Where2next?

"Miss, you want cold beer. Six for $20." Cervasus cold from the can in the midday heat on the macadam of the airport welcomes us to Cuba as we stand round the bus that will take us to our resort. The drive through Varadero is stunningly beautiful; red earth, aquamarine sea, golden sand, flowering plants and waving palms. The vintage vehicles we came to see parade by us, as well as horse and donke y carts and bikes of every kind, motorized and peddle. Nodding pump jacks draw crude from the ancient seabed, storing it in oil batteries that dot the arid plain, and at one point our guide points out the Cuban Eiffel Tower - an oil drilling rig. One hotel we stop at reminds me with its dark wood plantation shutters, cane furniture, inward opening library windows and lazily turning fans that this island inspired Ernest Hemingway's writings. Our Caribbean-style hotel has an open air lobby with courtyard pools in which cichlid fish swim lazily and a night heron stalks small mi

Snow snakes slither across the highway chased by a wind that cuts to the bone as we journey back into the land of snow and ice. The barometric pressure is high and stable, and the temperature is -7C, but the wind chill brings it down to -20C. Even though the sun warms me through the glass, my body has begun to complain. For the three months, I've hidden from winter on t he west coast. I had almost no pain. and how easy it is when pain-free to forget what it feels like when every part of you hurts and every thing you do is so much more difficult. The only other time I am pain-free is when I am in the water. However, a consolation has come into my life in the form of a little brindle-coloured French bulldog. He needed a home with people who had time to work on his problem behaviours, and though I didn't know it when I asked to have him join us on the road, we need him. Thank you, Brindle Buddy, For sitting with me when I am alone. For traveling tucked in on my sore hip like a

Today we are in the Living Sky Country of Saskatchewan and though cold and windy, it is gloriously sunny. For hours between Medicine Hat and Swift Current we drive through ice fog that obscures the landscape and coats every tree and bush with sparkling hoar frost, but from there on east, the blue vault rises above us strung only with the merest wisps of clouds. Once a y oung man of my acquaintance referred to Saskatchewan "as the brown streak on the underwear of Canada" after spending a summer working at CFB Dundern, and I know he is not alone in finding it a dry, barren land. I, however, am particularly fond of the vastness; the hills like waves of green in the spring and summer, acres of gold in the fall and such a contrast of white snow, black shadow and serried rows of stubble in winter. I have one perfect spot where we always stop near Chaplin; a bird observatory on the grassy shores of Reed Lake. In spring, summer and fall migratory waterfowl of every description

In the winter, the grassy slopes surrounding Radium Hot Springs offer grazing to flocks of Rocky Mountain big horned sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis) and almost anytime they can be found to photograph. While we ate breakfast yesterday, one flock of ewes and half-grown lambs was causing a Radium Road Block by licking the salt from the highway and lying down in the  sunshine on the black pavement. Now Manny has a scale of excitement for other animals; cats are prey, other dogs are fair game and four-legged, grass-eating creatures are of great interest, so he was watching the sheep intently from the passenger window. Carl opened the RV door to get an unobstructed photograph and quick as a wink, Manny scooted out the door. Before we could even get our shoes on he had raced across the snow-covered median, run out on the highway, circled the flock and herded them off the road. Pleased with himself, he was trotted back to the RV through the group of people watching this spectacle when he

Today we were camping in Kootenay National Park. Carl had just come back from hiking down to photograph Marble Canyon and I sent Manny, our French bulldog, out to join him for a quick walk. Carl came back furious at Manny for eating something he found on the trail, but I wasn't really concerned because he often tries to get away with eating wild animal scat. I fed him his d inner and then we sat down to eat ours. Manny was dozing off, so I lifted him up onto the bed where he wouldn't be underfoot, but when I went to get him a couple of hours later, I couldn't wake him. I lifted him up and he went rigid in my arms, head thrown back, eyes staring and front legs extended. He seemed to be having some type of neurological episode and I have seen these type of symptoms in dogs that have been poisoned. There was no cell service where we were in the mountains, so while I held Manny quiet on the bed, Carl drove us down to the highway junction. From there I called a vet in B

Revelstoke in the snow.  Not the snow flurries turning to rain the weatherman warned us about but big, fat, puffy flakes that float to the ground and stay on my nose and eyelashes.  Snowbanks as high as the roof of our RV.  Houses whose metal roofs have shed the snow load and whose residents now can't use their doors or see out their windows. Snowmobiles everywhere. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Spring will return if I'm patient. Meanwhile...sit and smell the hyacinth!