provincial Park, Sheldon was out front and made friends with the clan across the street.  It looked like an Erskine High School Drama club out for a good time. Sheldon went for a sleep over and everyone was thrilled, except Sheldon.

Thrice now, we’ve been awoken at 4am by highly annoying, cackling, cawing crows. They each have a different pitched irritating caw and it sounded like at least 8 of them but I’m sure I could hear the ring-leader who was right outside our window.  He would call and a couple others would echo and then they’d fly away still complaining and then fly back, again, right under our window.  I think I know why they’re called a “murder of crows.” I sure wanted to murder some. Mysteriously, they settle their fights about 5am and we all go back to sleep for a couple hours. I looked up what the sound of crows in French would be: Crôa Crôa – check www.fluentu.com/blog/french for what 20 other animals say in French.

We planned a few nights at this campground closest to Prince Rupert where, on Monday, we board our Alaskan ferry to Haines. Monday happens to also be Canada Day so we’ll see if there’s any parking left in town from 11:00 when we check out until midnight when the ferry departs. In PR this morning we walked around the quaint waterfront. Coffee at Cowpuccino’s was recommended and while we sat in the window front seat we noticed every other person in town, male or female, sporting a teal-colored jacket. Turns out the Seabourn Cruise Line had just docked and about 400 tourists had just hit town, the jacket must be their Heritage Tour-equivalent uniform to warn the townspeople. My down jacket happened to be about the same shade of teal. While walking along the waterfront some nice volunteers in red-and-white-Canadian-flag-T-Shirts asked if we’d like to complete a survey. I said sure.  After I started, I saw it was a related-to-the-cruise survey.  The nice woman said I could fill it out anyway.  She was jealous of our ferry to Alaska plan as she’d lived in BC all her life and never been yet. She happily gave me a Prince Rupert pin for completing the survey and Judd stood mortified that I’d actually puncture my down jacket with it. Maybe he’s worried that I’ll get a pin at every port we hit and end up looking like a Cheesecake Factory waitress with bedazzled suspenders.

At the campground, we wile away time reading books or combing maps, still playing cards or cribbage or backgammon after dinner. Some little people were cruising down the hill in front of us. The front runner yells back, “do we go left or right at the bottom?” The back-runner replies, “Left!”  The front runner yells back, “Which way is left?”  Dog-walkers and kids on bikes are still going by at 9 at night, annoyingly generators are still going at 10pm, and we remark we’re not even to the land of the midnight sun yet. We have to make ourselves don the facemasks and go to bed between 10 and 11:00 to be ready for the 4am crow murders.

Judd's massive spice rack improves our "beyond Burgers" (i.e. not meat)

Some little camper's tutu needed washing.

Zero Day

June 27, 2019   from Beaumont Provincial Campground, Lake Fraser, BC

June 26 was a “zero day.”  (Lingo from Judd’s time on the AT when you did zero miles hiking for a day and just resupplied, replenished or rested.) We did all three.  We slept in past 7:00.  We read books in the sun until elevensies.  We walked the 15 minutes into town for KJ Caffe (about the only place we could walk to.) We were surprised to be on the Corkscrew Wine Trail.  Everyone is growing grapes or cherries like where we just left Washington.  We toured the visitor center for brochures. (We wondered that little Okanagan Falls has a visitor center!) We observed a bird attacking a squirrel, really swooping down on the squirrel running zig-zag, hither and yon, over and over to get the squirrel away from her tree (presumably a nest somewhere.) We heard an exotic-sounding bird call and recorded it via smart phone for our birder friends, Bill and Denise.  They worked on ID-ing the sound from Maine—quite a feat!

June 27, 2019   We had a 9 hour drive scheduled on Mapquest to Beaumont Provincial Campground, Lake Fraser, BC . With our breaks every 2 hours, it took us 12 hours. We drove in and out of rain and thunderstorms but they bypassed our campground. We arrived right in time for dinner and actually a little early for sunset which doesn't happen until about 9:30 now. Our campsite is surrounded by birch and aspens.  The aspen leaves shimmy in the wind and make a lovely whispering sound. Camp Host Tim says to be bear aware--he's got a little 2 year old Cinnamon Bear around the site. We haven't seen him yet but we'd like to.

Sunset on Fraser Lake at Beaumont Provincial Park

And then there is the telogen effluvium. I have been pulling my hair out for a couple weeks.  I mean literally, pulling handfuls of hair out of a brush or a hair elastic or a bathrobe or fleece, for weeks.  Sure, I know you can lose 100 strands a day normally.  THIS is Abnormally. It isn’t obvious in my everyday hair styling and Judd totally denies it’s a thing. But it was brought to my stand-still attention on Sunday. I was vacuuming to clear quarters before we needed to put the Kirby in the U-Box for Maine.  You know when your carpet-beater-roller gets stuck, i.e. when it’s sucked up a piece of yarn that spins around the roller and won’t beat anymore?  Well, I finally turned the vacuum upside down to see why it was stuck…. And it wasn’t yarn.  It was more long silver hair than you’ve ever seen.  It was like a Gandalf beard stuck in your vacuum.  I had to get out the new super scissors to cut strands away before I could free the roller enough to spin again.

It’s happened before, once or twice in my life:  after a pregnancy during medical school; during residency.  Perhaps I can chalk this one up to summer shedding?—it was 94 degrees for several days my last week at work… OR…… Could it be a stressful life event:  happily retiring, getting everything packed in a day and leaving for the east coast via Alaska and Canada for 2 months camping?  Even a good life event can be stressful.

I am able to post the last two spots because Judd figured out how to make a hot spot from my phone to my computer.  Computer is charging on his portable battery.  Gotta go unplug now.

International Border Crossing

June 25, 2019  Okanagan Falls Provincial Park

Yesterday we passed through Yakima and had a nice brunch with Judd’s brother Bill.  Bill heard the nearby waffle house was good.  We heard that Denny’s served breakfast all day. Bill could walk to the waffle house any day so we drove him to Denny’s. The brothers had the Grand Slam—when the waitress asked if they wanted bacon and sausage the answer was yes.  Bill got the giggles when Judd paused and looked at me defiantly. (You could opt to have 4 bacon or 4 sausage or the 2 bacon/2 sausage combo.) I had the grits with a sunny side egg on the side. A good time was had by all.

It was a 5+ hour drive to our campsite.  We picnic-lunched half way at the rest stop at Dry Falls State Interpretive Center (where we had visited last fall along with the Coulee Dam.) Dry Falls is the waterless waterfall, a left-over gorge where the largest water fall on earth was known to exist:  5 times wider than Niagara and twice the height of Niagara. On this trip, the bottom was  full of spring rain and winter run off— the geography just as impressive—but the Visitor Center in the summer sports a food truck and we supplied up with iced coffee for the rest of the day’s journey.

We rehearsed our responses to things the Canadian border crossing guards could ask: “are you carrying any fruit or vegetables?”  no? YES!  Forgot about the fresh Rainier cherries we just bought at the Washington roadside.  “Are you carrying any cannabis products?”  yes? NO!  We gave away our edible gift from Californian friends to a stranger at the Oregon vineyard. (I was still a Federal employee at the time and liable for random drug testing and firing.) At least Judd and I agreed on how to answer about firearms.  All the guard asked was, “where is home (Maine); where are you going; (Alaska) any firearms? NO!….. we passed!  We didn’t get out of the car for a photo on the international border until AFTER we were in the country.  We thought Sheldon would look suspicious. We got tailed when we took him out for a photo op at Cal Tech.

Driving along Okanagan Lake

Okanagan Falls Provincial Park is part of the Canadian park system (equivalent to our State park systems.) Clean, courteous, Canadian! The campsite (everyone Canadian) recycles everything. Judd had made reservations on line for our first few nights. The camp host Bob, in his golf cart, greeted us.  I was almost choking from downing my celery so fast so he wouldn’t know we were having bloody Mary’s in our coffee mugs.  Turns out, you can drink alcohol if you stay at your site. We will. We got in our walk down the river trail, dinner (chicken chili which was defrosted from Walla Walla) and a brutal** backgammon game, before it started to rain.  We simply popped into our tiny home and finished up the evening with cribbage and whist. We discovered we can play games by my battery-operated twinkle lights and don’t need to use up our big bright camper lights. 

**Judd plays a mean defensive backgammon game—he doubles up on all the home slots where I would have to get back into the game if bumped. At one point, bumped, he had blocked all entry points and I could not play for 5 rounds until he started to vacate the area.  It was ugly (for me.)