Where2next?

A rite of spring for my husband and me involves waiting in Thunder Bay to greet the first ship of the season, then dashing down to Duluth to see the first ships loading there. This past weekend, we were lucky enough to catch the arrival of the John J Munson in Two Harbours on Friday and the the Edwin H Gott in Duluth on Sunday. However, the absolute highlight of our trip was meeting both Terry White and Paul Scinocca out doing what they do best, photographing and recording ships of the Great Lakes. It was an honour to meet you both and to put faces to the names from our favourite FB group. "She is turning in. Oh my goodness. She is turning in!" So says my honey with the delight of a schoolboy as the lake freighter, John G Munson, hoves to outside the Two Harbours break-wall in preparation to enter the ore dock for loading. We have followed this ship since we left Thunder Bay finally catching sight of her at Split Rock Lighthouse but were unsure of her...

"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 whe...

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!

The Fraser and Thompson canyons from Yale downstream to Spences Bridge upstream are littered with location names that end in Bar: Boston, China and Sailors Bar to name a few. But it wasn't until today when I was reviewing the history of the Fraser River Gold Rush of 1858 when 30,000 miners flooded into the canyons that I understood the significance of this moniker. The g old miners here search for placer gold hidden in the alluvial sand and gravels deposits through which the rivers have cut, and this material is then washed and sorted by weight by the action of the water. The heavy gold settles out on the gravel bars in the river, hence the need for the miners to name each for reference to the claims. "In the riffles, behind the rocks. That's where you find the gold." So says Doug who has mined these gravel bars for most of his seventy years. "Once I found a nugget. A 7.49 ounce nugget about yea big," spreading his fingers an 11/2 apart. "That did i...

Unstable winter weather conditions don't allow us the same freedom to overnight where we find ourselves, therefore, I have plotted a nine-day route through our old friends the mountains with alternate routes from each night's rest spot in case of snowfall. We have no trouble driving in snow but snow covered steep grades put us in unnecessary danger. Carl loves t o chase trains from one scenic view to another, so we begin where we landed at the west end of the Fraser Canyon on December 19th. May I never forget the sheer joy of putting on my sandals in Hope and walking on bare road edged with sword fern and moss in balmy temperatures. We christen our journey with a soak in the Harrison hot spring pool before finding a camp spot on Seabird Island just east of Agassiz where the sound of speeding freight trains and highway trucks lull us to sleep. The full moon is upon us and starshine like tiny rents in the fabric of heaven let the glory of God shine through. Eyelets of azur...

We are making a last visit to the sea by taking a drive around Washington's Olympic Peninsula. It is this land that we see from White Rock BC and the southern tip of Vancouver Island, so we are going to take a closer look.  Arbitus and gorse bush, cedar and fir. Sedum clinging to the fissures in the granite. Chuckanut Summit drive is stunning with ocean vistas at every curv e, and century old concrete bridges spanning burbling mountain streams. In contrast, near Oak Harbour the constant growl of Air Force jets passing overhead spoils the pastoral setting of the nearly one hundred year old Fort Casey now a conference centre for Seattle Pacific University. The heartbeat of the ocean keeps me company through the wee small hours. As we travel through the Olympia Mountains, it is disconcerting to be driving uphill and hear the engine labouring while my eyes tell me we are traveling downhill. What a dichotomy; cars carrying snowboards, skis and surfboards. In the quaint ship-buildin...

At the beginning of 2014, when I realized that for many reasons I was losing the ability to walk, I fought back by finding myself a place to live that looked out on the beauty and power of Lake Superior. I was determined that if I had to sit, I would enjoy the view. When Carl was ready to join me, we decided to make full-time RVing our lifestyle. I now have numerous choices  of indoor positions with a view, the vistas change as often as we wish and I have endless opportunities for short walks accompanied by my canine companion and supervised by my human partner. This morning I throw open the window by my bed and lean on the windowsill to watch the first light of dawn pinken the peaks at the far end of Seton Lake. The water is an unearthly shade of turquoise, made so by rock flour in the glacial melt, and as the sun brightens the mountains the colours comes alive in shades of emerald and jade. This beauty is so profound that it draws a visceral response from my body; I want to ...

"It is a breakaway!" Carl and I decided to take advantage of the sunny weather and go off adventuring. There is only so much time one can spend in the congested living conditions of the Lower Mainland before we need space around us. We start off tamely enough with a drive up the Fraser Valley through Hope where Manny and I hike a bit of Forest Service Road in the snow. T hen a bit more rugged when we pull out for the night beside a little no-name waterfall that tumbles into Fraser Canyon. On both sides of the river, train tracks cling to the steep walls so we can listen as trains run all through the sleeping hours. Rested and full of the excitement of being out on the road again, we choose a route we have never taken before. Just above Lytton and the confluence of the Thompson and Fraser rivers, a cable reaction ferry hauls vehicles from the east to the west side of the wide(even at low water) Fraser River. While waiting for the ferrymen to return for us, we are treated ...

Snow prickles against the windows at midnight and sparkles in the sunlight at dawn. Snow swirls from rooftops in pale clouds and slides from cars in slushy globs. Snow outlines each bare branch, then melts and hangs in crystal pendants from each branch tip. Children who rarely experience snow dance about making footprint trails, collecting it from the evergreen boughs and launching it at each other. But best of all, finally, the coastal mountains are frosted with snow. I fell in love with the mountains the first time I stepped from the CN Transcontinental train onto the Jasper platform and met the Rockies. I was a final year high school student on my way to Vancouver traveling with Mrs Kahara's Finnish language class. Our choir "Vahan Erilainen" was scheduled to perform at the Surjuhlat Festival 1974 and our class planned to interview Finnish people who had settled the coastal community of Sointula. We saw and did a great many things but it was the mighty mountains maj...

As an antidote to a very stupid decision that has left me with bruised ribs, Manny and I meandered through the trails and wetlands of the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Association property. Everything is so green; the moss and lichens, the ferns, the rapidly leafing out of the shrubs and trees. There are many guideposts along the trail that name and describe the vegetation and a lso historic photos of the Halls Prairie area. The clubhouse is a popular venue for celebrations and has manicured grounds around it where today crocus, primrose and dwarf iris bloom. This group also raises steelhead trout and coho salmon at their on-site hatchery which are released into the Campbell River. The year and a half old coho smolts are rising to the surfaced of their pond and leaping for joy in the sunshine. It makes me happy just to watch them. In another month they will enter the river and make their way to the sea where they will feed and grow for another eighteen months before returning here to...

After twenty-eight days of rain, the sun is shining! Not just wan winter sun but the sunball of a child's drawing haloed by rays that glistened against an indigo sky. There is warmth, too, enough to sit outdoors at the river's edge and let my skin drink in vitamin D. I always suffer from spring fever in February and usually a trip to the greenhouse cures my ills. Howev er, I recall one year when my railway gang was working in Nipigon, I had such a case of cabin fever that I set off for a drive in the sunshine. I stopped at Kama Hill to admire the view, and enticed by the thirst for sun on my skin, I hiked to a protected bank and scooped out a nest where I lay back on my parka and sunbathed. I've often wondered when the weather channel showed Vancouverites lolling on the grass in February sunshine, if the wind was cold as on a Thunder Bay spring day. The answer is no; though cooler than on a rainy day, the breeze has none of the bite that wafts up from the frozen surface...