Ed’s away right now at the semi annual swap meet we attend north of Barrie every June and September. I had decided before we got home that I wouldn’t be going this fall. Not only am I reluctant to go anywhere but it was too soon to leave the dogs alone again and too much to ask of my beleaguered daughter. I miss Ed and find myself going up and downstairs far too many times a day, letting dogs in and out, but I am quite enjoying a few days of solitude.

I spent a week (of two prescribed) on a diuretic to reduce the severe swelling in my legs and feet, going off it when it became clear that the side effects were outweighing the benefits. Fortunately I dropped all the excess fluid. My legs still swell but recover overnight, a chronic situation but one I can handle. I would obviously profit from weight loss but dare not risk the extra I inevitably gain following any effort to reduce.

I got all my regular maintenance done on the truck and myself with the addition of a couple of new tires, ball joints and an alignment (on the truck!) I wasn’t expecting plus the necessity of replacing my printer which balked sensationally at the suggestion it print on transfer paper.  I am beginning to whittle away at the credit card debt I accumulated on our trip, a job that will require all my self control and the remainder of this year.

I thought about going up to Kitchener for the Knitters’ Fair tomorrow but doubt I will. The weather is rather damp and gloomy and I shouldn’t incur more expenses.  I will probably eschew the American Sewing and Needlework Show later in the month as well though I’m keeping my options open. I will make it as far as London a week from Monday but will attempt to exercise restraint. For the most part I am more than happy to remain in my pleasant cave.

I am reorganizing and sorting and doing the sort of chores one is moved to do in the fall which ought to be the “new year” as far as I am concerned. I am oh so gradually beginning to bake and cook again after a brief hot spell when turning on an oven seemed sacrilegious. I am so grateful to have missed the extreme heat here earlier this summer! I have even been preparing more or less ”proper”meals for myself while here alone and went so far as to make hamburger buns (in the bread machine) yesterday.

My daughter and I have been talking about cooperating on her currently dormant etsy site and perhaps selling some unique bags. I have completed one and have a couple of ideas for others from “vintage” fabrics. I like making bags but have far too many of them, this could be a practical outlet for my compulsion and it won’t cost much to try. Perhaps we will be noticed by Regretsy and become infamous!

I need to get organized for Christmas ere long, filling in great gaps in my gift list in spite of  months of purchases and fabrication.

So I am pretty much where I usually am at this time of year, perhaps a little “poorer” but happy enough. “Content” I believe would be the appropriate word. How many people can claim contentment with their lot?

I’ve been in rough shape and not getting much done. Laundry barely started, no groceries acquired yet . . . and little else to account for the intervening days.

Most of the stuff is out of the camper but not all. My scooter is stuill mounted on the back of Ed’s truck so I’m not going far in mine though I did drive into Merlin for breakfast yesterday so I haven’t forgotten how.

In that connection, we left Kitty and Diesel inside the house with Barney and Rexie and Ulster outside while we escaped for an hour and a half and came home to find Kitty and Ulster missing. Kitty had gone through the screened front window in the living room, an eight foot drop. Eventually Matt found them on the road east of here when he went out in my truck after Kelly had, just missing them. (A neighbour called to report sighting them.) Ed was hours walking down the beach looking for them with no way to let him know they wre home. The fence has to be replaced and that was to be done yesterday but it didn’t happen, of course, and it’s been raining all this morning after a thunderstorm in the wee hours. Clearly Kitty cannot be let out unsupervised and Ed and I cannot go anywhere at the same time until the fence is secure.

My legs and back are awful so I get little done. Kelly teied to make an appointment for me with my GP but was told I would have to go to emergency and get an ultrasound if I suspected clots. I am loathe to do so in part because the rash from the black fly bites is masking what symptoms may be attributable to something more serious. The celebrex makes skin conditions more severe and I cannot skip that right now or I’d be bedridden. That doesn’t sound like all that bad a prospect just now and I might retire to the boudoir if I don’t get something accomplished soon. I’m sleeping well but that just means my back is worse when I do get up.

The dryer had issues and the one load that made it in didn’t dry so I got that restarted yesterday but that’s as far as it went. I really do hope to complete that chore today at least.

Apart from yesterday’s breakfast and a pizza Thursday evening, meals have been cobbled from canned goods, granola bars, cheese and stale bread from the camper fridge. The bread really ought to have been mouldy by now. Since it wasn’t, I can only assume it is incapable of sustaining life but it supported cheese. There are fresh eggs. I need to stock up but not badly enough to drive me out yet.

My daughter and I have put away yarn and sorted other purchases to their areas of usefulness if not quite put them away. Once I finish the laundry I can retire to my studio and ignore the rest for a time, perhaps quite a long time. Tomorrow I will have to call for appointments of various sorts and actually begin to peer out at the world if not actually venture past the door.

Caught up with e mail and feeds I care about and thought to make a closing entry here in case anyone wonders if I’d fallen off the earth. I didn’t though it felt a bit like. I don’t know if I’ll have caught the bug and will continue with the blog. I tend to think not but we’ll see. I know I have several ideas for fibre projects I would like to begin and I have a few such commitments I must honour soonish. I must really focus on regaining health and some function. Things would actually be simpler if I could resort to a wheelchair but this house isn’t remotely navigable that way so I have to maintain some degree of mobility. The last two days that hasn’t been particularly appealing.

I’ll be in touch . . . eentually.

Today has been alternately sunny and raining with s a steady wind but has cleared up this evening so I hope we can look forward to fair weather. It will be increasingly difficult for me to be patient  the rest of the way as we near home. I know myself.

Supper tonight was a birthday party for Ed whose birthday is September 1. He got lots of baked and preserved goodies as well as Finnish coffee so our pantry is beginning to be restocked.

Ed says we could visit Edna and then hit the Listowel sale on the way home Monday but I am broke and know I am too much done in for further travel. We found a couple of yarn stores and two or three fabreic stores listed in Thunder Bay. The big fabric store I remember from my very first visit here is gone now. I doubt I will visit any of them. A fuel stop and one at a bank and we are on our way as early as reasonably possible after a pleasant breakfast. We wouldn’t be lingering long in any case with the children aged five, almost three and nine months!

I am so anxious to see our furries and Barney will be so glad to be home!

Slept well last night and began today in a leisurely fashion in part because of an early thunderstorm. When the sky cleared, we found breakfast nearby and headed east again.

We stopped at a museum outside Moose Jaw, another old time village, this one on a much smaller budget than Calgary’s. The centrepiece was an unfinished boat, the creation of a Finn named Tom Sukanen who built it early in the last century with the intention of sailing back to his homeland by way of the Saskatchewan River, Hudson Bay and Iceland. The poor man died in an insane asylum and is now buried near his ark. When I first misread the listing in the tourist guide, I thought it referred to a sunken, unfinished ship but it turned out to be Sukanen’s unsunken, unfinished, Finnish ship. (Move over, Tom!)

It is interesting that Moose Jaw is built primarily in a little valley with newer portions extending up onto the hills around so that there are now both an upper and a lower “Jaw”.

Moving right along . . . as we did to Regina where we browsed an area called “The Village”, a sort of quieter version of Toronto’s Beaches with lovely shops where I found more yarn as well as some paper products (for collage and mail, not housecleaning). Supper was tacos from a street vendor for a pleasant change. 

Once settled in, I interrupted my e mailing to watch a brief appearance of the Northern Lights. I haven’t seen them since I was a kid and didn’t expect to see them this trip what with short, bright nights further north and wouldn’t have expected them at all this far south. Worth a few extra bites!

We crossed another time line when we entered Saskatchewan yesterday but this province does not observe Daylight Savings Time so its Central Standard Time  corresponds to Alberta’s Mountain Daylight Time. All that means that there was no change at all and we are still two hours behind Eastern Daylight Time. Manitoba will be on Central Daylight Time, putting us ahead the one hour and Ontario will bring us back in sync with home.

I still think time is essentially meaningless and still don’t have a clue what “time” it is most of the time . . . but I suspect it is time I went to bed.

. . . actually I haven’t a clue. There’s wifi at this campground but the owner is away and the person in charge doesn’t know the password. So I can’t check what or when I last wrote though I think it might have been my first night in Edmonton?

Left Edmonton yesterday morning without regret though I never did meet up with my lost love. Perhaps that was for the best. There were promises to visit that I don’t expect fulfilled. I can close that chapter, I expect. In reality it and a few others have been closed for years, really.

Didn’t really take to Edmonton though to be fair, I didn’t see much of it and that mostly road construction and traffic.

Last night we were in Bowden, south of Edmonton, in a strange little roadside “rest stop” that offered full services (but not internet). Ate meatloaf and salads from Sobey’s deli with South American red wine for dinner. Slept well and breakfasted at a Smittys’ in Olds, a town down the road.

Headed into Calgary which I immediately liked better than Edmonton for no logical reason though I also found it prettier. We went to the Heritage Park Village, the largest such display in Canada, similar to Greenfield Village and with an attached automotive museum, “Gasoline Alley”.

Pets not being allowed, I played my little old lady schtick and managed to have Barney babysat by the Manager and a half dozen or so enrapt minions. They admitted he had not been in his cage and was out for a walk when we arrived to claim him. He’s really going to be impossible to live with! He’d already figured out he could pick up chicks, hanging out at laundromats with Ed while I do the washing.

We had a good if  fairly quick look at the village and a thorough tour of the museum where I snapped my favourite vehicles:

I found a quilt store, reputed to be the largest in . . . a long way, but I didn’t buy anything and I was tired and hungry so didn’t pursue yarn shops. Apparently missed the best of those earlier in the day when we sailed by Lacombe.

We’ll head for Medicine Hat tomorrow with a detour to drive through Dinosaur Provincial Park in Canada’s “badlands”.

Ed’s auditioning Saskatchewan as I write and has found a couple of shops for me in Regina. We don’t seem to do most of the typical tourist things. At least neither of us is addicted to sports halls of fame or posh galleries so we mostly manage to get along at least as well as at home. The quiet evenings I the camper or – weather permitting – outside are pleasantly relaxing. When we first pulled in here, there was a horsefly that tried to carry Barney off until I beat him off with the end of the leash but it seems otherwise as close to bug free as we’ve seen, a great relief.

Tonight’s dinner was A&W a la carte again and the remaining third of a bottle of Johnny Walker Red is calling me to . . . er . . . knit. I’ll post this with an update next chance I get.

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So, now it’s Thursday evening, August 4, and we’re in a motel in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. Last night’s campground proved a trifle odd and I kept expecting parades of Schmoos. With the exception of ourselves and one other gentleman, the residents all appeared to be long term and would be termed “homeless” in the sense of no secure residence. In a province of tailer parks and manufactured homes, these were the forgotten. The all had dogs who ran loose, proving they were accustomed to calling the place home. While we had elctricity, the on site water hook ups didn’t and, as I said, the wifi was inaccessible. Ed said he was glad he’d showered the last morning in Edmonton and passed on the facility. When Ed  disses the decor you’ve got to wonder if there are walls and, indeed, he said there were “sort of”. I settled for my emergency wet wipes and voted for the motel tonight.

Today redeemed Alberta with a visit to Dinosaur Provincial park and magnificent vistas of the Canadian Badlands I can only poorly suggest.

We lunched late this side of Medicine Hat at a Husky, calling it supper, and continued as far as Swift River, planning to go into Regina tomorrow and probably camp just the other side of there tomorrow night. I hope to have a leisurely start tomorrow as I slept poorly last night. It wasn’t the fault of the campground but my own ailments including the black fly bites that have begun acting up again for no apparent reason after most of them appeared to have healed.

I’m going to go and stand under a hot shower until further notice.

I did do my laundry and we dined on leftover KFC from yesterday’s lunch. This morning we found a Denny’s for lunch and then explored the West Edmonton Mall.

The Mall is certainly impressive and it was a pleasant six hours or so of browsing. I think I liked the carnival ride area better than that at The Mall of America (in Minneapolis). One fountain in particular caught my fancy. We bought a few gifts and I found some tops for myself.

By the time the mall got really busy I was more than ready to call it a day around 3:00. We had supper at an Outback and came back here to settle in for the evening.

Ed and I don’t seem to do cities well. The driving in unfamiliar places with heavy traffic gets us both stressed. Te

There should be plenty to entertain us for the evening in a city like Edmonton but neither of us seems to care much for the standard tourist activities and I am learning to quit when I get tired as I won’t enjoy anything else anyway. I will post this check e mail for tomorrow’s plans and knit until bedtime which comes early when you reach fogey status.

The weather today has been lovely the sun warm but with a cool breeze. I hope the rain doesn’t return in time for our next stop in Wetaskiwan, probably Wednesday. There are several attractions there for Ed before we continue to Calgary.

Janet and her family have plans for the weekend of the tenth through the fourteenth so it looks like we’ll aim for Thunder Bay on the fifteenth. That gives us time to see the sights along the way without rushing for an abbreviated visit before they leave.

That’s as firm an agenda as we’ve had on this trip and it’ll do for now.

I hear a sock calling me.

We crossed into northern Alberta as planned yesterday, kind of through the back door, and the terrain is eerily reminiscent of the highway from Windsor to London, Ontario, i.e. rather boring. The differences would be in the number of oilcompanies and the prevalence of “communities” of manufactured homes and prefab boarding houses. If you come out here alone, it seems, you bunk in the company housing; if you bring your family, you buy a house at the house store (I saw one model for under $60,000, furnished!) and have it delivered to a lot you’ve bought or – I imagine – leased (possibly from the same company you work for?) 

Whatever you’ve heard about the cost of living out here is probably true. Breakfast specials that would run in the neighbourhood of three or four dollars in Ontario go for nine or ten and that’s only in a truck stop sort of place. I don’t imagine we’ll hit any high spots.

I did check out a yarn store in the suburb where we had a KFC picnic lunch. It was very nice and had a good selection including fibres for spinning and weaving yarns but I may be shopped out in that area. Nothing cried out to be mine and I have a lot of nice yarns at home. Had Ed take some pix of an interesting yarn winder, possibly plier, bilt on a treadle sewing machine base. Kelly might want to cobble one, I’m thinkin”.

Barney and I are a mite road weary to be honest. He can’t sit still so I can’t knit or do anything else I might normally do on a not so interesting  road. The remainder of this afternoon will probably be spent in doing laundry but that’s OK as long as I’m static for awhile. Ed got the water pump working (again) which would be more important if I were actually using any. I never got into cooking meals in the camper. It’s soo tiny you have to – as they say – go outside to change your mind and the fridge hasn’t been on steadily enough to risk keeping stuff. It works OK but won’t stay lit (propane) when we’re driving so is really onlyon ovenight when we freeze ice packs to chill our cola and water in the cooler bag in the cab the next day. We refill our water bottels and use that for most purposes, taking advantage of showers at the various campgrounds. The most important amenities are showers and wifi (and it’s nice to have a server actually working at our site for a change) though we’ve mostly had power and water as well, only using our generator once or twice in unserviced campgrounds. We’ve learned to avoid those as the mosquitoes and black flies tend to be  unbearable in those sorts of locations.

It hasn’t really been much like camping in the sense I used to do with my parents and later my kids but it’s served us well for the most part. It’s nice to be able to sit outside awhile after the relentless rain that persisted through this morning as well as the northern cold. I could hope it didn’t get any warmer. The sun is very hot but there’s a nice breeze. I hear it could get much less pleasant as we get nearer home. I hope that has run its course before we do.

Our neighbours here are three dogs: an English Bulldog, a Bloodhound and a Basset, lying in the shade as is Barney who isn’t even barking at them.the Bulldog looks a tad embarassed to be hanging out with the other two yet too tired to worry about it. They probably have come to some sort of arrangement. Barney was excited (or incensed, it’s hard to tell) to see red squirrels when we came in. Perhaps he misses his traditional adversaries at home and these guys are smaller, might be attainable.

Kelly reports she has Boris at the farm again. He’s relieving his stress by chasing her Hera and Hera is thrilled. It’s her favourite game! Kitty is fortunately still residing chez Kelly so we can hope there will be no further misadventures. Ed remembered he had pine tar ointement which Kel is now using on Rexie’s ears which may finally have a chance to heal.

I’m missing everyone more now and will not be sorry to get home when we do. I have so far been unable to contact my Edmonton friend and it is likely he is away for the summer in any case. We may well be on our way again tomorrow depending on mood, weather . . .  whatever.

We clearly will not be attending the wedding in North Bay next Saturday. Even if we wanted to barrel straight back that way, we would be missing a visit with Janet and her family in Thunder Bay. It means we won’t see Ed’s brother and sister-in-law but they may be visiting us on their way to see their son in Colorado Springs in the early fall.Ed didn’t actally pack clothes for the wedding and would have had to go shopping. He did buy jeans and a sweatshirt the other day and even a pair of dress pants (on sale) but doesn’t even have shoes with him I’d be seen in public with.

I’m kind of putting off working so should be about that laundry. Hey! You spend your lazy Sundays your way and I’ll . . .  knit while the washers are going. 

Almost every North American has heard of the large, hairy “Ape Man”, called Sasquatch, who appears mysteriously from time to time along the Alaska Highway. To date the only hard evidence we have of “Big Foot”‘s existence consists in casts of large footprints, found at Pink Mountain, Mile #147 of the Alaska Highway, and some poorly focussed photographs taken by staff of Mag and Mel’s in Fort Nelson, British Columbia, Mile # 293 of the Alaska Highway. The bulk of evidence to support belief in the Sasquatch’s existence comes from personal accounts given by tourists and area locals who claim they have seen him. In Pink Mountain, early trappers and settlers in the region began to hear stories told by natives of a large, hairy, manlike creature called the Sasquatch and soon newspapers carried accounts of sightings of such a creature by both natives and non-natives.

On July 3, 1884 a trapper based out of Fort Nelson reported the capture of a Sasquatch in one of his wolf traps. The creature was four feet and seven inches tall, weighed 127 pounds and was covered with glossy hair an inch long. The creature “possessed extraordinary strength”. Its keeper planned to take it to Vancouver to exhibit it but neither of them ever arrived in the lower mainland and there is no record of the Sasquatch’s subsequent fate.

In the late sixties and early seventies, there was renewed regional interest in the search for the Sasquatch. Trappers and Outfitters were searching all over the area between Pink Mountain and Fort Nelson. After years of searching no one had seen or found anything relating to the Sasquatch until the winter of 1975 when everything changed.

The famous researcher, Richard Crossing, a big game hunter from Europe, was at one of the oil rig sites near Fort Nelson. He reportedly caught a Sasquatch in one of his research traps. Richard made plans to have the creature transported back to his facility in Europe but on route, somewhere near Mile # 147, the Sasquatch used its extraordinary strength to escape. From that day forward, the Inn on the Alaska Highway at Mile #147 has been called Sasquatch Crossing after Richard Crossing, the man who had captured it for the second time in history. The Sasquatch now roams the highway between pink Mountain, Sasquatch Crossing and the oil rigs in Fort Nelson.

He is seen frequently, especially when the kitchen at Mag and Mel’s is baking cinnamon buns. This is the Sasquatch’s favourite food and he delights in feasting on the buns dropped by frightened tourists. Richard Crossing has since returned to North America and is relentlessly searching for his escaped Sasquatch, combing the area between Mile #147 and Fort Nelson, funding his expeditions by working as a cook at Mag and Mel’s.

The above account is thanks to the hostess at Mag and Mel’s where we had dinner and caught the above photograph before camping for the night at Charlie Lake, just outside Fort Nelson. Personally, I think someone took up chainsaw carving and failed miserably. His wife said, “That doesn’t look like a bear. It looks like Big Foot and you’re not keeping it in the house!”

The section of highway we drove today was long and boring for the most part but we did see elk at last as well as a not-at-all shy herd of Stone Sheep.

As usual the good pix are in Ed’s camera.

It is dark as I write for the first time in quite a few days so I should probably take advantage and go to “bed”. Breakfast in the morning will be somewhere in Fort Nelson after which it’s off to Edmonton.

Wednesday we saw a Transportation Museum with artifacts and stories from the history of the Yukon and the Canadian portion of the highway. We also visited an Interpretive Centre which focussed on the geological background and fossil remains of a surprizing number of prehistoric species.

While the former was interesting, I was fascinated by the latter where I learned some surprising (to me) things about North American geology. I had been aware of the land bridge between North America and Asia which once connected the two continents and made possible migrations of species including man. I had not realized that there was actually a vast expanse of continental shelf exposed, linking the two enormous land masses for many miles.

A variety of horse developed in the North and seems to have travelled to Asia and Europe. The species became extinct here but was reintroduced long after by Spanish invaders in the south. The original Beaver was an animal the size of a modern bear (or an Austin Mini). Picture the dams that guy could throw up!

As an aside here, I have come to an understanding, I think, of some features of the style of Native American art. The first epiphany came with the sight of patches of snow on the mountains when I recognized the characteristic curves and swirls of much stylized “Indian” designs. Then I saw ravens up close and realized that the huge beaks on the native masks and totem representations of the bird are not at all exaggerated. They could open cans with those things! The skeleton and reconstruction of the pre-historic beaver brought the realization that the legends around our National totem are based on a racial memory of a much more imposing creature. Seeing that fellow crunch a log would have engendered respect for sure.

We spent some time in downtown Whitehorse which is quite lively and interesting but unfortunately, along with the rest of the territory, pretty much handicapped inaccessible. They’re beginning to make alterations but the old buildings are challenging while being historic enough to warrant preservation. A resident told me that The Yukon is ten to fifteen years behind our urban society in these matters.

We had our final seafood dinner of a fettuccine at a popular local spot. It was very good and is one of my favourites anyway.

We’re in Teslin tonight (Wednesday), between Whitehorse and Watson Lake, familiar territory until we get past the latter when we will enter B.C. on the Alaska Highway this time, crossing the north eastern corner of that province and entering Alberta (where the highway actually began in Dawson Creek).

 It rained a wee bit off and on but wasn’t too bad though cool (which is fine). The sun is very hot when it comes out but the temperature doesn’t get above 70. I do hope the heat dome the rest of the continent seems to be suffering resolves itself before we meet it. We actually bought an extra blanket today.

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The above was written Wednesday night, the twenty-seventh (or early this morning, Eastern Daylight Time). It’s Thursday morning here now and I’ve been trying without success to navigate to Word Press. I can’t even open e mail on the incredibly slow service at this campground where we are having or breakfast in the restaurant. I have a “strong” signal; it just doesn’t seem capable of much over glacial speed and everything times out

We have a road and a direction but little in the way of expectations before Edmonton so the trip remains an adventure even as we turn homeward. I’ll tell you about it if I ever again have a connection.

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And now, Thursday night, we are at Toad River in the Northern Rocky Mountains in British Columbia again. There is internet service which, of course, I cannot connect with from the site though I have hopes for doing so and posting this tomorrow morning over breakfast in the restaurant accompanying the campground. This morning I had no such luck and – when Ed went to pay the bill for our meal, they couldn’t connect over the net either and used the telephone connection instead so it was the fault of neither me nor my laptop.

Today was long and the early part of the drive a tad monotonous but after lunch (in Watson Lake), the mountains rose around us again in all their magnificence. As if that weren’t enough, there were Wood Buffalo along our route, so many that you had to drive with great caution. (Sadly I saw one who had been hit, likely by a semi since there was no wrecked car next to the carcase. There are warnings all over the place. How can anyone callously drive without concern for the animals‘ prior rights?)

The mountain sheep again failed to materialize as practically guaranteed but I did see a young cow moose who slipped shyly into the woods as we passed, my first moose this trip.

There are few services along this part of the highway, along any of it really. The drive through Muncho Lake Provincial Park was unbelievably beautiful but many of the lodges and gas stations, restaurants, etc. are closed and some of those remaining may not be here much longer. I don’t know about the volume of traffic though I expect fuel prices have taken their bite but the speed today means longer intervals between stops, rendering many of the locations redundant. The survivors are clearly at the logical points as we frequently encounter the same travellers at several stops over the course of a day or even days.

It is late and we are tired so I must stop this again and hope to get it up on the site in the morning before we head off toward Fort Nelson and Dawson Creek, probably stopping somewhere between those points tomorrow evening.

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And now morning has threatened to get away from me but I am on line and might remain connected. W are spoiled with outr instant connectivity. You can’t take it or anything else for granted in the north.

I feel like I dressed in a box with no mirror and no shower; oh, wait, I did! Then I got out of the camper to be awed first by the lake and the mountain, then by the woman nearby, camping with a party of at least a half dozen motorcyclists, who was making breakfast at their site and had brought bananas!  I used to be like that! Now I rely on restaurants wherever we are. Oh well, it’s a vacation, right?

Ed says to tell you that it was nine degrees Celsius when we left the campsite yesterday morning but had reached eight by noon. (That’s forty-eight and forty-six Fahrenheit, approximately, for the challenged.)