Stunned

That is the only word that describes Brenda and my reaction to the news that some fellow RV’ers were killed while out on their morning walk this morning in Pismo Beach. Margie and Bruce and their writings were a staple of our morning blog reading and we looked forward each day to catching up their activities, whether they were traveling or spending time with their “Grands” Mackenzie and Zoey. It was apparent from their writings that they loved their lifestyle only slightly less than they loved their family.

We certainly felt that they were part of our “cyber” family and our thoughts and prayers are going out to their family members in Washington state. These will be difficult times for them and we are hopeful that thinking about the pleasure they brought to life and others will soften the pain.

Vaya con Dios our friends!

JB & Brenda

Rough Spots along the Road South

We are still heading in the right direction there are just a few rising creeks and bumps along the road south. Like I mentioned before the medical profession has given their blessing now, so we have been dealing with the “travel insurance" professionals. As most folks know the United States has the most expensive medical system in the world and when we leave Canada we carry extra insurance to deal with this issue. Our Canadian system will pay up to and including the cost of any procedure in Alberta that you might require in the United States but anything over that amount is for your own account. Well my account is not large enough, so like most Canucks we buy the extra insurance.

While my docs have done a lot of investigating and fine tuning this last 6 months or so and it seems that some of those changes although they have me feeling better and my heart working better, from all reports, they have given the insurance vultures what they think is a good chance to pad their profits this year. My usual insurer wanted so much more money that it may have been cheaper for me to endow a wing on whatever hospital I might end up in. Thank the Lord for the capitalist system though, after a lot of calling around and checking the small print in various policies we managed to find one that wouldn’t take all of our fuel money to give us the right coverage.

Tomorrow we hope to get the rig all washed up so that we aren’t carrying any more dust and dirt than need be south with us. And seeing as how we are heading south first to Texas I know Mark from RVing with Poppa will have the state troopers out to make sure that no non-shiny outfits sneak in.

Thursday morning we are heading over to Vancouver Island to visit some good friends over there for a few days. They have a little B&B right along the Nanaimo River and it is a great place to visit anytime of the year. On the way home we are hoping to stop over at the Adams River and see the salmon run. This year is reported to be one of the biggest in recent history.

Our departure date has changed a little and we will probably leave the farm here down the road from Dogpound for a warm spot somewhere in our southern neighbours sunbelt on or about the 3rd of November.

And just in case that water keeps rising and our rig isn’t up to crossing that high water I have my eye on a different one for our journey south.

Now where to?

Well I had my visit with my cardiologist today, and she figures as long as I going to be hanging around for a few more years, I might as well spend this winter somewhere warm. That was good news, so now I can start planning for real. Departure day is tentatively set for October 27th. Anyone who knows me has probably figured out that I have already got a pretty detailed plan formulated, right down to where we are giving Brenda her smoke breaks as we travel. But most RVer`s also know that those plans are cast in jello, so the fun part is actually seeing where you end up going, as opposed to where you started out heading for.

We missed out on all the goings on in Indiana this last couple of months so we thought we would point ourselves a little farther east than originally planned and go down the Eastern Slope of the Rockies towards South Texas. That will give us an opportunity to catch up with a lot of our friends and acquaintances that are not planning on heading towards Arizona this winter. For now we will say we are pointing ourselves down through the Texas Panhandle in the general direction of Austin and as time passes and we figure out where folks are hiding we will firm up things.

We’ve never been down to the Rio Grande Valley so that will certainly be on the table for this eastern swing and we have heard good things about Betty’s in Abbeville and just love that Cajun country so maybe before we head back to the desert we will spend some time exploring that part of the world.

Then sometime around the time we spot that Jolly Old Elf tearing around in his sleigh and giving us a few flashbacks of winter we will be heading back out west to the desert of Arizona where we plan on holing up till we get reports of warm weather and spring growth up here down the road from Dogpound.

It’s Fall on the Northern Ranges

We are enjoying one of those great Indian Summers that happen in this part of the country. Good thing seeing as how we missed the regular summer. Not to much sun tanning going on here down the road from Dogpound this year. But what a great year for the trees, lot’s of rain and just enough heat to keep them growing.

And this kind of weather does make for great fall colours. In this part of the world we are not big on the reds that are seen to the east of us but we do get some glorious golds shining through.

This stretch of weather is supposed to last through the weekend so maybe, just maybe, we will get the last of our barley combined and in the bin. Once that happens the farming will be done for the year here and things will start slowing down for the long winter ahead.

Yesterday Brenda and I had an exciting day. Our excitement started with dinner at Gnocchi’s Ristorante in the Beltline area near downtown Calgary. This is an old favourite of ours and to make it even more special our daughter Rebecca joined us. Her husband is out of town at a conference in San Diego so it was a great time for her and her mother to get a little visiting done while I watched from the sidelines and enjoyed the great food.

After that great dinner we finished up our visit to the big city lights with an evening at the circus. Cirque du Soleil’s touring show Kooza is in Calgary for a month or two and we managed to acquire some tickets. It was a pretty high energy show and even though there were some parts that Brenda just couldn’t watch, there were others that mesmerized her so we really enjoyed the evening.

All in all the best part was dinner with Bec though.

It takes us an hour to get back here “down the road from Dogpound” from the city so it was long after our bedtime when we got home.

Today we are back to the city to attend to some medical issues and figure out whether we will be enjoying the farm for the winter or moving to different environs. For now it is a great place to be.

But we are getting a little hitch itch here and would like to see a little different scenery and enjoy some different weather for a while.

 

That time of year is coming again so I know where my heart is heading, now to see if our bodies can follow.

Something was Hidden

Over this summer we have been blessed with visitors from the south and thought we should share our neighbourhood and some of it’s vista’s with them. We have a confession to make, we kept a lot of it hidden. Now that was not all our fault but maybe more the fault of the timing. We went to a lot of places and saw a lot of beautiful country but the weather was not always cooperating. Brenda and I thought we should take a run out and see a few of the places we were with Deb and Rod and Gina and Rollie and see if they looked any different. And because as many of you know we are still waiting on a couple of doctors reports before we are able to head out of here, we were able to wait till the weather was better.

Now anyone who has been reading along with us for a while knows that when it comes to pictures I am never really sure when to stop so even though I like the one above taken from Highway 1A there are a lot of close seconds in my mind so I will share them in an album type format.

View Full Album

Now this wasn’t an original idea, heading to Banff National Park on a beautiful fall day, when we got to Moraine Lake, the cars were parking a mile up the road from the parking lot so we got a little hike down the road before we actually got to the lake. Not all for nought though we saw this little cascade coming down the hill towards the trail.

And this mountain towering over us as we strolled along.

Now the walk in was well worth it and a little exercise could never hurt me although with Brenda’s knee probably didn’t need the walk.

The picture above is of Moraine Lake and about half of the peaks in the “Valley of the Ten Peaks”. All the folks who were parked along the road must have headed on into the Larch Valley as there were only a few folks here at the lake. The larches will be in their full fall colours right now and it is probably the most popular hike in the Canadian Rockies this time of year. We will have to take the hike some year but this is not the one. It was a little breezy up here today so the water is pretty agitated and the reflections were not great :). We took the shots below on our way back out of the valley.

You can see the larches high on the shoulders of the mountains.

 

After we left Moraine Lake we headed around the hill to Lake Louise to see if there was anything different about it on a day like today.

Well certainly no reflections in the water but those mountains do look a little different. After doing all this driving and walking we worked up an appetite for lunch and seeing as how it was nearly 3:00PM we decided to call it supper as well. We got this picture of Rundle Mountain especially for Rollie as he took a shine to this particular mountain when they were out this way.

We took off for Banff and our favourite Irish Pub “St James Gate” and chowed down before heading out of town past the Banff Springs Hotel. This old hotel shows Canada’s Scottish Roots and was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway to encourage folks to visit the area.

Oh yah, I started this story talking about hiding things from our guests, and although I think both visits were beautiful I will let you compare. Here are a couple from the two trips to Lake Louise.

And a couple from Moraine Lake

Now we are not offering refunds but come on back while the weather is better and we will gladly do it all again.

I was reading earlier today that my friend Al from the Bayfield Bunch is no longer accepting comments on his blog and that is certainly his prerogative, but, I just thought I should mention we will take any and all comments here if some of you are feeling withdrawals after losing the ability to comment on Al’s blog.

Last Day of Summer/First Day of Winter?

Well dang it, what happened to fall. I would like to be able to tell you that we went to bed last night on a late summer evening and woke up to winter. But alas, as Rollie put it, “this is just like a Louisiana winter”, a week ago. We appeared to miss out on summer this year here on the Northern Ranges. Now don’t get me wrong we had a couple of days that it got into the mid 20’s Celcius (mid to high 70’sF) but nothing much warmer than that. Now that might be alright for Scotland, Iceland or even Alaska but for heaven’s sake this is Alberta and we used to get some hot days at least once in a while. Well on the bright side we didn’t use much electricity to run our air conditioners so the world is a greener place, and we are certainly doing our part to stave off Global Warming. I’d like to get my hands on that Al Gore fellow, but it is hard to hold on when you are wearing mittens all the time.

At least one member of our family is prepared for the weather.

Maybe because she is youngest she doesn’t believe all us oldtimers when we talk about that mythical season we remember as summer.

We did manage to get a lot of the family out for supper last weekend and even got a photo of them all. Although we were missing a couple of the adult kids and one grandchild we were pretty happy to see that they all managed to make it out. Hmmmm, maybe with the cold weather they were thinking it was Christmas and there would be gifts :), but no such luck, just one of Brenda’s great meals. We enjoyed a good visit with everybody and are looking forward to the next time we can gather as a family.

I am not going to name them all, but even at my advanced age I do recognize everyone and can put a name to them all. Come up and visit us and we’ll introduce you to any we can catch as they fly by with their everyday busy lives. Thanks kids for making your parents pretty happy.

Other than our family gathering it has been a lot of the same old, same old. A trip or two to Calgary, Cochrane or Rocky Mountain House and just watching the rain come down, wondering if it was NOW that we were supposed to build an Ark. I caught this little fellow wandering along the road the other day.

I was happy to get this photo as even though there is no shortage of coyotes in our neighbourhood they are usually a lot more camera shy. As well the other morning a big bull moose ran right through the yard as I was out feeding the horses. That picture however is burned into my mind as my camera was back in the motorhome.

I’ll leave you with a shot of the road into our place, down the road from Dogpound, this morning when I returned from my dentist appointment.

Time to Head South!

I am a little slow getting this blog written. Tuesday morning it was time to say goodbye to Rollie and Gina. We really enjoyed their visit and being able to share a little bit of our neighbourhood with them. I think you really see the things around you in a different light when you see it through other eyes. Thanks for letting us borrow your eyes folks, and travel safe. Hurry Back!

Sorry for the lack of focus but they left pretty early.

Once Gina and Rollie left we settled back into our normal routine, the odd trip to town and a little tinkering around the farm.

It is looking a lot more like fall every day around here and the temperatures are dropping below 0C (32F) at night now on a pretty regular basis. Although there are not many yellow leaves in the trees above they are showing their faces more and more each day. I saw these fellows below this morning while out doing my morning walk and it will not be too long until they are looking for the does’ and working on next years crop of fawns.

And these guys they call Canada Geese but I think you can’t be called Canadian unless you spend a winter or two here and don’t fly the coop as soon as a little frost gets in the air.

As for us we are planning on staying here and enjoying a little Indian summer but if God is willing and the creeks don’t rise we are hoping to get out of here towards the end of October. So we are hoping those geese save us a little space somewhere in the Arizona desert.