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Coming from DinoLand and Arches we headed directly south to Canyonlands with relatively low expectations. How can anything compare to Arches which was so unbelievably beautiful with another great view after another? Canyonlands was a sleeper as we discovered the Shafer trail which descends what seems like vertically down into an impossible canyon on a road that was a hair raising, white knuckle experience. Sheer drop offs that were mind boggling to see if you ever had the guts to look down. The grade must have been something in the order of 20-25%. Definite four wheel drive material and we were not let down by the nifty sidekick which was in low the entire (jaw) drop down. You can’t even detect our car on this photo even though it is in plain sight. Can you spot it?
Our destination at the bottom was an arch that you can actually walk across. That was creepy but we all did it, except the Shmookers who we felt could get spooked and that would have been real trouble. It made us all focus very hard on looking straight forward and not getting overwhelmed with fear and the prospect of, gulp, dying.
A funny thing happened to us while we were in Canyonlands. We were in the most far removed and isolated area that you can imagine overlooking a gigantic canyon that the park is named after, staring off into the abyss when out of the corner of my eye, under a huge stone and tucked way back in the dark recess and hidden by yet another pile of stones, I see just a bit of blue. We were in a very pure place so even a small piece of trash seemed very unlikely. After a second look I decide to investigate this and I have to pull some rocks away to get at it, and I discover an unusual plastic capsule with a blue lid on it. This was creepy as I felt that someone else had been in the exact place that I was occupying and had actually left personal items behind. I opened the capsule and there were really strange things inside. A business card from Washington, hair clips, basketball cards, plastic rings, fake coins, a medallion, other odd assortments of weird personal stuff, and finally, what put it all together; a notebook, with dated entries going back several years. What I had unearthed was a cache that was hidden from the public and was placed there to be found only if you had received GPS coordinates from a secret Internet site, all of which was explained on a piece of paper that was attached to the previously mentioned medallion. The objects that were left behind were from previous explorers who were instructed to leave an object behind as a token offering. Cool. I had just stumbled on a cache that was not supposed to be found by just anyone. The instructions were clear that I was to take the medallion and hide it carefully at a new location and log it in at the web site with the GPS coordinates. The kids and I decided to leave some artwork behind. We placed it into the capsule, logged our entry and took the medallion. I will hide it in the Los Padre National Forest, somewhere way exotic, deep in the mountains of Ojai.
Myla in the hot springs. Nice.
After this adventure we headed towards Colorado on our search for hot springs that are not well known. It was exciting to search for these far out places where only locals know about. Another new hidden mystery hot spring was what we were after. In Ouray Colorado we hit pay dirt. It was fantastic soaking in the healing waters the American Indians dubbed Uncomphagre, which means “medicine water” in the Ute tribe. Fall was in full bloom.
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Well if you want a taste of Church and State and the lack of separation between the two, you could do no worse than visiting Utah. From the famed Dinosaur Church to the outright weirdness of the religious drinking laws it becomes all too clear that you are in a warped, albeit beautiful, environment. Here is just a few of the peculiarities of alcohol and how it pertains to the leaders of the Mormon population, who are often consulted on such important community matters.
But before I get into that I want to just say that if you have such a need to control anything, alcohol in particular, and any drug for that matter, there first needs to a personal problem with the substance. Obviously Mormons had (and in my opinion still have) a problem with their consumptive ways. If you are like me, for instance, you want to sit down with a nice cold beer or a glass of wine at dinner time. A hoppy Beer for instance taste really great with a good wood fired pizza from my smoker. With wine, I constantly cook with it, way more than the average American father of two might do. More on the order of a French cook who would deem a meal inedible if it didn’t have a wine reduction sauce nicely accenting a select piece of meat. But that is just me. Wine in cooking is almost as important as salt or seasoning. In fact if you use wine you often have no need for additional seasoning, but I digress. I never set out to get drunk and therefore I do not have a problem with it. So I have no need to, for instance, refrain from purchasing beer on Sunday for fear of wanting to consume the entire six pack and having that get in my way of spending time communicating with God. Actually my relationship with my family is way more important than my relationship with God especially since my kids need me way more than any God ever might. So I would look at the matter in regards to my ability to parent effectively rather than my ability to stay on religious course, you know, the way any well intended Pagan might do.
So, getting back to those highly religious Mormons, who by the way have it in their spiritual belief to communicate directly with God to receive their divine orders of the day, even if it is pedophilic in nature. Now then, alcohol would be a problem, I suspect, as one of these soldiers of God wants to go off and marry a 13 year old girl because God told him so, and that is even before the alcohol clouds his otherwise demented brain. In this case it would be downright dangerous for the would be bride to have alcohol involved in that relationship. And for that reason I am actually grateful that they have enacted the crazy laws which prohibit consumption on a family day, such is Sunday, in the Mormon faith. What happens on the other days is anyone’s guess and it is tragic to fathom the consequences. But let’s look at some other strange things about Utah’s odd arrangements with alcohol.
To get a handle on Utah’s strange laws you begin first by looking at how it is regulated. For instance, only state-owned liquor stores can sell carryout liquor in excess of 3.2% and are closed on Sunday. Anyone worth his hops knows that beer less than that has no taste. These days a good Ale will be on the order of 5-6%, so there is considerable difference. Then there is the strange rule that a brew pub can only serve beer that is brewed on the premises and none other. Other oddities include that someone must fully have drunk his first drink prior to ordering another no matter how slow your wait staff may be and you cannot order more than one drink. So much for a beer and a schnapps chaser for which my father-in-law is keen. More telling is that all the dispensed liquor is controlled through state-run metered plumbing system so as not to allow any funny business with that all important line on your shot glass. Alcohol can only be served from noon to midnight with a restriction of 3.2% on the off hours. Furthermore, you can be served alcohol in a restaurant only if you are dining there as well and you cannot bring your drink from the bar to your dinner table. (Which, come to think of it, would encourage drinking as you would have to down your drink fast to get your table before someone else claims it). If this sounds crazy, well it is, but there are a couple of local breweries that have capitalized on the strangeness of it all. Take for instance Polygamy Porter. On the label is a (Mormon) man with his arms around four sumptuous babes with a caption “why settle for just one!”. Sabine and I liked that one.
And wouldn’t you know it, we just happened to pull into sleepy little Moab, Utah on, you guessed it, Sunday. So without a beer in our fridge we ventured deep into Arches. A fascinating 3,600 square mile desert jungle of arches and sheer cliffs. No babbling brooks or peaceful forest here. It is harsh, unrelenting, and downright dangerous if you venture out anytime, say between 9AM and 6PM. If there was ever a part of the world where beer was actually necessary, this was it. So we became friends of the sunrise and thankful for the invention of sundown and hiked our hearts out. The kids were getting used to hikes of 3-4 miles per day. Now, if you are a parent, or have any recollection of having kids of 4 and 8 you will no doubt appreciate those kinds of numbers. We were beginning to hit our stride on the trip. With our legs in great shape it was now time to stray into a Park that you most likely never heard of, much less visited. Dinosaur National Monument.
This park could have been picked as the most under-rated of all 16 that we toured had it not been for the main attraction, a dinosaur of course, completely off limits for viewing. Nevertheless the campground was nice and the hiking was splendid as the family went poking around in a 150 million year old fossil bed. We turned up all kinds of interesting Jurassic and Paleozoic stuff, but nothing would compare to seeing an almost perfectly preserved fossil of a Camarasaurus still imbedded in the rock, but that wasn’t going to happen. The building had foundation problems and they were not letting anyone near there. The projection for re-opening was years but nobody was talking. It had a odd feeling of religious right at work, but then again, I am prone to conspiracy beliefs.
Rummaging through stuff that was buried and brought to the surface by forces that are way beyond measurement is an interesting endeavor. It got me thinking about a lot of stuff. Dustin and I had beat the sunrise and we were on the trail at first light so we were still in a sleepy daze on our way to fossil beds with tremendous excitement and anticipation. Geological time is difficult to describe to an 8 year old, but possible. Way more possible than trying to explain it to some creationist, but that is a different story. For Dustin to get an idea of just how long geological time can be I had to invite the football field into our discussion. Now, if Earths age as geologist count were a football field long, the time at which humans arrived till now would be a grass blade in thickness.
Now I have told Dustin to get his sleepy cloths on at least 4.6 billion times, which coincidently is exactly how old the Earth is. Trying to explain this number to him was going to require a whole lot more creativity than pajama talk. But I tried and what I came up with is this:
Assuming that Earth formed at about the same time as the rest of our solar system, scientists have dated meteorites and samples of Moon rocks (because they have not been re-melted and re-formed as most rocks on Earth have). Meteorites and Moon rocks are about 4.6 billion years old and so Earth is estimated to be that old too.
I will go back to the blade of grass example but now let’s imagine each blade of grass representing 1 year of age. I am unfortunately 46 blades old, but luckily, if looked at geologically I am just a small speck of infantile cosmic debris, but still, imagine that each blade of grass on an entire football field, including end zones, is one 1 year of Earth’s age. How many football fields would you have to count before you counted 4.6 billion blades of grass?
It turns out that someone has done the math and estimated how many blades of grass there are in one square foot of an average lawn—about 3,000 blades. A football field is 120 yards (360 feet) long, and 53.5 yards (160.5 feet) wide. If you do the math, and I trust you will, you will find about 173,340,000 blades of grass on a football field. This means that if every blade of grass is one (1) year of Earth’s age, you would have to count all of the blades of grass on about 26 1/2 football fields to count 4.6 billion blades of grass. Start counting. That will bring it home.
The earth is very, very old, but let’s not stop there. Why don’t we really dig our heals in and start looking at cosmic age? This is of course where I lose the average born again Christian, especially a Methodist, but he was already lost long before my attempt to explain stuff that was not well represented in his, ahem, “Good Book”. So for those of you willing, let’s go on. Dustin did.
The universe is thought to be 13-14 billion years old.
If you sat down to count from one to 13 billion, you would be counting for 1235 years.
If just a billion kids made a human tower, standing on each other shoulders, they would stand up past the moon.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
And this just in… Pop (my Dad) tells me that his heart has beat 2,515,968,000 in his 80 years. It’s a good thought to know that I come from good stock!
All this rock and fossil stuff was making our heads spin about how old every thing is. And it made me feel young again.
Next up Canyon lands National Park. How does it compare to Arches?
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Well we arrived at the much coveted Yellowstone and it has a long history as it was the first of all the National Parks. The real history, however is its’ geological one in that Yellowstone blew its’ proverbial top about 16.5 million years ago releasing untold bits of stuff into the atmosphere. After that initial explosion Yellowstone has gone off another 100 times since. But the last 3 times is what gets all the ink. It is a bit of interesting history that no one could actually find the crater until the 60′s. It was not that it was so hard to find as it was just so incredibly large that nobody could get their geological brains around it. It is huge. 47 miles by 28 miles. The most recent eruption was 640,000 years ago and it is estimated to have been 1,000 times greater than Mt. Saint Helens, which usually defines a volcanic catastrophe these days. The cycles of eruption are on average every 600,000 years so it is long overdue for the next big, and I mean big, blow. Anyway, what was left behind, even after all those years, is truly a spectacle. The earths crust and the pleasantries we generally associate with it for providing (you know…stuff like top soil, trees, shade, food sources and water) are completely removed exposing, as Sabine put it, one huge festering sore on the earth. There is stuff spewing and spitting and gurgling everywhere you look. You think the hot springs in Ojai have a funk, well the stuff that is regurgitated out of the earth here has the distinct smell (and ph balance for that matter) of battery acid. Not exactly where you want to soak your tired butt.
There are amazing sights of Thermophiles, which is a fancy name given to those microorganisms that not only thrive, but make entire communities in extremely hot water. They are quite colorful and fascinating in that they can live in the boiling water that comes right out of the geysers. Despite their extremely colorful appearance and the fact that they are in plain sight all over Yellowstone they were only examined for life and given a name in 1965. There is only one type of microorganism that can out perform the Thermophiles and that is Hyperthermophiles (a name so new that my spell check doesn’t even recognize the word) which live inside the walls of ocean vents at the temperature of 240 degrees F (120 C) and good luck getting a view of them.
We also met some geyser gazers. They are an interesting bunch of people that spend their hours just waiting around for geysers to blow meanwhile taking copious notes on the nature of the eruption, or near eruption as is more common. Marianne had a whole notebook chock full of notes when she whispered almost inaudibly about a “stage two delay” while we were awaiting the Grand Geyser to blow. Amazingly, she had it exact when she said the next cycle was a positive loop and she predicted it within 30 seconds. Apparently that is no easy task. Everyone has heard about old faithful, but that is just about the only geyser, of the more than 300 in Yellowstone, that one can safely predict. By the way there are only 500 geysers in the entire world, so 300 in this area is quite extraordinary.
The animals, for their part, have found the geysers that are everywhere provide a pretty nifty warming spot in the otherwise inhospitable winters in Yellowstone. Animals are everywhere. We had plenty of sightings and we began to feel as if we were on some kind of wild goose chase every morning that we woke up. What was it gonna be today? At the end of the day we had trouble recounting all the wildlife we had seen. We even got stuck in a “Bison jam”.
Despite what seemed to us a clear and common theme here in the U.S. the ridiculous amount of Rangers in the park becomes quite nauseating. Interestingly there was a clear lack of enforcement in the campgrounds with generators roaring at all hours despite the regulations. Generators, quite literally are unheard of in Canada. Never did we hear one in five weeks camping in Canada. I have been known to sport my ranger hat and enforce the quiet hours all the while having them believe that I am the ranger. It’s amazing how quickly they comply.
The Tetons just pick up where Yellowstone leaves off. Autumn suddenly appeared out of nowhere and we were at once surrounded by the yellows reds and cremes of fall. It was gorgeous…and cold. Overall Sabine and feel if there is one National Park that you don’t want to miss, especially if you enjoy wildlife viewing, it would be this area. Just don’t come in the Summer, it’s the Walmart of National Parks.
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Wild animal sightings have become commonplace on our trip, but still exhilarating nonetheless. I cannot begin to explain how often we had these experiences. Sometimes 3-4 times per day!
Our days have become defined by the animals we see due to the sheer amount we encounter. Grizzly Bear, Black Bear, Elk, Bison, Orcas, Mountain Goat, River Otter, Mule Deer, Big Horn Sheep (female), Coyote, Wolf, Moose, Pronged Horn Gazelles. (I removed the pictures to hasten download of site)
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C’mon and take a walk with me
through this green and growing land
walk through the meadows and the mountains and the sand
walk through the valleys and the rivers and the plains
walk through the sun and walk through the rain
From Oregon to Washington and the San Juan Islands too
Virginia and Alaska from the old to the new.
Idaho, Wyoming to the California shore.
Tell me who could ask for more?
Yet she is only as rich as the poorest of the poor
Only as free as the padlock prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand
Here is a land full of power and glory
beauty that words cannot recall.
Her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
glory shall rest on us all. On us all.
ochs
Beautiful Town of Cisco, Utah
Sigh.
In our 5th month of travel and in Canada for the past 5 weeks, being at one with the Canadians, in their wonderful, well looked after country we were met with dismay at the U.S. Instantly things changed, for the worse. Shanty towns were the first sights that were shocking. Here were towns surrounded by beauty, the same beauty that was surrounding us in Canada. The difference here was that there was no pride in the townships. Junk yards were as common as as the local depressed bar. Dilapidated buildings were everywhere and abandoned. Towns with poor infrastructure, dismal services and products. Mind you I am talking small town here, not some artificially built, corporate owned client city. No, here were towns with nary a store with any local products. No butchers. No bakers. No candle stick makers.
It increasingly dawned on us that we were in towns that were bereft of any heart. There was certainly evidence that it was once a thriving, beautiful town with a vibrant center. Where did the heart go exactly? Well it went south to the newly minted Wal Mart for all its’ needs. No longer were these town going to depend on local U.S made products when they could get a ultra cheap Chinese or Brazilian imported product or food items. (See this link for an incredible presentation of this http://storyofstuff.com/ ). No local eateries were to be found. Only the proverbial McD’s and Taco Hell, The only bread that could be found was as lifeless and tasteless as the agri-company that produced it (about a month back). But hey, we gassed up the rig and grabbed the first cheap six pack of beer and headed south towards Yellowstone, the very first national park in the U.S. They couldn’t possibly screw that up.
Could they?
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We finally pulled up stakes and headed south after reaching our furthest northern point of Jasper, Alberta Canada. We have been in this country now for over a month and now we find ourselves rumbling down the Trans Canadian highway, clicking our 4000th mile, towards, gulp, the U.S.A. We are experiencing degrees of sadness for having to leave behind all what Canada has meant to us.
Goodbye European flair cities that combine the sophistication and nuances that offer so much in terms of diversity. Farewell to the charming townships that still have a thriving soul and have not had the life sucked out of them by corporate entities. Goodbye sweet high-end park system campsites replete with free hot showers and toilets that actually flush and staffed by happy, smart employees who make a good living and know it. Goodbye rivers so clean I could reach down and drink right from it, and did just that. Goodbye sparkling, unbelievably pure pristine air touched by hints of pine, frost, glaciers and a smidgen of a feeling for the coming of fall. A sad good bye to all the people we encountered that had positive and rewarding lives and having kind words for their own government. Goodbye the precious home spun bakeries that we depended on every 2nd or 3rd day when we needed a fresh bread restocking. No doubt we will miss the terrific recycling programs that are well thought out and easy to use. And lastly, a goodbye to a society that is able to look after itself without the need to be policed to death and does better, far better in fact, than those societies that are.
Also goodbye to brutal 6 dollar a gallon gas prices making our fill-ups seem like we were taking out 2nd mortgages. Au revoir to prohibitive cheese prices and 12 dollar six packs of inferior beer. But really, that is about all I could fault the entire our Canadian adventure. There might be room to add the bit about a garbage collection program that has you taking your garbage to the dump yourself. It at least makes you aware about how much trash you produce.
As we approached the border we started feeling paranoid about the border crossing. Were they going to grill us on the meat that we had in our freezer? Would they seize it? It actually became an issue due to the fact that we indeed had a fair amount of incredible small farm raised chicken, fresh cold-water salmon from the pristine waters of Vancouver Island and grass fed Bison from the vast plains of Alberta. What should we tell them at the border? That we have “some”? Or lie outright and tell them we have nothing, even though we have a fully stocked, full sized refrigerator and freezer on board? And if they catch us will we put on the homeland security blacklist and would that end up dashing our hopes for immigrating into Canada ? How serious is this type of “offense” anyway? Adding to all this weird drama was that the day that we were crossing the border happened to be none other than September 11th. No doubt security would be heightened to ludicrous, almost astronomical levels. It was a red day across the entire U.S borders and we were going to encounter that impenetrable wall of fear in just a little more than an hour.
It brought up all sorts of discussion as we closed in on the Port Authorities. so much so that we decided to change our route into the U.S. We figured that if we came through where the International Peace Park entrance was it would vastly improve our chances of not having our valuable contraband taken away from us. This also brought up the discussion of guns, though of course we had none, it highlighted what might be viewed as actual harmful, detrimental items that were of real concern being brought across borders. The Canadians upon entry into their country had a few questions of course about possible stuff that we might be carrying, like guns for instance. But the whole friendly conversation lasted less than 15 seconds and we were welcomed into Canada without so much as hint of concern.
Sabine and I talked about the prevalence of guns in the U.S. and we were reminded of a wonderful park that we visited back in Oregon. We had arrived at a beautiful river out in the middle of a gorgeous valley, not so removed from the city, and we found a few families having their Sunday outing enjoying the cool river. There were the proverbial beer drinkers throwing the empty cans carelessly around. However the real problem was that one of these beer imbibing individuals was packing a weapon, not in the least concealed, in plain sight, tucked behind in the shirtless small of his back sticking out of his shorts. This was a “family man” out on a pleasant Sunday outing with his kids. It was scary to see this. What was he actually afraid of? Now how can that be OK? That kind of thing should be of highest consideration and not our poor frozen chicken.
At any rate, that was the discussion that came up as we approached our newly routed border crossing. What should they be concerned with? Meat or Guns. Maybe if we were to wield a couple of Semi-Automatics and maybe a Saturday night special as we whooped it up screaming “Yeeehaww, Gawd Bless Merica!” as we crossed into U.S. territory, they would just wave us through, welcoming us back home as just another “good ole boy” family. Perhaps that would work. The deer strapped across our hood, however, would obviously have to go. You know… it is meat.
When we finally get to the border we were greeted with pent up smiles. Here we were, actually coming home. The border officer was asking us all sorts of questions and actually boarding the RV before nailing us for a lemon. What his concern exactly was we could not discern. Then the question about how long we have been in Canada. When I replied a month he looked at me with puzzlement and furthered his questioning asking unflinchingly just what do I do for a living? He never took his eyes off of mine while he waited for the answer. This was the critical part, for if I had told him that we gave our business away to the employees and we were now gainfully unemployed, well he might have handled me a bit differently. As it was I just said that we sold our business and we were on a one-time trip of a lifetime with our kids. Which is actually true. He looked at me with more than just a hint of envy and was reassured that he didn’t have a hot item on his hands. His assistant came to the window and was enquiring about my passport and asking if I was in the military! Now come on; I have been accused of many a thing but being a military man is usually not one of them. It was a strange entry and he got the illegal lemon he was looking for. Funny enough meat was never a question. He did, however, ask us at the end of the interrogation if we were carrying, not a weapon, but anything in excess of $10,000 cash. Hmm. That would have been nice. I guess military family men on a long family vacation are known for such things.
Next up: The coming to the U.S. and all of its’ glory
Forget the mountains. Just look at that Ojai dog!
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One thing that strikes me over and over again about the Canadians is that they seem to be very happy and at peace. There is no edge to them so to speak. As we traveled for the past 3 months through California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and now here in Alberta Canada I get the sense that the population that lives here in Canada are much like the animals and nature that surround them; peaceful and content. I have been talking it up with them, as I do, and found that even the workers that occupy the low wage end of the spectrum have full medical benefits for $20 a month if they are gainfully employed. The minimum wage was $8.40, if I am not mistaken, but all the people with whom I spoke made much more than that. They were employees of the park system cleaning up campgrounds the bathrooms. pretty much the lowest of the low. But they were a happy lot. Sabine and I witnessed a “crew” of three women shining up a trash can at the edge of the road. It’s amazing what kind of funding can be applied if the majority of the federal budget doesn’t go to stuff like, say, war.
Now there is much to love here beside the people and the system that actually seems to be working. Like nature, and loads of it. Man I have never seen so many trees. They carpet entire valley’s and mountains and hills and barns and housetops (no kidding) and …well you name it, it has trees growing from it. There is just no end to it. I was speaking to an ex-logger back in Tofino, he mentioned that he was making $600 per day as a feller, meaning he was the one who did the dirty work of actually cutting the tree down, that is until one of them fell on him. Anyway, the man was making serious money. He got a medical disability payment of 60K and now he was driving the tow truck that pulled us out of that nasty jam a few weeks back. He said that the green people had protested so much that they are only logging 20% of what they were logging just 5 years ago. Real estate prices went through the roof and the loggers were out of a job. Sad, but I guess that is the price of good stewardship. Somebody has to take the fall and it is no longer going to be the old growth trees.
That said, we came to a place that has mountains. Crazy mountains and crazy weather. We thought we were on a summers vacation but here in Jasper it has turned into a winter wonderland. In fact, Dustin was just munching on an iceberg today. That would have been a 400 million year old glacial berg, so I trust it was fresh.
Man the sights here are incredible. Yesterday, in fact, as we were just coming into the campground Sabine sees a wolf, I see a bear and her cub and then we see a grazing Elk. When we finally got our campsite there was a huge female Elk (whatever they are called) waiting for her man basically in our campsite! She had deposited all her poop in and around the area and we didn’t feel too good about the entire scenario and then we realize that it is the peak of mating season and just the other week a kid was trampled on by a male Elk who must have thought the poor boy was going take his gal. He’s alright by the way (the boy) but these things can get quite serious. The girl who told me this story, by the way, was the camp ground booth attendant who also went on to tell me that she couldn’t make it to work one day because a herd of Elk had her house surrounded. She now carries an “Elk Stick” which she described as a hockey stick with a Canadian flag taped on the end of it.
We visited a terrific place called Edith Cavell Lake which was a glacial fed lake with real ice bergs floating around it. It was surreal. Look real close and you will see us in the one picture hanging out at the shore.
We visited the famous Athabascan Glacier that is fed by the Columbian Ice field, known to be the largest glacier in North America. We took a snow coach out into the middle where the ice is 1200 feet thick! It is retreating (melting) due to global warming at a rate of 18 feet per year at its’ toe and accelerating. We figured the kids ought to see it before it disappears in their lifetime. Of course we just dipped our thirsty snouts right into the glacial runoff and tasted, gulped actually,the purest water in the world. That’s me and the kids next to the coach.
Somewhere in the U.S. today there were children in school behind their desk “learning” about the Ice fields, mountains and wildlife of far away places such as the North American Rockies. No doubt in the textbook it was following the lives of Big Horn Sheep, Elk and their mating rituals (perhaps not that bit) and maybe the habitats they thrive in. It was ironic to have this thought meanwhile having these animals right in front of us. Today we went to Malign Lake and we saw those very same textbook sheep and when we came back to the campsite we were surrounded by Elk. Just like yesterday there was an Elk but this time it was the Stud with a full rack just taking over our site. He had two females to choose from. Here he is at our camp site:
Camping rules here are draconian by any measure. Quiet hours between 10PM and 7AM, (wait, that would be 2200 -700 in Canada). No biggy there but there is a fire ban and alcohol ban between those same hours and if you are found to be consuming your favorite alcohol laden beverage after 10PM, well, they take all of it away, evict you, and you are banned from the National Park system for 48 hours. Pretty heavy stuff until you really start thinking about it. Who actually drinks after 10Pm anyhow, especially when you really want to be up at the break of dawn with all the other animals? The only reason you would be imbibing at that hour would be for the sole purpose of getting drunk(er). Trust me, you do not want to be drunk, feeling your way through some brush to take a badly needed pee and find a 800 pound buck who thinks you are the one for him. In these cases the animals get the benefit of the doubt and your beer bladder has no place here. I personally like the rules. I come to a place like this to enjoy the solitude of nature, away from the city distractions. I can save my poker parties for later.
Recycling has been taken to new levels unheard of back in the States. Nothing goes to waste here. It would make an Arcata Green Party voter proud.
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We arrived in Nelson just in time for the hot weather to break. Fierce thunderstorms and loads of rain. Nelson is gorgeous with a lake view and the pristine hills dense with pine trees. Very little human activity outside the charming little city. Things are different here, to be sure. What we would consider a protected watershed corridor in the States is just another hill of trees here. The water is pure because of them. Salmon are ever present in these pure waters. There is a bit of a parallel to Salmon and me. Salmon basically live to lay their eggs and then they die a slow death.
People really like to talk about the weather here, maybe because there is lot’s of weather to talk about. Here we are, end of August and I overhear a conversation like this: “…so, winters aboot over, eh?” “yep, surer than night, eh?” well, have a good winter eh?”
Sure enough it feels pretty winter like. About what a cold winters day in Ojai would feel. This has Sabine and I thinking serious about the possible move to these parts. People and the society seem very gentle and caring. No one seems to have an edge. It’s as though Europe found it’s heart here. It looks like Austria in any ways and I guess that is why there are so many Europeans here. Certainly there are more Europeans here than in Southern California.
An interesting factor of Nelson was that there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of disenfranchised population of younger folks hanging out on the street corner with their hats laying next to the gutter, w ay more than Ojai. Wether they were locals or just stragglers taking advantage of the liberal bias of the community or the tourism was not clear. The Twelve Tribes were also active in the community recruiting through the stomachs of those very people who were otherwise homeless. They operate cafes and the fine one in Nelson is called The Preserved Seed. Good, honest people except they believe that Man was created out of Gods’ hand in one fell swoop a couple thousand years ago and put here to master the Earth and the “beasts” as God’s chosen one. One simple ice core drill in the 400 million year old Athabascan Glacier just north of here could shed a lot of light on their strange geological beliefs. They have no idea what WiFi is, nor did they care. Ditto Darwinism.
Staying with three Ojai families Jeff, Kim, Miai, Remy, Patty, Garret and their daughter Shae. Barbara, Shawn and their son Hunter. They are all very generous to share the summer retreat home overlooking the Kootenay Lake at the 6 mile mark just outside of town.
Water water everywhere.
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In this case Sabine wanted to take a picture if I could just pull off the highway a little…
Oops!
Oh, and here is the picture
Two tow trucks and 580 bucks later
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This one says it all
Gotta Love this sign from Victoria B.C
In a country where everyone matters
And that means everybody!
