Bonnie and Clyde hit British Columbia

We love the Canadians.  We have had nothing but wonderful experiences with every single Canadian we  have met so far.  They are charming, engaging, and really, really funny.  However, the Canadian customs agents who met us at the border were none of those things when we disembarked the ferry that had taken us from Port Angeles to Victoria.  Looking back, we are quite sure that we were met with suspicion and hostility before we ever opened our mouths.  What? After all these years, did we still fit the "smugglers profile?"  What?  It spiralled downward quickly when the first customs agent we encountered (hereinafter "Canadian Bitch #1") took issue with our rather vague travel plans. When Hilary's response to "Where are you going while in Canada?" and "How long will you be in Canada?" was "We're not really sure," we were pretty much screwed.  It turns out that "not really sure" was not really the best response.  I seemed to make matters worse when I tried to clear things up by telling her we were thinking  in terms of "week-ish" (you know, close to a week) as opposed to "month-ish."  But when I blurted out that we were pretty sure we would be going to San Juan Island at some point during our stay (San Juan Island is in the USA not in Canada,) that was it.  You'd think I'd just told her that I was there to shoot eagles. While all of the other cars from the ferry were waived through the various stations, we were directed to an ominous stall in the far corner of the parking lot and turned over to a second customs agent (hereinafter "Canadian bitch #2".)  Hilary, still unaware that we were being sent to the gulags, asked Canadian Bitch #1 if she could recommend a place for lunch.  Suspicion and hostility turned to incredulity.  No, she had no lunch recommendations.  Just move along to the the public enemy #1 stall please.

Not that appearances matter, but both of the Canadian Bitches looked like major league umpires.  I'm not sure if it was unfortunate breeding or just large bullet-proof vests.  While CB#1 had made us feel really stupid, CB #2 scared us.  Sarcasm oozed when she asked where we would be spending "this, uh, week-ish of yours?" Geez, Lake Louise.  They were not going to let my "week-ish" blunder go.  CB#2 proceeded to interrogate us about our backgrounds, what we did now, what we used to do, who we used to work for, how it was that we were no longer working, whether we had criminal records, whether we had ever been turned away at a border before, etc., etc., etc.  Our passports were taken and the umpires conferred amongst themselves for what seemed like a really long time while we sat in the "suspects" stall , sadly waving goodbye to the friends we had made on the ferry.   CB#2 finally returned, handed us the passports and without saying a word she gestured toward the exit gate. We left without a recommendation for lunch.

The upside of our chilly reception of course was that things could only get better for the "Ugly Americans."  We found lunch on our own, thank-you very much, and took in Victoria's picturesque and fairy-tale like sights.  But we didn't stay long.  The next day we set off for Tofino, a small town on the western coast of Vancouver Island in the Pacific Rim National Reserve.  We were ready for some serious wildlife action.  So far, our most exciting wildlife sighting was the cow vs. elk match in the Lake Quinault region of the Olympic Peninsula (we were surprised that it was the cow that prevailed; after a mock charge, the herd of elk beat a hasty retreat while the cow gave a couple of victory donkey-kicks and swaggered back to his pack.)  Anyway, our mission on Vancouver Island was clear.  We were going to find the bears that the Australians told us were eating salmon along the banks of the rivers on the wild western side of the island.  The drive from Victoria to Tofino took us north along the infamous Malacot Highway, much like our Highway 1, and then west through rain forests and First Nation reservations.  The water here is spectacular.  There are lakes of every shape and size.  There are rivers and there are creeks.  And there are hundreds of waterfalls that trickled down the cliffs on our way to Tofino, and that gushed down the cliffs on our way back after three continuous days of rain.

We had planned on camping at one of the four star campgrounds - "Provincial Parks" as they are called here in Canada.  But the rain put a serious damper (pun intended) on our plans and we were forced to upgrade to a small cabin on the ocean (alas, no Motel 6s in Tofino.)  And given the weather, it was really nice to have a little "home" to return to after our increasingly wet and wild adventures.

We began to see eagles almost immediately - soaring in the sky and perching on snags - sometimes in pairs and sometimes alone.  But the bears were the main attraction.  And after our initial attempts at tracking were met with frustration, (as it turns out, they were not just sitting on the side of the road waiting to entertain us) we hit the bear lottery.  Some of the locals directed us to the Thorton Hill Hatchery where we were told that bears were often sighted fishing for salmon in the streams.  And that's where we found them.  Looking just like a National Geographic special.  On our first day we saw five of them. They waited patiently and then pounced on the fish that were desperately struggling to make it upstream.  Apparently the salmon only "run"  like this for three or four weeks out of the year as they return to their own breeding grounds to spawn.  This  alone would have been worth the price of admission.  These salmon were actually launching themselves out of the river and up the waterfalls before our very eyes.  We were very lucky to be in the right place at just the right time to witness this spectacle.  We watched the bears for over an hour that first day and only left when my fingers went numb and I was afraid they would fall off.  We went back the next day and there they were again.  This time, three of them.  Catching fish that were three feet long.  Sitting on rocks to rest.  Watching us from the forest above before they moved into the river.  Moving in and out of the forest.  And my favorite, standing with all four paws on one rock and peering into the water.  I took hundreds of pictures, but none of them really captured what I saw.

You need to know that our adventure was not without a measure of danger.  We were warned to move slowly when approaching the bears and to give them space if they started moving toward us.  But there were times when I couldn't see them all at once, and all of a sudden one would be climbing out of the water 20 ft away.  Yikes!  Hilary was definitely braver than I was.  At one point, he just sort of stood his ground as one of the bigger bears climbed out of the water with a huge salmon in its mouth and walked right in front of him.  All I could do was hold my breath and hope that the bear was more interested in the fish than in Hilary. I did have the presence of mind, however, to ask the guy standing next to me to snap a photo if anything horrible happened.  "That would work well in the blog" I thought to myself .  I'd call that one "husband getting eaten by bear."  Luckily, the bear was more interested in eating his salmon than eating Hilary and he took off into the woods without a sideways look.  But man, is that an adventure or what? 

On that second day, it was really hard to get back in our car and leave those bears behind.  We knew we might never see anything like that again.  Then I realized that what had made this whole experience so exquisite was that we knew that as we were experiencing it.  We were fully present, watching those bears, in that river, at that moment. It was "zen and the art of bear watching," courtesy of the bears of Vancouver Island.  And all we could say was "thank-you."

                                                     My favorite bear pose                                    

                                                      Hunting for salmon

                                                 Wish I were a better photographer

                                                  Hilary watching it all unfold                                      

Hanging with Kurt Cobain in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington

Layla enjoying the ferry to Victoria

The beautiful Oregon coast

Sand art after the storm

           My favorite sign - (if we don't stop having so much fun, I may need these soon)

Going Rogue in Oregon

That's "Rogue" as in the Rogue River.  It's all about the Rogue in southern and central Oregon. The Rogue River runs through Grants Pass, our first stopover on the way to Crater Lake.  And it's Rogue this and Rogue that.  There's the Rogue Cinema.  All of the restaurants are called Rogue something or other.  There's the Rogue Tattoo Parlor.  And it's very green and beautiful, but of course all I can think about is Sarah Palin.  Especially because the nice Canadians we keep running into actually say "you betcha."

Did I mention that Grants Pass is gorgeous?  It sits in a valley surrounded by cedar forests that encircle the horizon with these unusual scallop shapes. The white water rafting industry is big here and a there are a million places along the river offering various camping and boating excursions.  But we Motel Sixed it again in Grants Pass.  My concerns about whether Motel 6s would do it for us, as we've become a bit more "high end" over the years, have been completely assuaged.  We are just fine.  In fact, we fit in a little better there than in some of the chi-chi resorts that we've gotten ripped off at over the last 20 years.  And dogs are always welcome. 

Grants Pass also has the best YMCA I've ever seen. We've been trying to keep up our morning swims wherever we can and the pool there is the size of two Olympic pools and has a cedar roof that gives you the sense that you are swimming in the forest.  We have noticed, however, that there is a large retiree population in both Northern California as well as in Oregon.  And they do tend to crowd you out of the swimming lanes as they come to life around 9:30 a.m. and the pools take on this "Cocoonish" atmosphere.  But Grants Pass wasn't as bad as Eureka a couple of days earlier when we felt like we were swimming in Lourdes.  They came with oxygen tanks, they came in wheelchairs, they came on stretchers.  Okay, there were no stretchers, but there are a lot of retirees in this part of the country, and we are finding it's best to get to the pools before the water-aerobic classes start.

We hoped we were ready for camping at Crater Lake.  We knew that this would be the test. Although we slept in our tent in the Humboldt Redwoods, the weather was warm there and we went out to dinner every night - not exactly roughing it.  Crater Lake would be different.  Temperatures dropped into the 30s at night and we would be cooking over fires - real manly-man camping.  Again, we did just fine.  The campsites felt remote and isolated.  And there's something about cooking your food and percolating your coffee over a fire - everything just tastes better.  And Crater Lake itself was pretty amazing.  It is a blue like no other blue I've seen.  It is the deepest lake in the United States (1943 feet) and apparently the intense color comes from the way light is reflected into such depth.  What we didn't know in advance, was how treacherous this place is.  The lake was formed when a volcano collapsed into itself and it is ringed by cliffs almost 2000 feet high.  This means stomach turning drops from all of the viewing points (many that have no walls or guard rails between you and the lake below.)  Once you are there, you see lots of  warning signs showing little stick people falling to their death.  And there are signs reminding us that off-leash dogs have disappeared forever.  Needless to say, Layla stayed in the car a lot at Crater Lake.

When we were packing up to leave a couple of days later, we got a hot tip from our Australian neighbors about some hot springs somewhere along the back road to the Oregon coast.  We found the Tokatee Springs in a lush and isolated Douglas Fir forest.  We hiked about a half mile up a very steep trail and there they were. Several natural hot springs - the hottest 110 degrees - overlooking the river and the forest below.  Heaven on Earth.

Leaving SF

                                                                    Confusion Hil

Tee in Tree

Redwood Art

                                                              Welcome to Crater Lake

                                                               And to a cool waterfall

                                                 Hilary teaching Layla how to guard the tent

                                                              Layla guarding the tent

                                                             World's best campsite

Heavenly Hot Springs

                                                                     Signing off

Live from the Humboldt Redwoods

Well, we are officially on the road! We found a cricket in our kitchen on Wednesday night (who finds crickets in San Francisco?,) and saw it as a portent of good luck - the Universe saying "Vaya con Dios." But after getting a late start on Thursday, we promptly got stuck in commuter traffic and only made it as far as the Motel 6 in Ukiah. But that's okay. The developing theme of this trip seems to be "slowing it down" and then "slowing it down some more." We are not in a race to get anywhere; we are only on the road to nowhere, right? Toward that end, we are making decisions that force us to linger in the places that we do stop. So we found a great lap-swim pool in Ukiah and then spent a few hours on Lake Mendocino, where Layla chased quail (bad dog) and her water frisbee (good dog) before heading north to the redwoods.

We are finding lots of crazy critters (human and otherwise) along the way. Hilary stopped to look for guidance at a place called "Confusion Hill" and we met the cast from "Deliverance" working at the gift shop. We then took some cover shots for the Giants Calendar before heading off to the Avenue of the Giants, the scenic route through the largest old growth redwood forest in the world. Something like 52,000 acres of trees that are over 300 feet high and thousands of years old. How big are these trees? Really big, like the Russian River redwoods on steroids. Like the Big Basin trees squared and squared again. Big ass trees!!!

On Friday night we camped right smack in the middle of it all. The Humboldt Redwoods State Park is so amazing we decided to stay for another night. There is something about the light filtering through these big, beautiful trees that is very calming and very spirutual. It's like being in a great big outdoor cathedral. So when we met some people who invited us to a barbeque in a redwood grove on Sunday, it was a good excuse to stick around even longer. At this rate, we might never leave California......

I am presently blogging from Garberville, which looks a lot like the parking lot scene of a Grateful Dead show. Everybody seems to have heard about what these parts are famous for. The pot-culture is very much accepted in this region and we hear that even the old red-necks are growing pot now.

Anyway, the redwoods are awesome and all that. But might I expound for just a moment on the miracle that is our newest toy, the slingbox. Slingbox Rocks!!!! We were able to watch the Giants v. Padres on our laptop in Ukiah and on our DroidX in our tent in the redwoods! Go Giants! And on that note, I must say that we are becoming quite proficient at using our new smart phones. I've avoided all of this tech stuff for many years now, fearing that it would only be another oppressive connection to my job. But absent the job, this stuff is big fun! But they are dangerously addictive and we are finding ourselves a bit obsessed at times. Even Hilary, more of a dinosaur tech than I, was talking about live streaming and missing accessories in his sleep last night.

So we are off to a good start and it's hard to remember a time when I've felt more relaxed. It's difficut to get too riled up when our most pressing issue is whether to go to Crater Lake or the Modoc Lava Beds. It turns out that the United States are bigger than I thought they were...See you at our next stop.

P.S. We wanted to attach pictures of: us leaving SF, H looking very confused under the "Confusion Hill" sign, T, wearing a "Sandavol" tee shirt and posing in the arms of a giant wooden panda, and various shots of Lake Mendocino and Humboldt Redwoods. We'll try and figure it out by next blog...

Getting started

Are we ready to go? Well, let's see.  If ready means having a detailed picture of exactly where we are going, the answer is no.  If ready means having planned for all of the potential problems and pitfalls, the anwer is no again.  We are sceduled to leave on Tuesday and we still have a million things to do - things that probably should have been done weeks ago. We haven't started packing yet and I can't even find half of the many incomplete lists telling me about all the things that will be needed on this road trip across the USA.  And I'm sure we'll realize we've forgotten something very important (like sleeping bags - something we forgot on our last camping trip) once its too late to turn back.  But even though we plan to be gone for several months, I don't seem to be very concerned about all that remains unsettled.  And I want to hit the road  on Tuesday whether we are ready or not.  Its almost like a primal force that's pushing me out the door - I don't quite understand it, but it seems important and necessary - and like if we don't do this now, we might never do it at all.

In a lot of respects, this trip is perfectly timed - the first chapter in the next phase of our lives.  Both of us are leaving behind careers that have burned us out badly.  And while I'm trying to keep an open mind about whether I might return to my law practice, the voices inside are saying "please God, let it be something else that I spend the rest of my life doing."  So we are hitting the road, as so many before us have done, with hopes for great inspiration.  Maybe, just maybe, something will bubble to the surface.  It hasn't yet.  Honestly, right now there is just a big blank slate.  And although it feels strange not to have some kind of career goal in front of me, I think I'm starting to feel comfortable with that awkwardness. 

So, we are not terribly organized.  But it occurs to me that we are doing this trip in much the same way we do our lives.  without a lot of planning and preparation.  Sort of figuring it out as we go along.  Pretty spontaneous.  But its pretty much zero to 60 once the decision is made to act.  And  I like that about us.  I appreciate that we are both on the same wavelength as far as this goes. I guess its one of the reasons we're still together after close to thirty-six years.  So, anyway, its balls to the walls baby!  The road to nowhere begins!  We'll keep you posted!!!