Montana and Guns

     I was in a grocery store parking lot in Havre (pronounced have-er), when I was approached by a man who used to live in Patchogue and born in Brooklyn.  He now works in Montana for the railroad.  He mentioned that there were very few taxes on anything and then went on to say that they had almost no gun control laws and they had very few problems with guns.  That is the problem with statistics.  I did a little research and found that Montana did, in fact, have the lowest level of murders by gun on a per capita basis in the nation according to the FBI.  This makes sense because I just took like 4 days to drive across the state and they have less than a million people in the whole state.  People don't have enough contact with other people to get angry enough to murder them.
     Interestingly, another on-line source reported that Montana ranked 6th in the nation for total gun deaths per hundred thousand citizens.  Apparently, there are a lot of accidents involving guns (it's hard to prove murder in a hunting "accident" and ballistics aren't of much use with a shotgun).  Also, a lot of Montanans commit suicide each year.  Seven of the states with the strictest gun laws in the nation were in the list of the 10 states with the lowest per capita rates of gun deaths in the country.
     In 2010 and 2011, there were a total of about 64,000 gun related deaths in the US.  This is such a shameful statistic, which dwarfs every other industrialized nation in the world.  So, in those two years, thousands more US citizens died from gunshost than US soldiers died in the Vietnam War. I am sure I would feel differently about guns if I didn't live in suburbia, and lived far from help from the authorities.  Apparently, some gun owners are looking to protect themselves from the authorities (as if they have a real chance).  I am not going to get into a 2nd amendment argument.  However, we need to make gun owners legally responsible for damage inflicted by their guns, the same as car owners, based on the doctrine of dangerous instrumentality.  Then gun owners will store them properly and safely or be subject to liability to victims injured or killed by their gun.  I would also require biometric devices on all new guns that would only allow the gun to be fired by an authorized user. This wouldn't help with the 100s of millions of guns already in the hands of the American public, but would offer a person worried about self defense a way of owning a gun that would insure that only he or she could fire the weapon - not their young child, not a mentally ill person, not a troubled teen contemplating suicide, not a thief, and certainly not the criminal that got the drop on them. This could save many thousands of innocent lives every year. And shield the gun owner from potential liability.  It probably would have avoided Sandy Hook.  It's a start.
     Sadly, Montana also is at the top of the list in terms of automobile deaths in the country, again on a per capita basis.  The American Legion puts little white crosses beside highways where the deaths occurred. (It seems that everyone gets a cross, irrespective of their religious affiliation.)  There seemed to be a lot along our route; sometimes 5 or 6 in one place.  Montana repealed its "reasonable and prudent" speed limit some time ago.  However, a surprising number of two lane roads, with minimal shoulders and questionable maintenance, now sport 70 mph speed limits.  I am pretty sure it would not have been reasonable and prudent to do 70 on them before the imposition of a speed limit.
       
   
     

We passed this abandoned farm building today, again traveling HWY 2 across  hundreds of miles of wheat fields among deserts in the Columbian Basin of  Washington. Washington has deserts and it was 104 degrees F in Spokane yesterday.   Near this site a motorcyclist died today.  Going too fast over the rough road, I suppose. We saw the motorcycle being hauled away and the chalk outline of the body and were reminded of how quickly life can be gone.  This is not my photo or Pat's but from the Internet.  Amazing I could find the farm building I wanted to stop and photograph. Although this wasn't the worst stretch of road we have covered, it did have unexpected bumps and very few pull overs or wide enough shoulders to stop and take photos. The landscape is bleak. But farmers were bringing in the wheat today with their big combines and it was just a little bitter and ironic to me. Life and Death.

Walk to the Waterfalls

     Stef posted some pictures from today's activities.  We took a fairly easy trail down to the falls.  It was really a beautiful spot, and I found myself singing a song that my friend Linda and I sang for a recent service at UUFSB, "Standing in this holy place, eyes open to the light, that I might see what you can only see in darkest night.  One thing I see for certain in the light of stars above, if we love this land that we walk upon, we've got to hold on, to what we love." (Greg Artzner and Toni Leonino)

     The water from St. Mary's Falls is the same beautiful blue that you see when you look down into crevices on glaciers.  Come to think of it, I saw that blue last winter while shoveling many feet of snow.  I am told it is the lack of oxygen in the snow that causes it to appear blue, but I don't know for sure.  

    I really didn't want to leave as quickly as we did.  This was the least crowded of any trail we went on here at Glacier National Park.  Logan's Pass and the trails leading from it look like Times Square on New Year's Eve.  The mountain goats and big horn sheep must be used to the crowds, because we saw a lot today and heard reports of many more nearby.  A small herd (I counted 14) of big horn sheep was on a slope right across from the Logan Pass Visitor Center. Very exciting. 

    I understand that Yosemite and Zion National Parks have banned cars from the parks and only permit access via shuttle bus.  I might not go that far here, but I would limit the number of cars allowed up on the Going to the Sun Road each day.  We have used the Shuttle Bus system exclusively.  Sometimes we have to wait for a bus, but it's probably no worse than the wait for a parking spot at Logan Pass.  

     

One of the 25 Glaciers left out at Logan's Pass. Can you pick Pat out.

We made it to Glacier as you can see from Paddy's great photos of the Mountain Goats and ground squirrel from yesterday's wayfarin adventure. He is using the "real" camera as much as possible now, but the photos on this page are from my phone. 
The first day (Friday) it was blowing still 35 mph with gusts in the 60s so we stayed close to the RV. Paddy had to rest from the white knuckling experience of driving in those kinds of winds.  9000 people were still out of electricity on Friday. We walked about 3 miles yesterday and 6 miles today.  Getting better but still winded.  You see Paddy going ahead of me to the glacier fields near Hidden Lake, a 480 feet upgrade 3 miles).  We didn't get to go to the entire trail because of BEARS-the big kind-Grizzly. The Park Service now closes trails if bears are seen.  The idea is to NOT have any encounter! The method is make a lot of noise especially near streams and blind areas, carry bear spray (like pepper spray), avoid walking near cow parsnip and berry patches, at dawn, dusk and night.  We are about the only ones without spray, but we sing along the trails:"Love is the Water that Wears Down the Rock", "Help Some Body", "Do Must What Be Done" and my all time favorite "They Call the Wind Mareah". There are 250 Grizzlies and 500 Black Bear in Glacier alone.

A closeup of my mountain man.

My favorite hike today was another climb, but this time down to St. Mary's Waterfall and Virginia Falls then again back up.  Everything is far apart in this International Peace Heritage Park of 1720 square miles so we took the shuttles.  In 1910 there were 150 huge glaciers and now only 25 small remaining and will most likely be gone in an estimated 6 years according to the National Park system which states that without a doubt climate change and global warming is the cause for the extreme lost of fields.
The mountains, rivers, lakes and meadows are sacred to the Blackfeet, Salish and Kootenai Peoples and hope lives here in recovery of animals like the wolves, bear and lynx.  The hope is that even the mountain lion will regain a foothold some day. There are millions of visitors each year and the hope is that by educating people we will learn to value wilderness and its sacredness. Paddy calls this land  "Cathedral".

Mountain Goat and Kid at Glacier NP - Amazing!

Columbian Ground Squirrel at Glacier - Very Cute

Riverside RV Camp Cut Bank MT

One of those days...We found out where we were going to stay in the mountains of N. Washington after Glacier was closed because of forest fires and the winds are so strong today weather advisories suggested you park your RV and wait 24 hours.  Pat could hardly keep the RV on the road between Shelby and Cut Bank less than 25 miles with only 2 hours to go. So we are at an interesting private RV Campground on the bank of the Cut Bank River in downtown Cut Bank, it does have a McDonalds, which we will not eat at! Interesting because part of the views are unique and part are industrial. Above is photo of the beautiful view! We knew something was up when the 200+ Wind Farm out of Shelby had only a few wind turbines turning.  The winds are gusting at over 60mph. Montana's wind energy has increased by 32% since 2013 and hydroelectric takes second place at 107 BTUs to 157 BTUs, the resource is coal.  We are searching for "TRUTH" on this trip, it is all about perspective!
We past 3 Buttes over 6000 feet high with no snow on them and the temps are suppose to rise over the next few days until they reach close to 95 degrees, in the mountains.  Oh boy! Oh boy! as Toby would say.  We will be inspired if we find any glaciers left in Glacier National Park. Pat has photos of the Wind Farm, I think.

So let the Sunshine In!  UUFSB's (the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship which we consider our spiritual community) Solar Panels went on-line today, making on a sunny day 109 kilowatts.  UUFSB uses that about everyday in the summer so we will be making hay later in the Autumn when we don't use as much, banking that energy.
Thanks all who contributed to this effort!
Energy is on our minds as you may guess after the last couple of bloggs...can we call the writings something different???Blogg sounds so blog or down. I think they should be called wonderings or wayfarings???
I am trying to figure what in the hell the above photo is about?? But it is kinda of interesting.
Sometimes my phone camera takes pictures of my leg, the dashboard or Paddy's butt and I know I didn't mean to snap any of those photos. 
We left Fort Pec Downstream Campground, Montana, sadly, but The Wedding Calls and we have to cover a few more hundreds of miles to make it on time. Fort Pec had everything a kid like me could want! I think I could spend at least 4 days there which is 1 day more than my record. Wonderful helpful youth in the Interpretative Dinosaur and Historical Museum, fishing, swimming, biking and no mountain climbing or swarming mosquitoes, although the camp hosts (from Florida) told us they are bad sometimes. Montana has hundreds and hundreds of miles of reservoirs built for flood control and irrigation and then later to make energy (after WWII). Bill Lynch and Joe Catapano would love the tour of the Power House and Hydroelectric Dams. Pat couldn't believe the size of the wrenches used in maintenance and tried to lift one, luckily it didn't hurt his ability to drive this machine. The Earth Dam  at Fort Pec is amazing, the largest in the world, and the information for history and geology learners incredible.  FDR New Deals made jobs for people up here when the farms were failing and the people were starving and now there are hundreds of miles of bird and wildlife refuges (Some of  largest migratory bird refuges, Charles M. Russell-named after a famous artist)  and Bowdoin.) At Fort Pec, an entire town was built, they have a summer theater in one of the historic buildings and a hotel which reminds us of one of Yellowstone's. 

 One of the things we knew might happen with this semi-ass big Proud Mary RV is that we couldn't get down very rough roads, well the dear Wildlife Rangers at Bowdoin got on the ground with Pat and said it probably would be ok, but couldn't understand why our landing gear(leveling) was so low. No problem we road the tandem bike.
But Pat is calling the Mennonites and trying to find out more info. Bowdoin in the photos has one of the largest shorebird and white pelican sanctuaries in the  country. It has over 263 different species of birds and 2000 in number white pelicans..I think they must travel back down to the Gulf in the winter. There are also many mammals including Pronghorn Antelope and wild Horses.
Paddy is doing laundry, I have to start cooking at this first Private Campground we have stopped at, but they have chickens and we bought a doz eggs for $2.00 and gladly. Montana has also been great for 4G and being able to make a "hotspot" for Pat's work.   I can't believe how many words I have misspelled  like Cores/Corps.Oh well. 

Dinosaur Trail

We are now at Ft. Peck Downstream Campground in Montana and on the Dinosaur Trail next to the largest earth dam ever built for flood control, irrigation, recreation and also hydroelectric (by FDR and the New Deal!) Beautiful wildlife refuge. Great Day! Great Campground for kids with bike trails, easy distance to beach, fish ponds and the Interpretive Museum and Power House Tour!!! Interesting for the Physic and Earth Science minded. And Me, still the kid! I will write more later.  Here are the photos.

All these displays are part reconstruction and part the findings near here.

 Pat and I liked the Museum better than National Museum of History because you could bike to it and also spend an hour on the history.

Looks like Pat's photo of Prairie Dog, but these are in the museum. 

On our way to Montana we stopped at Fort Union, one of the International Trading Posts established by Astor across the country.  He made $ millions and the Native Americans received cloth from England which they valued because Bison fur was too hot in the summer.  Beads came from Venice, other goods as far away as Russia and China.  The Russians liked the Bison fur.  Audubon created many of his paintings in his 4th book here. This Fort only gets about 100 visitors a day.  We got to touch all the type of furs traded including badger and otter (very soft).

Funny time exchange here.  The parking lot runs along the Missouri River (one of the reasons for the trading post) and the Missouri separated Mountain Time from Central Time and you can stand on one side of a sign and be in Montana and North Dakota on the other. The time on the cell phone flips back and forth.

Paddy calls this rock formation the Apostles.  All the next photos come from our visit at Theodore Roosevelt. Below see FDR Conservation Core's Work amidst the yellow sweet clover (an invasive species in the native grasses) Then the next photo see the Little Missouri River wander through the Badlands.  Now for the funniest story of the week.  We are riding our tandem to Caprock Coullee to hike to the Prairie Dog town. (Pat will send photos of those along later). We come on area called the Long X trail where cowboys herded cattle and there sat four huge bison. There heads are almost as big as me (1500-2000 pounds) and they did not like us.  The ranger said they ignore cars and RVs but for some reason bikes seem to disturb them. We peddled like no tomorrow. Along the way back  to the campground from the hike we get on our tandem and see a herd of bison.  He got a great photo of the herd of bison with calves, a far away photo...and then whoops, a big bull is racing beside us and we go off the road and almost buy it right there.  We get away from that encounter and there is another one just sitting at the roads edge looking straight at us like he/she might charge us next. So the photo at the end of this was safely taken from the Proud Mary (she is much bigger than any old bison.)   ONE LAST NOTE!  PLEASE FOLKS COMMENT. WE NEED TO HEAR FROM YOU! JUST CLICK ON "NO COMMENT" and a place should come up for you to write something! Tell us what is going on in your lives.
Pat is starting to use the camera so many photos will be better once he figures how to load it on the computer and send on the blog.  We are learning so many new skills.
But one skill I never will have... I don't check my spelling or edit my grammar (dyslexic, you know).  Don't have time because we are never at a 4G place long enough, so forgive me.  I did note on one read back that I failed to say for every oil well it is estimated that 10,000 jobs are made.  That doesn't seem like an exaggeration when you see what we have seen on the road. I get the idea from many local people that they think about it the same way the Park Rangers think about the invasive clover species. One person described it as the "gold rush" of 2014.  We wonder what will happen to all the metal homes, rigs, etc.. once everyone leaves, metal ghost towns, disrupted wildlife and human lives?? We found out one other sad piece of information: 80% of the water they use for the fracking stays in the ground to find its way back to the surface through the cracks and broken pipes; the other 20% goes to their "salt water" disposal stations where they inject it 1000 feet down. Pat is finding all kinds of information bad news.

Bison own the road!

The Mighty Bison

The Mighty Prairie Dog

The Rest of North Dakota

    Based on my last post, you would have thought that maybe ND had a bad rap.  Turned out that we had not yet gotten to ground zero for fracking.  It was disturbing that it was happening on farmland.  However, we turned off on a scenic byway.  As we came over a rise and got our first glimpse of the Missouri Breaks (Badlands), we were treated to the most beautiful scene of our trip.  Then there was the total heartbreak of the roads, the trucks, the water suckers and pipes, and the numerous scars for wells, depots, offices, camps for the oil field workers, sleepy little cowboy towns that had been turned into god-awful clusters of temporary buildings.  And everywhere the dust and the noise and the wide loads.  

     Honestly, is nothing sacred?  Will we rape every piece of land and threaten our health, water supplies and wildlife habitats, so that we can continue to enjoy cheap (relatively) energy.  Why do we cling to fossil fuels as if our lives depended on it?  It can only end in environmental and economic disaster for the US.  

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 Our campsite at Theodore Roosevelt Grasslands.  Thanks Maureen for the bumper sticker.  See how dirty the RV is from travelling down Scenic Byways.  We have seen bison up TOO close, prairie dogs and bighorn sheep.

We left the Oxhead Daisies, Lupines and Orange Hawkweed behind in Minnesota for flowing fields of Yellow Rape Seed (Canola), Blue Linseed and tall majestic White Wind Turbine farms in the first part of North Dakota. And then we traveled along the Byways 22 and 85 (Once two of the 275 Best Scenic Drives in the US near where Theodore Roosevelt hunted buffalo and elk from his Elkhorn Ranch, cowboys herded cattle across the Long X Little Missouri Trail and the Assinibone, Crow, Blackfeet, Cree, Ojibway and the Hidatsa traded buffalo robes and other furs for guns, blankets, knives cookware and beads at Fort Union Trading Post.  Theodore Roosevelt founded the National Park Systems through the Antiquities Act as I recall but maybe I am wrong.  Here is what we found and I call it Coyote’s Story. It might rain tears tomorrow.

Prairie Dog was the lookout for the day.  He listened as Coyote sat on the Windy rainbow colored Butte and howled a warning:  “Big Animal Coming, it has many legs and glides on the land like Gold Eagle flies in the air, it will destroy your Village.” But Prairie Dog did not listen because Coyote was known as a trickster and he did not warn the others.  And so, very few escaped the Big Animal as it glided over the village, not only burying homes of Prairie Dog relatives, but also collapsing those of Rattlesnake and Badger.  Over the next few months 2000 Big Animals, called Trucks by humans, invaded all of the Land around Prairie Dog’s town.  They destroyed all the Land around Prairie Dog’s Village, bringing in a drill rig, well pad, pumpjacks, debris pits, storage tanks, and disposal areas for the “salt water”. The water was once beautiful when it was taken from the Little Missouri River and Lake Sakakawea, but had been pumped down into the Earth to “hydraulically fracture” the Land in order to extract oil and now was contaminated.  

Coyote went to warn Buffalo, Pronghorn Antelope and Cougar that more TRUCKS would be coming. They had their ancestor’s memory and recalled the first warning from the past over 200 years ago when humans had herded wagons, cattle and horses. The Land shook and cried more this time; the rumbling was louder. So Buffalo, Pronghorn Antelope and Cougar fled once again further across what humans call the North Dakota Badlands to a small oasis by the Little Missouri River. In the distance at night where only stars could once be seen now flares are seen and during the day a haze covers the once blue skies.  Coyote is not the trickster anymore, humans are…but they are only tricking, deceiving themselves. The Wind knows this and also that soon humans will have taken all they can from 2 miles below the surface of the Land and then The Wind will rejoice as these Badlands are reclaimed, made quiet and beautiful Goodlands once again, because Everything is Holy Now and … (Music to follow)

For every new well drilled 2000 TRUCK “events” occur, this is a fact and new wells are being developed every day.  We had to stop and move off the road at times when wide loads pass us going to a site no doubt to house workers.  In old cowboy towns one bedroom apartments are said to cost as much as $3200 a month.  We saw trucks carrying pipes and water tanks and others to bring in lights for night time work. 10,000 jobs have been made with the industry but what has been taken away? We saw “For Sale” signs on farmlands saying commercial or industrial site vs farmland.  We saw very few “homesteads” enriched by this “fracturing” of the Earth. Last night at one of the Sakakawea Lake campgrounds the docent purposely told Pat they did not allow oil industry workers to camp there. The Theodore Roosevelt National Grassland where we are camping for the next two days is the oasis I wrote about in the story.  It is Incredibly Sacred and Holy.  Only 1% of this Land is protected in North Dakota from our greed and yes it makes me cry tears so there will be rain tomorrow. I understand there is a new film called “Gasland 2” being distributed. When we get back from this Wayfarin Journey I will get it for all of us to review for the sake of this Good and Sacred Earth. The Wind blows here almost all the time.  Why not build them? The scaring of the land will be less and we can still have our energy.

 

The trail to the Prairie Dog Town

Yu can't see all the wells in the background, but this is what we saw over and over.

 

North Dakota

    Although I have crossed the country by car or RV 5 or 6 times, none of my journeys had taken me to North Dakota.  The eastern part is flat.  Not much else to say.  The towns aren't very appealing and I wonder what in the world would hold someone here.  

    I expected to see a fracking well every mile or so.  There was none in the eastern part of the state along Route 2.  There are a lot of wells in the vicinity of Parshall Bay, where we are staying tonight, although most of them are oil wells.  Stefani's phone says ND is now second in oil production in the US.  If there are more people here because of the boom, there isn't much evidence of it.  This state is fairly empty if you aren't in a city.  We went through Minot today searching for a grocery store.  That place is full of traffic, but the state fair started today.  Just a snapshot is all we will ever get.  

    To my surprise, we saw at least 200 large windmills operating nearby our route.  The state generates 16% of its electrical energy via wind according to the phone.  Again a snapshot, but there appears to be plenty of wind here.  The windmills were rotating nicely.  

    Tomorrow, we will post pictures (to be taken) of bright yellow canola fields, which are flowering now.  It looks like something from the Wizard of Oz.  (Yesterday, we learned that Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.)  Sometimes, the yellow fields are planted adjacent to the blue flowered crop that we think is linseed. It is beautiful. At other times, the canola fields lie behind stands of deep green cattails. 

    Went past the geographical center of the US.  We couldn't have been more than 200 miles from Canada.  I am sure I have heard this stat before, but it is still hard to get one's head around.  

    Tomorrow is Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  No reservations and no expectations. For whatever reason, I have yearned to see unspoiled grasslands.  

    Not sure why I waited until over 3 weeks in to start chiming in on the blog.  I have had quite a few work assignments over the first part of the trip, which I have often been working on while Stef was blogging.  Then there were the many guitar nights.  It's not TV - we haven't seen TV of any kind since Buffalo. Cheers!

The Edmund Fitzgerald

                Earlier in the Freedom Tour, we visited the nature/visitor center at Neys Provincial Park.  We loved it there.  It has a nice center and was quite informative.  I was both shocked and moved to find on display a life ring from the Edmund Fitzgerald, which was found by a light house keeper washed up on shore a few years after the ship was lost on this impossibly big lake, Superior.  Why here in the campground of this little known provincial park, I ask myself.  We were not supposed to stay at this lovely park on the north shore of Lake Superior.  We got bored at Rabbit Blanket and so headed down the road to Neys, which has a long, sandy beach littered with driftwood and some very interesting geological features. 

Now, Gordon Lightfoot is one of my all-time favorites.  I have a number of his songs in my repertoire.  I play a Guild guitar because Gord always played them.  I have never learned “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, even though I am moved by the story (true) and it is quite easy to play.  I enjoy listening to the song, but I doubt I will ever undertake to play it.  The original is just too good and too haunting.  Because the wreck happened on Lake Superior, where we were then touring, I had found myself thinking of the song or singing the pieces of it that I know.  According to the lyrics, “the sailors all said she’d have made Whitefish Bay if she’d put 15 more miles behind her.”  I found Whitefish Bay on the map.  It is at the far end of the lake from Neys, making it’s being there all the more unexpected.   Neys is probably more than 200 miles away from Whitefish Bay.  Yes, the lake is that big. 

                What drew us to this place?  Have I received a message?  It is certainly tempting to find deeper meaning in such a curious occurrence.   Maybe it’s that we should be less structured in our travel plans and open ourselves to the unexpected.  Maybe we should have stopped in today in Elaine's House of Dreams in Lakota, North Dakota. She arranges flowers, sews, bakes and serves coffee and food. I am sure she has a wonderful story to share.  Wish we had heard it.  

On Traveling/Camping With a Cat

     First, it takes considerable advance planning, much of which is based on our prior unhappy experience.  Having the litter box in the shower is bad.  It is not pleasant to step on litter in the shower stall.  It happens even with one of those hooded boxes.  My search of the net turned up a plastic bucket with a cover, said cover having a cat sized hole in the lid.  For the nominal price of only $180 US, the maker claimed that the cat would shed all of the litter from its paws as it climbed from the chamber. I ask, what is harder to believe: 

    1.  The advertising claim. 

    2.  That our 11 year old cat would actually climb down into a hole on a plastic bucket to do her business. 

    3.  That someone would charge $180 for a plastic bucket you could buy at Home Depot for $5. (Assuming the internet reviews are from real people, it doesn't require belief to realize that people actually paid that price for a plastic bucket, although to be fair, it does appear to have an ergometric hole in the top that would be difficult to duplicate with my jigsaw.  

    So, I bought an ordinary litter box a fitted it into a cabinet in the RV.  3 weeks in, it is working well, except for our plan to use the litter made from recycled paper.  It didn't pass either the clump test or the smell test.  

    On past trips, we kept Eliza (the Cat) in a cat carrier while driving.  Besides being clearly unsafe (although arguably more safe than her crawling on my head while driving), her incessant crying was very hard on the nerves.  It took maturity to truly understand my Nana's frequent complaint "You're getting on my nerves". We found a compartment under the bed.  It looked to be adequate in size and shape, and was far more safe and secure.  More importantly, being as it was at the back of the RV, we wouldn't hear her crying. Unfortunately, the lack of ventilation in the cubby promise to end the crying problem permanently, and lifting up the bed to let her in and out would be difficult (in fact, when the bedroom slideout is in, you can't open it at all.  I purchased a pet door normally used to let cat go in and out of doors. I drilled air holes in the plexiglass door for ventilation and installed it. It can be set so that she can go in, but can't get out. This makes it easy to load her in, provided you can find her.  I have cautioned Stefani not to use the words "trip", "leaving" or the like where the Cat can hear within 24 hours of departure.  But even without those words being spoken, there must be something about the change in routine on the morning of departure that sends the Cat scurrying into some impossible place requiring thermal imaging to locate.  Images of her being crushed, mangled or permanently trapped in the machinery of the RV cannot be casually brushed aside.  By the way, I have heard that a cat will not go into an opening that is narrower that the width of her whiskers. This is not so, although it could explain her reluctance to exit through the same opening.  So, we start each travel day frazzled and behind schedule.  

    In the beginning, travel days were surely days of terror for Eliza, even in the womb of her cubby.  Perhaps even as terrifying as piloting a large vehicle through rain, cross-winds, steep grades and avoiding even larger vehicles.  However, as time goes by, we both seem to have become more at ease with the situation.  She seems much less neurotic when we let her out after a long drive, and even has some curiosity about getting familiar with yet another change of scenery.  

   We think, on balance, she is happier being with us on the road than being left behind at home in the care of relative strangers.  She wouldn't come out and say it, but the chilly receptions we used to get when we returned home speak volumes.  We wonder how she will react to returning home after 4 months away.    

On Swatting Mosquitos

                Unless you just weren’t paying attention, you know that the north woods have 4 seasons.  Black fly season, mosquito season, horsefly-deerfly-biting fly season, and winter.  They have only a short season to do their thing, so they are generally pretty aggressive when it is their time.  I don’t think they are aware that they have a short season, however, my rudimentary understanding of genetics and evolution tells me that those who don’t bite early and often don’t pass on nearly as many genes to the next generation.  It is clear we have arrived in mosquito season. 

                To be fair, I don’t like being bitten by any insect, but I seem to have a special hatred for mosquitos.  Their bites don’t make me itch or swell.  I have only known one person who ever contracted any of the dread diseases carried by them.  All I know is that when I am in their presence, I am compelled to seek them out, stalk them and kill them.  It becomes something of an obsession.

                After arriving late at the Rabbit Blanket campground in the Lake Superior Provincial Park, we awoke the next morning to discover 2 things:

1.        Stefani was threatening to jump ship if we couldn’t get a better campsite.

2.       Our RV was besieged by hordes of hungry anopheles. 

Number 1 was easily fixed.  We quickly found one of the prettiest campsites we have ever had.  (privacy, space and a lovely view of Rabbit Blanket Lake).  No, I don’t know why they call it Rabbit Blanket Lake and no one we asked seemed to know. 

At first we thought Number 2 might not be a bad problem as we sat on a log with a fresh breeze coming off of the lake.         However, they were on the leeward side of the land yacht, plotting their ambushes.  Unfortunately, this was where the door to the RV is.  No matter how quickly we clambered in or out of the door, some number always made their way in.  Thus, the battle raged both in and outside. 

About the buzz.  At first I thought the buzzing about the ear could not be a good adaptation.  Being forewarned, it gave me an advantage.  After a few days now, I understand that the buzz is a sort of psychological warfare.  I lie awake at night anticipating the inevitable approach.  I swat blindly at the invisible marauder.  After about the third time, the light goes on and the game is afoot.  Stefani doesn’t mind too much about this, as she suffers from itching and swelling from the bites.  I am relentless in my efforts to search and destroy the offending creature. 

It may come as a surprise to you that I don’t particularly like to use insect repellent – I wear long clothing and a hat instead.  If pushed, I might spray my hat.  The only explanation is that the repellent keeps them out of my kill zone, where my slaps and claps are lethal blows.  Many of those slaps and claps are painful to me, but this does not dampen my zeal.  I have nearly ruined a pair of sunglasses and a pair of reading glasses on this trip from a too vigorous pursuit.  Maybe they will win in the long run as I slowly beat myself to death.  The walls and ceiling of the RV are also being tested. 

I don’t know why I am so fixated on killing these creatures, who have done nothing all that offensive to me personally.  Perhaps it is a hard-wired genetic behavior.  If so, I don’t think it gives me any particular advantage over my fellow campers, who don’t seem to be nearly so bothered or fixated by the mosquitos.  They have apparently evolved to apply insect repellent and enjoy being in the beautiful outdoors in temperature appropriate clothing.   They have successfully passed on their genes to their beautiful children.  I suspect that I, like the mosquito, am guided by my genetics and evolution in this regard.  Most certainly, those in the past who swatted mosquitos are more likely to be my ancestors than those who didn’t.  Given the fact that man only became aware of the role of mosquitos as a vector of dread diseases within the last 200 years or so, it stands to reason that this is not our intellectual and learned response to the relentless swatting of them.  It is surely much more primeval.   

I decided to apply repellent when conditions merited it.  I immediately relaxed and started enjoying myself more.  The buzzing of ears in bed thing is still a problem, though – I will not be wearing long clothing, hats or insect repellent to bed.  Where’s the sport in that? 

The Sleeping Giant Experience.  Months ago, I reserved a campsite at Sleeping Giant, a park located on a peninsula jutting out into Lake Superior.  The map showed that it was at the end of the loop, that it was far away from the next campsite, and it appeared to be near the water.  It was private to be sure – it was surrounded by thick stands of firs that blocked off the fresh breezes that refreshed other areas of the campground.  It was close to the water, but afforded no view.  There was a trail to our very own private beach, provided you survived the bogs and skeeter breeders that lined the path.  It was like something out of the Lord of the Rings.  As you might imagine, the mosquitos were aggressive and smart.  They seemed to have proven strategies for getting into the RV, such as sweeping in as you opened the door.  The net result was that seemingly 100s of them were inside the RV.  A pitched battle rage as Stefani and I attempted to fight them off.  She awoke the next morning with her wrists, hands and forearms covered in swollen, itching bites.  We were playing Tippie Hedron to their birds.  We began to imagine they were getting into the RV in clever ways, perhaps burrowing through weatherstripping, seals and previously unrealized breaches in the windows and doors.  We searched and investigated, we slapped, we smacked and generally walloped them every waking moment.  Just as we began to think that we had finally rid ourselves of them, more would show up.  The only thing that helped was a change of campsite.  Not nearly so private, it was wide open to the fresh breeze off of Lake Marie Louise.  It also had a fine view of the Sleeping Giant.  However, it took many more hours for us to defeat the ones who remained in hiding. 

In a lighter moment, I wondered how many Weightwatcher activity points one might earn for an hour of “Skeetercise”.  My pants are getting loose.