On the Road Again - Adventures from an Empty Nest

Beautiful Lake Huron. More pictures below. Churning across the water in the darkness and rain, above the rumble of giant engines strong enough to carry semi-trailers and RVs and trucks and cars across the mouth of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. Joe has gone upstairs to the passenger area of the Chi Cheemaun Ferry. Darwin and I are staying below, as dogs aren’t allowed out of the vehicles. It’s surreal. We are clearly moving, but the view outside the window is just a sign that says “ Les freins doivent être appliques pendent le voyage" –  “All vehicles must have brakes applied while aboard vessel.” When we left you, we had returned to the U.S., and it was lovely, but the coming week promised to be too warm for living in a black steel box, so we have headed north again.  First though, we had a delightful visit with my friends (Joe’s new friends) Nathaniel and Trina Borenstein on the east side of Michigan’s mitten. Nathaniel and I were at Grinnell College together. We were both relig...

Manitoba and the Great Lakes The Souris, Manitoba, swinging bridge (Many more photos at the end of the post)   I ended the last blog entry with a teaser: we were headed to Souris, Manitoba, the next day. I was tickled because “souris” is the French word for “mouse”. Souris turned out to be a lovely place, with a long pedestrian suspension bridge, a great bakery, and a delightful town museum. The tagline on Manitoba license plates is “Friendly Manitoba”, and it’s true. Since leaving the Southeast, we hadn’t experienced those casual friendly conversations one can have with strangers during the course of a regular day. But Manitobans are eager to engage, and will start a conversation just about anywhere. We learned about the region, heard about travels people have taken, got advice on great places to see in the region, commiserated about the shortage of rain this summer, and fielded questions about where we had been on our trip so far. Thanks, Manitoba, for such a warm welcome.  ...

 Alberta and Saskatchewan (More pictures at the end) When we have asked people from outside the Canadian hinterlands what there is to see between Calgary and Toronto, most have said “nothing much”. Heading east, it’s a land of dry hills and then endless prairie. But we have managed to spend a week in this hinterland, and it’s a fascinating place. Again setting our GPS to “avoid motorways” we have sometimes ended up on dirt and gravel roads, traveling for hours without seeing another car or person.    Calgary itself was fascinating, though we didn’t spend a lot of time there. It is made up of tightly dense neighborhoods of attached homes that each have supermarkets, dentists, theaters, etc., so lots of folks were walking, biking, and riding scooters. Not sure what that looks like when the temperatures plummets in the winter, but it makes lots of sense now. We were in town for the beginning of the Calgary Stampede – a state-fair-like event that features nightly rodeos, live...