Pandemic Diaries - Year 3 - Our Trek South and East

5 November 2023

Richard and I always take a while to negotiate where we'll spend the winter.  Our first priority is somewhere warm, or at least not cold and wintry.  Our second priority is somewhere affordable and within our budget.

 

We tried for St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.  We really tried.  We looked online at housing, wrote to landlords, avoided scams, even contacted a realtor.  All to no avail - everything we liked was either in a location we wanted to avoid (such as a gated community), or out of our price range.  What was in our price range was either inside one of those gated communities, or was too small (as in only a microwave and no kitchen).

 

So, we both threw out ideas.  I thought Las Vegas might be fun and different.  Richard suggested New Orleans.  And I thought hmmm, that could be fun.  Even though the distance is more than double, New Orleans sounded better.

We did our usual search for furnished apartments that included utilities, and found a place in what seemed like a nice area near a university or two.  In a residential neighborhood, but also walking distance to some more commercial areas.

 

The next blog will be about New Orleans.  But this is a summary of our drive here.  We didn't take the most direct route, but Greta the Garmin sent us along a reasonable route on either interstate or state highways.  There's a map of our route at the end, with each day a different color.  Photos are from our trip along the way - not many, just a few.

 

Day 1 – Sandy Point to Yakima, WA – 240 miles – Unfortunately, it was a cold and rainy drive, especially in the mountain passes!

 

Day 2 – Yakima to La Grande, OR – 182 miles – More cold, more rain, and extremely foggy in the passes.

 

Day 3 –  La Grande to Burley, ID – 327 miles – Mixed weather so not as much rain.  We hoped to go to Twin Falls, Idaho, but somehow didn’t see the exit sign on the highway so drove on to the next reasonably sized town for the night.  Finally had some sun!

 

Day 4 – Burley to Evanston, WY – 223 miles – Woke up to a fire alarm!  It turned out to be something minor burning in the kitchen as the staff began breakfast.  Greta Garmin tried to send us on a different route, we weren’t planning on WY!!!   Our day ended with deer/elk hunters at our hotel, wearing camouflage and carrying guns!!   YIKES!  Turned out it was opening day of rifle season!  (I asked the desk clerk what happens if the guys actually shoot a deer or elk - she replied they have to leave it locked in their car or truck over night.  Is that creepy or what???)

 

Day 5 – Evanston to Rawlins, WY – 208 miles.  Reports of snow in the mountains where we had planned to drive along the state highway, so we went with the more travelled route of I-80.  Cold, and crazy windy!

 

Day 6 – Rawlins to Pueblo, CO – 341 miles.  Insane wind in Wyoming, I had trouble getting out of the car at our first rest stop!  Colorado’s landscape seemed to change dramatically from Wyoming’s right after the state line - really, it went from flat prairie to hilly and piles of rocks!

 

Day 7 – Pueblo to Santa Fe, NM – 278 miles.  Sunny and warm day.  We'll spend 36 hours staying with friends.

 

Day 8 – Our friends in Santa Fe took us out - Richard went on a foodie tour with his college buddy, I went on an art and culture and shopping trip with his wife.  I think I had more fun!  Mural is "Three Sisters," by Ehren Kee Natay, referring to the Native American practice of growing corn, squash, and beans together, forming the three staples of their agriculture.

 

Day 9 – Santa Fe to Adrian, TX – 230 miles.  Windy, but we found a motel on Old Route 66.  I think the motel dates back to when that route was built, or at least 1966 or so.  Population of the town is 129 people (2021 census).  This town is the midpoint of Route 66!  (Our lunch was a taco truck burrito at a rest area mid-day!)

Day 10 – Adrian to Vernon, TX – 222 miles.  More excitement in Adrian this morning; we went to breakfast at the Midpoint Café, and found the place overrun with tourists on a Route 66 bus tour!!!  Most people were taking photos or having a morning snack, but the café was packed!  We invited a couple to sit at our table, they were from Arkansas – they told us about the tour, arranged by a company in Seattle.  This was a two week tour of Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles, with stops all along the way.  Fifty tour participants from across the US, plus four people from Ireland and at least one person from Japan. 

 

Day 11 – Vernon to Terrell, TX – 219 miles.  Greta the Garmin kept taking us off and then back on the same highway through Dallas.  Totally confusing!  We had lunch in the town of Jolly – unfortunately, they didn’t have any Welcome to Jolly tee shirts.  Very disappointing.

 

Day 12 – Terrell to Natchitoches, LA – 224 miles.  We had lunch in Kilgore, Texas, which made us laugh.  As fans of Kurt Vonnegut novels, we both think of Kilgore Trout, so we toasted this fictional character.  I have no idea how to pronounce Natchitoches, locals somehow make it only two or three syllables.  It sounds more like Nachos or Nach-toes than "Nah-chi-TOE-chez."

 

Day 13 – Natchitoches to Alexandria, LA – 56.5 miles.  Richard was not feeling great, so we cut the day short and found an affordable place.  Not a stellar day of driving, and a bit rainy.  More rain predicted for tomorrow, so if need be we can spend a second night here.

 

Day 14 – Alexandria to New Orleans, LA – 205 miles.  Pouring rain, sometimes quite heavy, but we made it.  Apartment is nice, we’ll figure out our way around, and this is home for the winter.

 

Total:  2,955.5 miles 

 

 

 

 

Pandemic Diaries - Year 3 - A Summer By the Sea

 4 November 2023

I realize it has been months since I last posted a blog, but there’s a good reason.  I had another hand surgery, on my left thumb this time.  Had the surgery in mid June, along with all our normal medical checkups.  Three months of physical therapy, which is the normal time frame for this.  And, as with my right hand, there was some extra swelling since that’s how my body just reacts.  As well as extra arthritis in the joints, though that’s something that happens to most people with this surgery.

 

That meant three months of my left hand not being as dexterous as usual.  Not that my left has ever been as helpful as my right, but that’s normal for a right-handed person.

 

However, it did make typing problematic.  And Siri was her usual unhelpful self with translating dictation into Siri-ish.  Or Siri-isms.  I never know what to call her interpretations of English, but it makes writing a blog exceedingly frustrating.

 

But we somehow found probably the best ever place to spend a summer recuperating.  We rented an apartment in a house on Sandy Point, a bit north of Bellingham, Washington, but right on the coast. 

 

We had a ground floor two bedroom apartment with a small kitchen, a huge living room/dining room area, a patio that ran across the width of the house, and my favorite part, a gangway to a 50 foot dock!  SO gorgeous to sit on the patio and watch the sunsets.  Or walk down to the dock and see the sea birds, the crabs and sea plants in the shallows, or to talk to the seals that came by and stopped to look at this strange creature. 

 

I think these were harbor seals.  We had two seals who came in the boat canal for a week or two.   I wasn’t sure if they were somehow lost and stuck in this interior canal on the peninsula, or if this was normal.  So after five days, I called Fish & Wildlife, and had an extended call with a marine mammal expert.  Turns out that seals have what experts call a “haul out period.”  Seals need to get out of the water and lie in the sun to warm up every few hours, so they haul themselves onto beaches, docks, boats, even sea buoys.  But during the summer, as the seal pups reach adolescence, parent seals teach their young to do this, as well as how to fish, open clams, find crabs, all the skills they need to survive on their own.  Seal school.

 

That’s what we saw, seal school – no idea if this was a mother or father seal with the adolescent, but they spent about two weeks in one of the side areas on the boat canal, swimming past our dock every day.  I’d go out and talk to them – the parent would ignore me, but the young one would often stop and just watch me with their giant eyes, trying to understand.

 

There was even a very young one, all alone, who was still a mottled grey color rather than the dark color like the older seals.  He/she stopped and watched me for a while.  It was a chilly evening as I chatted with this little seal, then I said okay, gotta go, goodbye, and gave a little wave.  My seal buddy actually gave me a little tiny fin wave, somewhere between a shoulder shrug and a full wave!  Really, my funniest animal encounter in a long time!

 

We also had two families of Canada geese, and watched the goslings grow up.  There was a bald eagle who would fly by several times a week.  A family of purple martins nested in a hole in one of the dock pilings – they look rather like swallows, but a bit more “robust,” as my birding friend called their body shape.  Several cormorants, sea birds that swim with their bodies underwater and only their necks sticking out, so they look like tiny Loch Ness monsters.  And a belted kingfisher who showed up for a few days.

 

The only land mammals seemed to be rabbits who’d hop through the yard and nibble grass.  We also had several baby garden snakes.  Fortunately western Washington has no venomous snakes, so I knew we could just ignore the snakes.

 

This area has about a twelve-foot tidal change, so high tide had water just a few feet lower than our yard.  Low tide was way out, beyond the supports under our gangway.  There wasn't really a beach, just cobblestones and mud and muck.  

 

People who don’t know western Washington would ask, where were you located?  It’s kind of hard to explain.  The short answer is that we were on the Salish Sea.  Never heard of it, right?  It's a new but better name for the inland waters up here in the Pacific West.

 

This region has always been called Puget Sound - but if you look at a map, Bellingham is actually quite a bit north of Puget Sound.  It's north of the area where the Pacific Ocean cuts into North America (the Straits of Juan de Fuca) and reaches around the Olympic Peninsula, and Puget Sound heads south from there.  Bellingham is much closer to the sea leading into the Canadian waters which are called the Straits of Georgia.  (This is the area between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island.)

 

So, in 2008,  regional Native American nations as well as geographers proposed calling all these combined waters the Salish Sea – the regional indigenous peoples of various tribes are called the Coastal Salish, and have similar languages. The Salish Sea seemed like a reasonable name for this region.

 

That means we're on the Salish Sea, which makes more sense since we were never really on Puget Sound.

 

To top it off, our place is actually on a man-made canal that bisects the little peninsula called Sandy Point.  It used to be a place used for gravel and sand pits.  Being right on the sea, and made pf porous materials, digging was shallow because the sea water would fill deep holes.  Eventually, someone bought the right to dig a canal connecting these gravel pits, creating a boat canal out to the sea.  They also built a marina on the inland end of this canal.

 

A huge meadow was left undeveloped in the middle of the little peninsula, and that’s now a public park.  We saw people walking or biking there; often, dogs would run down the edge of the meadow and jump in the water, swimming around while their owners either laughed or called them back to the trails. 

 

This peninsula is jutting out into the sea, but adjacent to Lummi Nation land.  (Actually, Sandy Point is part of the Lummi tribal land, but the homeowners do hold deeds to the land, so technically this is deeded tribal land or something.  Not leased, at any rate.)  On the Fourth of July, most residents bought fireworks from various businesses on tribal land, and we had quite a show in our neighborhood!  It was exciting to stand on the dock and watch about four or five different places where people shot off fireworks fairly consistently, as well as the sporadic and random rockets being fired off by more timid or less affluent neighbors.  Richard and I are very cautious about fireworks, so we didn’t buy or shoot off any – we just watched from the dock or the patio.

 

There’s also an odd mid-summer festival called Elvis at the Point.  I had never heard of it, and have no idea how long this has been going on.  But Elvis impersonators, both amateur and professional, come for this competition and sing their hearts out for one long evening.  We sat on our porch and listened – some were better than others, all were entertaining.  We sang along to each other, neither of us sounding anything remotely Elvis-like, but amusing ourselves.

 

I’ve added three maps to show where we spent our summer – you can see where we were located in relation to Canada, as well as the San Juan islands.  Our view was the back side of Orcas Island, Lummi Island to the south, and the Canadian Cascade Mountains to the north.  If we crossed the street, we saw Mount Baker to the east.  Our place was at the red star.

 

This was the perfect spot to share with friends willing to make the two hour drive up from Seattle, or friends visiting from other states.  I hosted four brunches this year – I could measure how my hand was doing based on how much assistance I needed from the friend who was sharing brunch.  Really, I went from needing someone to cut up fruit and put the frittata pan into the oven, to doing everything myself! 

 

Sandy Point is a bit of a vacation spot for locals, so many of the homes are second or vacation homes.  The place is a bit emptier in winter, given that not everyone is a year-round resident.  It probably is rather desolate in winter, between the grey rainy weather and early sunsets.

 

But it was a gorgeous place to spend a summer, with long evenings and brilliant sunsets.  I really loved being there for four months, right on the water!

 

We left by late September, heading south for the winter.  There will be a quick road trip summary blog, and then an intro to our winter location.  So, check back!