Thursday, June 12, 2008

It Could Be Much Worse!

Well, its not nice, but it could be much much worse. We had 2 1/2 - 3 feet of water, but it was mostly drained out on its own by the time we got home yesterday. It was not sewerage, as our next door neighbors had. We hired 2 young men to haul a lot of stuff out to the curb and it was miraculously gone with the regular garbage this morning. We have a lot of things to replace, but our furnace may be saved and none of the appliances or furniture was new. Some plastic boxes floated up on the tide and then back down without tipping! Someone just told me I should make an ad for Rubbermaid.

We hope to have the bedroom and TV room downstairs usable by the time Rachel and Ben get here about July 1. But they can use the upstairs guest room for a while if need be.

There is still a little water in the basement and the Emergency authorities are saying we shouldn't flush our toilet because it might back up, so we are being creative with strategic visits to friends, libraries, etc. Friends who live above a store downtown are away for 4 days now and we are taking care of their cat and showering there.

I don't have the heart to post any pictures.

Tonight Cedar Rapids is in big, big trouble with water inundating downtown and 4000 homes evacuated. Many other cities have bigger trouble than Decorah. We just need for the rain to stop!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Almost Home

We are waking up in a motel in Davenport and will be home today. Decorah has had massive flooding since a 7 inch rain on Saturday night. The best photos are at http://theinspiredmedia.com

On Monday, our basement had 3 feet of water. It was going down yesterday. Our neighborhood was evacuated on Monday, but the mandatory order has now been lifted. And the streets that were closed are opened enough to let us get home. Our river was 2 or 3 feet higher than the previous record, set in 1941. We had a bitter 5 year fight to keep a Super WalMart from filling in flood plain just below Decorah. We lost and I'm thinking CIVIL SUIT for our friends right on the river. I'm quite certain that 4 friends of ours had overflow into their houses.

We have a lot of furniture and storage items in our basement. This is not going to be fun. The weather forecast is very bad - I hope it is wrong.

By popular demand, I'm going to keep this blog going a bit longer to report to our out-of-town friends on the situation.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Another Family Picture

This is most of the family of Alan's brother, Barry.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Family Pictures for Lauren and Rachel



The little one on the right here is Anna, our great-niece. I got to attend the end-of-the-school- year program at her nursery school. Anna sang with gusto!

Alan, the Big Sports Fan

Alan is loyal to only one team, the Detroit Red Wings. We hadn't had a chance to watch, or even listen to, any of the Stanley Cup games. But for game 6, we found a sports bar in Kingston and got to see the Red Wings win the big cup. Here Alan does a high five with a sweet young college student from Detroit who wore her jersey to the bar. We had a great evening, even though we were twice as old as the next oldest person in this bar. AND even though they had music blasting on top of all the TVs.

We "Hit a Wall"

After our big day in Quebec City, we sat down to plan the next day on the town. I don't remember which of us said, "or we could just head for Detroit?" Then the phrase "hit a wall" was uttered. Suddenly it all caught up with us and we were exhausted. We had had a fabulous trip. But we were tired of studying every night as though we were facing an exam the next day. Barb told us that we had twelve hours of driving to get to Detroit, so the next day we waited until she said we had six left and stopped for the night in Kingston, Ontario.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Big Year for Quebec!

On July 3, Quebec (all of Canada?) will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of this city. I believe it was Cartier who landed here. This anniversary is big and the city is shiny bright with reminders of the big date everywhere.

Crêpe







Mine had cheese with mushrooms. Yum!
We were promised that we would think we were in Europe when we got to the old walled city of Quebec.

Happy Birthday, Rachel!!!

Happy, happy, happy birthday to our dear Rachel. What a lot of changes coming in the next year! It won't be long until she and Ben have a little boy who will undoubtedly be as curious about the world as this one was.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Quebec City

Blogger trouble and I've managed to post only a couple of pictures from today in Quebec City. Maybe I can try again in the morning.

Today we shared the streets of Old Quebec with hundreds (probably thousands) of school trip kids. Here some of them are having a wonderful time interacting with a golden living statue.

Trompe-l'œil

Gannets on Bonaventure Island


This is a 19 second clip from You Tube of the gannet colony exactly where we saw them. We learned later that this is now the largest colony in the world. One in Scotland used to be larger, but it has no space to expand and this one is gradually getting larger.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Appreciation for a GREAT SHOWER!

Tonight I wrote my friend Katy, "I just had the best shower I have ever had in a campground. I dread showers because the room is the temperature of the outside air AND there are always open windows that cannot be closed or some sort of vent that makes for a nasty wind-chill factor. This one was closed up tight, no coins needed, and lots of very hot water. Sublime!"

Setting Out for a Hike

Its a NO HOCKEY night in Canada

There seems to be no such thing as a sports bar in Quebec. We are watching the score of the Stanley Cup online. Go, Red Wings!

Huge Group of Black Scoters

(I got things out of order a bit here.) On Sunday, we turned west as we came around the Gaspe Peninsula, so we are in a sense heading home. We waited out the fog until noon and had only a few patches where we could see nothing.

What is that Water?


This is the view from our trailer window last night at Ste-Anne-des-Monts. We walked to a nearby restaurant where they found us a kind English-speaking waitress. I asked her, "Is that the ocean or the St. Lawrence River?" Our AAA map showed it clearly as the river, but I had never been almost blown off my feet by a wind off a river. The ensuing conversation was interesting. It is technically the river, but it is 100 KM across. They call it the ocean. It is salty as is the river all the way upstream to Quebec City.

One More Bird Shot from Saturday

On Sunday, we talked to a man the the interpretive center for the national park. He helped us sort out what we had seen on Saturday. I had had my binoculars along, but was too excited about taking pictures to get them out. In this photos of the birds on the cliffs, there are gannets and little black and white birds that look like miniature penguins. (You might have to click on the picture to see the larger version.) Most of the those are Common Murres. There might have been a few Razonbills among them. We did not see any Puffins. We learned that there are only a few pairs on Bonaventure. They nest in burrows or deep crevices and must be well down the cliffs to avoid being prey for foxes. We learned that there was ice in 1990 which allowed foxes to cross over and there are now 4 in residence. A Gannet can fight off a fox with its beak but a puffin cannot.
We also saw lots of Black Guillemots. And Great Black-Backed Gulls. We were told that we would have seen Black-Legged Kittiwakes, but they just got mixed up with the gulls for us. Everywhere, we have seen cormorants.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

A Big Day!

Yesterday was wonderful. We had an adventure that will remain vivid in our memories forever. I had a fever Friday night and we were tempted to delay this outing for a day, but the weather forecast for Saturday was good and for the next few days bad. So I dragged my body out and felt so happy that I did. We took a boat from Percé out and around the Percé Rock, then out to Bonaventure Island. We went around the island and saw gannets and several other kinds of birds by the thousands, in the air and on ledges. (We need to work on identifying the birds a bit more - I'll let you know.) We then landed on the island and hiked up and over it to a place where we could be only a few feet away from a solid mass of gannets, nesting and getting ready to nest. We didn't see any eggs, but some looked as though they were already sitting on an egg. Others were busy bringing in materials for their minimalist nests. They are already paired. One of the mysteries is how they find each other.

We are sitting in a hotel dining room where we had breakfast and are using their internet. The Rock and Bonaventure Island are lost out there in the fog. We hope it will lift a bit for the rest of our scenic drive around the Gaspe. The photos I just uploaded continue on another page - follow the "older post" link at the bottom. Alan says the best ones are there.

Parc national de l'Île-Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé


Friday, May 30, 2008

World's Largest Lobster

Billed as 11 meters long.

The light poles in this New Brunswick town proclaims it to be Acadian and French speaking. I've made a stab at figuring out some history, but it is very complicated. Here's a fact: New Brunswick is the only province of Canada that is officially bi-lingual. The country is bi-lingual, but not the provinces. I don't think we have seen a sign in English in Quebec.

A sign that got my attention.

Bridge to PEI

Confederation Bridge, from New Brunswick to PEI. I think it is 8 miles long. Completed in 1997. Difficult to photograph. There is also a ferry to PEI. The ferry and the bridge are both free going over. If you decide to leave, it costs $41 for the bridge and a bit more for the ferry. Clever marketing for tourism.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Can't Upload Photos Tonight

I'm connected to the internet, but I can't make blogger accept any photos, so I will try a bit of text. In the last two days, we cut across a part of New Brunswick to get from PEI to Quebec. We entered Quebec this afternoon and have started a drive around the Gaspe (that should have an accent, I'm sure) Peninsula. If you look at a globe or a big map, follow the St. Lawrence Seaway all the way from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. The Gaspe is the land to the south of the mouth of the Seaway. We have chosen to take a 500+ mile scenic drive around the tip, mainly because our AAA map put dots next to the road, indicating that it is especially scenic. When we were in Utah three years ago, we took a much longer route one day because of those dots and we still talk about the incredible scenery on that drive. We are on the south of the Gaspe Peninsula now, heading East.
The other positive thing I have to say about AAA is that in their tour books, they rate some attractions as "gems". Even though we are taking a 6 1/2 week trip, we can't do everything and we look at their gem listing as part of the study of upcoming places.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Trying to Keep up with Music


Its a tight squeeze, but I can practice my recorders in the trailer, even the bass, seen here. I hope to play with my Dames' Rocket Recorder Consort on the opening night of ArtWalk and I'm always in danger of mixing up the fingerings of the two recorders I play. So, three or four times Alan has gotten lost for a while and let me play.

Charlottetown, PEI





Today we took a walking tour of Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island. As capital cities go, it is very small, only 32,000 people. In fact, this whole province is amazingly small in all ways. Everywhere we go, we are surprised at how fast we arrive at our destination.
We aren't terribly far north, but the flowers and trees are at about the same stage here as they were in Albany three weeks ago.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Birthplace of Lucy Maud Montogomery

I visited this nice little house. Some wonderful scrapbooks kept by L. M. were on display. I learned that L. M. Montgomery was not an orphan like her character, Anne Shirley, but her mother died (age 23) of TB when L. M. was only 21 months old. Her father left her with her maternal grandparents and took off for Saskatchewan. She lived with her grandparents until she was 37 when she married a Presbyterian pastor named Macdonald and moved to Ontario. There is evidence that she missed PEI very much.

Lucy Maud Montgomery's Typewriter

Green Gables

The house and farm used by Lucy Maud Montgomery as the setting for "Anne of Green Gables". In her childhood, some elderly relatives of hers lived on this farm. I have very happy memories of watching the Anne TV series with Lauren and Rachel when they were about 8 and 14. This site is part of a national park and is tastefully presented. But the size of the parking lot told me that I wouldn't want to be in "in season".
"Anne of Green Gables" was published in 1908, so this is a big year on PEI. The book was an immediate hit and tourists started coming to the Cavendish area. L. M.'s relatives who lived in this house rented out tourist rooms. I took a nice photo of the bedroom called "Anne's room" and accidentally deleted it tonight. I always wondered how people could do such a stupid thing. Now I know!

Especially for Lauren


Lauren had a big crush on Gilbert when we watched the "Anne of Green Gables" TV series back in the 80s. He probably cured her of her crush on Dan Rather.

Beautiful Island

PEI is strikingly different from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. "The Gentle Island" is the catch phrase of the tourism people. It is very agricultural and the soil is surprisingly red. Many beautiful vistas. As always, I am frustrated in not being able to capture it the way I want. No dramatic lighting today.

What is it?


I saw big mounds of this stuff along a beach. It looked like finely shredded paper. I thought maybe it was Irish moss because I had read about it being collected after storms, but I looked at some pictures of it online and it didn't look like this.

Another Evening of Scottish Music

We moved on to Prince Edward Island (PEI) yesterday. Last night we attended the MacKinnon Family Scottish Concert near Richmond. There were 5 other people there. Reading the description, we pictured some young children playing along with mom and dad. We had a wonderful evening, but nothing like what we expected. Dad died in 1988. Mom and the kids are barely hanging on, with numerous medical problems. Mother is on the right. Floyd is in the middle. He walks with a walker and plays his fiddle by supporting his left elbow on his knee. Cecilia is on the left. She was dynamite, playing piano, bagpipes, guitar, fiddle, penny whistle and singing very nicely. Alan said that if he had known what it was going to be like, he would not have gone, but he's really glad he went.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

For Your Protection, Do Not Climb


This is a wave statue, commemorating those who were killed by the tsunami generated by the explosion in 1917. I was amused by the sign in front saying "do not climb" and the man who was running up the side to join his children at the top.

Maritime Museum


I went to the Maritime Museum in Halifax. There were many interesting displays. Survivors and bodies from the Titanic were brought into Halifax and the museum has many artifacts. The poster above is for "the voyage that never happened", the return to Europe of the Titanic. The other big event highlighted at the museum is the explosion in the harbor in 1917 when a fast moving ship collided with a French ship loaded with explosives. Until the atom bomb, that was the largest man-made explosion.