Our summer vacation

Mary and I are just back from a month-long vacation in our trailer. We visited family and friends from Yellowstone (Mary’s brother Paul and sister-in-law Karen) to Nordegg, Alberta (old friend Nancy and her family. Nordegg is a small town on the eastern slope of the Canadian Rockies where Nancy and her husband Dennis are finishing their retirement home.) We had great visits with everyone and a chance once again to spend time in some of the most spectacular mountain settings on earth.

Plus, we saw a bear, our first grizzly in the wild. Mary picked it out from our speeding truck, eating berries about 300 meters away and across a river. Perfect circumstances for extended grizzly viewing through binoculars, so we stopped and watched for some time. Surprisingly, only one other car pulled over. I guess grizzlies are about as routine up there as deer are here. No one stops to look at deer in deer country, unless you just hit one in your car. On a motorcycle, you will definitely stop.

Of course, bear photos taken with our pocket digi-cam only show a brown dot in the bushes, so you’ll have to take our word for it. Here’s what the bear looks like in our photos:
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This trip was something of a trial run for a planned excursion this winter when we hope to head to the southwest for two or three months. Mary’s thinking two, I’m thinking three. I guess this will make us snowbirds, a label I don’t particularly like because it evokes pictures of elderly couples pulling trailers or driving motorhomes the size of an army barracks and staying in “parks” which are actually little parking lots with personal sewer hookups. Said elderly couples rarely leave their trailers since they can now automatically level themselves from inside and deploy their satellite dishes so the TV can go on even before their canopy automatically rolls out.

I think of us as more akin to the Lewis and Clark expedition if Lewis and Clark had a Dodge ¾- ton with a Cummins Diesel to pull their chuck wagon.

But then I don’t really have a better name than "snow birds" to describe us since “explorers” is an obvious stretch. Besides, birds have known for millions of years that when it gets really cold and the nights are long, you can just go south. They deserve respect for that, though I consider myself smarter that the average bird, so we’re going to see if it works for us.

We wanted on this last trip to see how well we could get along in the confined space of our trailer and in a setting where we spend almost all our time together for weeks at a stretch. This has never been the case in our marriage, and I think we discovered that the curmudgeon in me comes out in direct proportion to the time I do not spend alone. I need time alone to think my Deep Thoughts, like how long have birds been flying south for the winter?

Millions of years!

Also, we need to work on team trailer-backing since we still do a crappy job of me backing up the trailer as Mary shouts instructions. “NO! Your other left! Turn the wheel this way.” She yells this while inscribing a large circle in the air with her arm, which of course looks backwards to me in my mirror. Meanwhile, neither of us notices that I’m crushing small trees and driving through log fences with the outside, neglected front tire of the truck.

We’re better at this when we’re less tired from driving all day. Too bad we only have to back up the trailer after we’ve been driving all day. Quoth Mary, delivered in a calm but forceful manner: “You need to know that I will walk every fucking mile home if you don’t stop yelling at me like that.” I think that took care of that one problem of mine, anyway. How was I supposed to know I was yelling?

So for our coming winter hajj, we know that we have to drive less and stay longer in one location, and I have to take frequent walks into the desert to think my Deep Thoughts. Also, we have to remember that Scrabble is just a game.

For now, we’re back home where Mary is enjoying not getting ready to go back to work next Monday. This is the best part of early-stage retirement. It hits you about twelve times a day and by itself is enough to overcome any background existential angst, chronic depression, or even a toothache, which Mary has; thank God she got an emergency appointment to see the dentist today.

I’m watching all the motorcycle races I taped while I was gone and thinking about making a little bike trip sometime in about a month. It’s good to be home, but after two or three days I start to feel a little restless, and fall is the perfect time of year for a motorcycle tour.

Plus, I vant to be alone.