Up to Coldfoot

Turns out that a lot of information about an airplane is readily available via its registration number, typically found on the fin. If I’d thought about it, I probably would have realized that before, but it isn’t something I ever had much interest in, until I decided to look up the number on this aircraft.

Arctic Air

N3589B tells me that it’s a Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain manufactured in 1980 and owned by tour operator Air Arctic since 2007, with 310-horsepower Lycoming TIO-540 engines.

“Stretched version of the Navajo with more powerful 350-hp (261-kW) counter-rotating engines (a Lycoming TIO-540 and a Lycoming LTIO-540) to eliminate critical engine issues,” Wiki says.

Italics mine, since critical engine issues were the last thing I’d have wanted during my flight from Fairbanks to Coldfoot, Alaska (pop. 10), last Tuesday. Of course nothing untoward happened. There wasn’t even that much turbulence.

There was a chance that we might not have made it to Coldfoot, however. Not long before boarding the plane, a tour company employee told us that visibility was poor in Coldfoot, with low clouds and rain. If those conditions persisted, landing in Coldfoot might be impossible, since the place only had a simple airstrip with no instruments. Such are the vagaries of an Alaskan summer.

In that case, our flight would be diverted to Bettles, where an instrument landing would be possible. Bettles (pop. 12), founded during the 1898 Alaska gold rush and currently location of a lodge devoted to Arctic tourism, is also above the Arctic Circle, but not on the Dalton Highway, so we would have to return by air rather than tour bus.

We all said that we understood this was possible, and agreed to proceed.

The pilot was this fellow, Steve. He posed for pictures after the flight with all of the groups on board: a couple, a family of four and me. He has some years on me, which I counted as a good thing. You know what they say about old pilots and bold pilots.

Arctic Air pilot Steve

I sat in the back of the plane. When I called for a reservation about a month earlier, the woman taking my information asked me my weight. I gave as honest answer as I could, considering I don’t weigh myself regularly. I suspect I earned by position in back by being the fattest of the passengers, but I didn’t ask.
flight to Coldfoot, Alaska

That was before we all put on earphones, so we could hear the pilot talking to us, and not hear the roar of the engines. I listened to the engines for a few seconds, and they did roar — too much to put up with for the full hour and ten minutes of the flight.

Off we went.
flight to Coldfoot, Alaska

Because I was by myself in the back, with the seat next to me empty, I could look out of both windows. For a while out of Fairbanks, the view was pretty good. Such as of the expansive Tanana River, south of town.
flight to Coldfoot, Alaska

The pilot mentioned the name of this place, but I’ve forgotten it.
flight to Coldfoot, Alaska

We also had a view of the Alaska Pipeline for a while, but soon everything clouded over, and the views looked like this for a time.
flight to Coldfoot, Alaska

No matter. The thrill was still there. We spent much of the flight at 6,000 or 8,000 feet, above the clouds. Air-traffic control chatter was audible through the earphones, and I could see the altimeter clear enough all the way in the back. Guess that’s something that really needs to be visible. There was a fair amount of air traffic over the Alaskan bush, including a medevac in progress, though I couldn’t make out from where to where. Guess bush planes are the main way to get around this wilderness.

Most of the way into the flight, the pilot pointed to a display on the control panel — that I couldn’t see much from back in the back — that told us we were flying over the Arctic Circle. We were still over cloud cover. “It isn’t like you’d see a line on the ground anyway,” he said.

We flew near Bettles, within sight of the airstrip, in case we needed to land there. But pilot Steve reported good visibility ahead, and the ground at Coldfoot confirmed tolerable weather, so on we went for a landing. The landing strip was wet with recent rain, with temps in the 50s F.

In full, the place is Coldfoot Camp, at Mile 175 on the Dalton Highway, and roughly 55 miles above the Arctic Circle. It too was originally an ephemeral gold rush camp, much later (1970) repurposed as a camp for the construction of the Alaska Pipeline. Later still (as it is now) it’s a truck stop for the traffic on the Dalton, founded by Iditarod champion Dick Mackey. Last gas for 240 miles.

Coldfoot, Alaska

For me, and of interest to no one else, Coldfoot now marks the furthest north I’ve ever been, besting Vyborg, Russia, where we stopped briefly in 1994. Coldfoot is at 67°15′ 5″ N, 150°10′ 34″ W. Actually, the day before, Fairbanks bested Vyborg, but never mind.

Coldfoot is a utilitarian place.Coldfoot, Alaska

Coldfoot, Alaska
Boasting the northernmost bar in the USA, at least according to our guide (not the pilot, but someone also named Steve, who later drove our bus south).
Coldfoot, Alaska

It’s a claim I haven’t checked thoroughly, except to note that it would be unwise to have a bar up near Prudhoe Bay among the oilfield workers, and in fact Deadhorse is a dry town. Barrow (Utqiaġvik) is what the Alaskans call a “damp” town. No alcohol for sale, but you can bring your own. This map seems to confirm Coldfoot’s northernmost-bar status, though it doesn’t seem to be up-to-date about Barrow.

We ate lunch in the barroom, meals we’d ordered back in Fairbanks and which the tour operator faxed to Coldfoot. I had a decent fish sandwich and fries. Elsewhere in the complex was a dining room occupied mostly by truckers, a kitchen, a snack counter and a gift shop, and outbuildings that seemed devoted to truck and aircraft maintenance (Alaska DOT has a facility there). I understand that spartan rooms are available for rent in Coldfoot as well.

One wall included a place for stickers. People come from all over to visit Coldfoot, just like I did. Note that Buc-ee’s is in Alaska, in spirit anyway.
Coldfoot, Alaska

There’s also a post office, adjacent to the main complex, open three days a week — not the day I was there.
Coldfoot, Alaska

Still, the slot is always open, and I dropped in eight cards that I’d written earlier while waiting for the plane: two to Illinois, two to Texas, two to Tennessee and one each to Massachusetts and New York, with the promise they would be picked up the next day. We shall see how long delivery takes.

North to Alaska

Last week, I found myself at the Arctic Circle. Or so the sign said. I didn’t bother to check with GPS, since I knew it was close enough, like the Prime Meridian line in Greenwich, England. I posed with it. That’s the tourist thing to do, especially when you’ve come a long way.Arctic Circle Sign, Alaska July 2021

A fleeting but memorable moment there at 66 degrees, 33 minutes North, early during my recent visit to Alaska, which ran from July 26 to July 31. Before that, I flew to Seattle to spent a long weekend with Lilly, who has established a life in that city. I also visited some of my old friends — stretching back to college and high school — now resident in that part of the country.

On the first day in Seattle, July 23, Lilly and I walked from her apartment in the Wallingford neighborhood (near Fremont) over to Gas Works Park under a warm summer sun. That was one of the first places I ever visited in Seattle in ’85, long before the notion of walking anywhere with a grown daughter. After an afternoon nap (for me), we had a delightful take-out dinner at Bill and Gillian’s back yard in Edmonds, with another friend, Matt, joining us.

On Saturday the 24th, I had breakfast up the street from Lilly’s with a high school friend, Louis, whom I hadn’t seen in… 40 years? Late in the morning, Lilly and I went to the Seattle Art Museum, which has quite the collection, arrayed in galleries each featuring a certain genre or artistic theme – usually a radically different one from the neighboring galleries. Out to smash that paradigm called “chronology” or “art history,” I suppose.

That afternoon, we went to the Ballard Locks, formally known as the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, which connect Puget Sound with Lake Washington, a worthwhile suggestion of Jay’s. Not as impressive as the Panama Canal, Lilly said, but still a feat of 1910s engineering. That evening, old age rested (me) and youth went out (Lilly). That meant that the next morning, youth was a lot more tired than old age during the ferry ride and drive to spend the day at Olympic National Park, where we took a hike along Hurricane Ridge and then a walk to see Marymere Falls.

On July 26, I flew to Fairbanks, my base for the rest of the week. I didn’t have a rental car at first, so I got around via cabs and municipal buses in roughly equal measure – the former being infinitely more expensive than the latter, since the buses have been free since the pandemic hit. I took in the excellent Museum of the North on the sprawling campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and visited downtown Fairbanks long enough to get dinner.

The next day, I made my way to a general aviation runway near the airport and took a tour that involved flying in a small plane to Coldfoot, Alaska, which isn’t even a town, but rather a camp on the Dalton Highway, about 250 miles north of Fairbanks. North of Coldfoot, there are no services for 240 miles, until Deadhorse.

We didn’t continue further north. The tour then headed southward by bus on the gravel road that is the Dalton, stopping at a few places, including the Arctic Circle sign.

On July 28, I picked up a rental car and spent some time looking around Fairbanks, including the Birch Hill Cemetery on the outskirts of town, and then suburban North Pole, Alaska, for a look at the curiosities there. Mainly, the Santa Claus House. From there I headed south on Alaska 3, a two-lane road to Anchorage. I didn’t go to that city, but rather to a hotel near the entrance of Denali National Park, where I spent the night. Along that road, I unexpectedly found a presidential site.

The next day, I took a bus tour of the national park, which took us along the only road in the park to see magnificent vistas and animals along the way. We saw many of each. We also saw Denali itself for a short time without a shroud of clouds, gleaming white among the brown mountains. About 600,000 people visited Denali NP in 2019, a record, and I understand the attraction.

That evening, or rather during the long twilight afternoon, I drove back to Fairbanks, only about 90 miles. On the morning of July 30, I spent time futzing around downtown Fairbanks, this time using the rental car, occasionally marveling that I was in the furthest north U.S. city.
welcome to alaska

A heavy lunch made me tired, so I returned to my room and napped and read and wrote postcards and watched YouTube and regular TV. Even tourists need time off. If the trip had ended then, I would have been more than satisfied, but I had scheduled one more day.

It was a good one. Better than I expected. I’d considered going to a hot spring about 60 miles from Fairbanks, but I’d had enough of long drives, so instead I visited another cemetery, some churches, a couple of neighborhoods and had a lighter lunch than the day before.

That meant I was ready for the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in the afternoon. I almost didn’t go. Two museums seemed like enough for this trip. But I figured I’d go look at some old cars for an hour or so, since I was nearby anyway. I was astonished at the place. Not only was it an excellent car museum, it was an excellent museum, period: an amazing collection expertly displayed and curated.

That wasn’t quite all. I spent a little more time before returning to the airport walking on the trails of Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, including its boreal forest trail, a term that evokes the trackless reaches not much further out of town. My July 31 flight from Fairbanks was a redeye, bringing me home early today.

My senses had to work overtime to take in all that I experienced. Alaskan vistas tend to be intense, in spots sweeping far to the distance; more expansive than I’d ever seen, besting even the Grand Canyon or the Canadian Rockies or the Gobi Desert. Roads took me through vast forested square miles without much human presence. On learning that there are really only six main species of trees in the Alaskan forests, and that one of them is the quaking aspen, I started noticing them everywhere. At one rest stop, I listened to the wind blow through a stand of maybe half a dozen quaking aspens, a distinctive rustle I’ve heard in my own back yard, only magnified.

Mostly the temps were in the 60s and 70s, and as high as 80, though a rainy cool day on the Dalton made the gravel crunch and the mud stick, and some of it yet remains dried on my hiking shoes. As the days passed, I started noticing the hours-long twilight and the never-quite dark of the night, strange to contemplate, if you’re not used to it. The signs and businesses and other details along the way in Fairbanks spoke to a strong regional identity, as much as in Texas.

At first, Fairbanks itself didn’t impress. The Lubbock of the far north, I thought. But the longer I stayed, the more I began to appreciate its light traffic, historic spots, and restaurants that wouldn’t be out of place in any much larger American city.

And its oddities. Perhaps none as odd as the green pyramid at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in front of the engineering building.
Engineers Tradition Stone University of Alaska
The text is here.

The Alaska leg of the trip was a little expensive, at least after arrival, because the airfares to get there and away were the least expensive part of the trip. Everything else in Alaska is expensive. But I have to add: entirely worth it.

Wednesday Debris

Warm days and cicadas at dusk. Back to posting around August 1.

I saw this in my back yard yesterday.

Imagine my surprise. A lawn circle! The suburban version of crop circles. (In the UK, they’re called garden circles.) Clear evidence that space aliens visited.

Spotted in a northwest suburban parking lot the other day.
Color Me Green
I ought to look that up, but I don’t want to.

Dear streaming service that I subscribe to: When you send me an email with links in it, the links should not take me to this.

This statue was just east of the commuter rail station in New Buffalo.
"Gakémadzëwen," which is Potawatomi for "Enduring Spirit,"

“Gakémadzëwen,” which is Potawatomi for “Enduring Spirit,” by Fritz Olsen, dedicated only in 2018. The plaque says it was erected by the city of New Buffalo “in recognition of the generous contributions to the city by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.”

“The 1833 Treaty of Chicago established the conditions for the removal of the Potawatomi from the Great Lakes area,” says the band’s web site. “When Michigan became a state in 1837, more pressure was put on the Potawatomi to move west. The hazardous trip killed one out of every ten people of the approximately 500 Potawatomi involved.

“As news of the terrible trip spread, some bands, consisting of small groups of families, fled to northern Michigan and Canada. Some also tried to hide in the forests and swamps of southwestern Michigan. The U.S. government sent soldiers to round up the Potawatomi they could find and move them at gunpoint to reservations in the west. This forced removal is now called the Potawatomi Trail of Death, similar to the more familiar Cherokee Trail of Tears.

“However, a small group of Neshnabék, with Leopold Pokagon as one of their leaders, earned the right to remain in their homeland, in part because they had demonstrated a strong attachment to Catholicism. It is the descendants of this small group who constitute the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.”

Even so, it wasn’t until 1994 that Congress reaffirmed the federally recognized status of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. The band now owns some Michigan casinos, including Four Winds New Buffalo, which features 3,000 slot machines, 70 table games, four restaurants, bars, retail venues, and a 415-room hotel.

Got a boring email from Amazon the other day. It said:

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped. We apologize for the inconvenience.

You can track your package at any time. If you no longer want these items, you may refuse delivery or return them after they arrive. You can visit Your Orders to start a return.

There’s no style to that. How about:

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped. No force in the universe can stop an Amazon order once it is past the FailSafe Point.®

Not even the mighty Jeff Bezos can stay your package from its appointed delivery, even from his perch in space. You may refuse delivery or return them after they arrive. You can visit Your Orders to start a return.

Also from Amazon: One of our updates involves how disputes are resolved between you and Amazon. Previously, our Conditions of Use set out an arbitration process for those disputes. Our updated Conditions of Use provides for dispute resolution by the courts.

Well, well, well. The Wall Street Journal reported in June: “Companies have spent more than a decade forcing employees and customers to resolve disputes outside the traditional court system, using secretive arbitration proceedings that typically don’t allow plaintiffs to team up and extract big-money payments akin to a class action.

“With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits… The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users.”

This is the flag of Greater London. The officially approved flag of that political entity, I’ve read. It looks like it was drawn by a ten-year-old.

One more thing: National Geographic now asserts there is a “Southern Ocean,” hugging Antarctica below 60 degrees South. That’s a term that I know Australians have long used — I heard it from Australians in the ’90s, and saw the term on a sign at Cape Leeuwin — though I believe they mean the “waters south of us.”

Speaking of ten-year-olds, I understand that part of Nat’l Geo’s mission is educational, but a headline asking whether I can name all the oceans, as if I were that age?

Galien River County Park

A waxing gibbous moon this evening for Moon Day. Looked light copper, a bit like a lunar eclipse moon, but not quite. The next lunar eclipse visible in these parts won’t be until November 19.

National and state parks are all very well, but there’s something to be said for more local units, such as Galien River County Park just outside of New Buffalo, Michigan. An 86-acre spot overseen by Barrien County, the park is upstream from the town and offers short walks to view the Galien’s meandering course through a marsh.Galien River

After lunch on Sunday, we drove the few miles to the park, which opened only in 2014.

Galien River County Park

Galien River County Park
That trail soon leads to a boardwalk.
Galien River County Park
Which takes you to a platform 60 feet above the marsh.
Galien River County Park
Galien River County Park
A sign warned visitors not to do certain stupid things, such as dangle over the edge, but also that the platform sways slightly, even when there is no wind. I felt it. That was a little unsettling, but the views were worth it.Galien River County Park

Galien River County Park

The lower boardwalk crosses over the marsh, which we walked after leaving the platform. The boardwalk provides views of the marsh and the river, up close.

Galien River County Park

Galien River County Park
Galien River County Park

A pleasant way to spend an hour or so. Just as nice as a few hours in town or time spent eating a hamburger in Redamak’s, with one essential difference: almost no one else was at the county park.

New Buffalo

A Mediterranean pattern has set in, here on the brief plateau of high summer. I’m taking as many meals as possible out on my deck.

Not long ago, we went to Buffalo, so by my idiosyncratic lights, that meant we ought to visit New Buffalo too. So we did on Sunday. Good thing that town is only about two hours away, assuming good traffic, which in no safe assumption. Even so, it isn’t that far, with New Buffalo hugging the eastern shore of Lake Michigan just inside the state of Michigan, only about two miles north of the Indiana line.

New Buffalo has been a nearby vacation destination for metro Chicago for many years. I first visited in 1987, when I spent a short time at the vacation house of a Chicagoan I knew, and went back occasionally after that, though not in about 20 years.

A lot of people go for the public beach, but Waikiki crowded, it isn’t.New Buffalo, Michigan

We didn’t spend long this time, since it was nearly 90 F, and our idea of a good beach is an almost empty one in the 70s F. It was nice to see the lake, though. And the marina.

New Buffalo, Michigan

New Buffalo, Michigan
A boat belonging to the Berrien County sheriff’s office, docking.
New Buffalo, Michigan

Not far inland from the marina is the town’s commuter rail station.
New Buffalo, Michigan

Not much to look at, but the station and the line facilitated New Buffalo’s growth in the early 20th century, providing easy access from Chicago in the days before the Interstate or major suburbs. Come to think of it, if I were planning to be in New Buffalo and nowhere else for more than a few hours, that would be the way to come, so as to avoid pain-in-the-ass traffic jams south of Lake Michigan.

We parked on a leafy residential street and walked a couple of blocks to the main tourist street. One of New Buffalo’s two main streets is Whittaker, which connects the shore with I-94. About three blocks of Whittaker is lined with retailers, restaurants and new-looking residential properties, such as these.New Buffalo, Michigan

New Buffalo, Michigan

That told me that, except probably for recessionary downturns of a few years at most, the second home and residential rental business in New Buffalo has expanded over that last few decades, taking advantage of the fondness among well-to-do people for parking themselves close to water. Not an ambition I share, but water does have its allures.

The street wasn’t overly crowded on Sunday, a very warm summer weekend day, but busy enough. We wandered around and looked in some stores, and came away with a t-shirt, refrigerator magnet and some postcards, as one does.

New Buffalo, Michigan

Interesting mural.
New Buffalo, Michigan

I’ve been able to find out that it’s painted on the side of Michigan Mercantile Building, home to a recently opened Starbucks. At the end of a short alley under the mural is the New Buffalo Farmstand by Mick Klug Farm. As for the mural, it looks new as well, but that’s all I know. I didn’t check for a signature.

A detail.
New Buffalo, Michigan

One reason we spent the day in New Buffalo was to have lunch at Redamak’s.
New Buffalo, Michigan

Since 1946 is a telling detail, since the restaurant is on Buffalo Street, the town’s other major thoroughfare. It isn’t a pedestrian-friendly road and the train doesn’t go there, so for Redamak’s to prosper in its early years, it needed car traffic — which was booming about then.
New Buffalo, Michigan

Currently the place is owned only by the second family ever to own it, which makes for continuity. I had a good hamburger there more than 30 years ago, and we had good ones there on Sunday: one with bleu cheese for me, a barbecue burger for Yuriko.

The road out front is also U.S. 12. Ah, where does that go? I wondered as we waited on the porch for a table. My phone wasn’t connected to the Internet at that moment, so I had to wait to find out. Just like in the not-so-old days.

All the way from Detroit to Aberdeen, Washington, running almost 2,500 miles, it turns out. We had a table next to a window. There’s something satisfying about sitting in a storied burger joint that looks out on a 2,500-mile highway. Not a nostalgia-industry highway like the defunct U.S. 66, but a genuine active part of the U.S. highway system in the 21st century.

Paestum 1983

One more card, depicting Paestum, which I visited on July 20, 1983. The postcard dates from the early 1990s, sent to me by an Australian I knew. I’d recommended he visit the place, and he did.Paestum

“Paestum, also known by its original Greek name as Poseidonia, was a Greek colony founded on the west coast of Italy, some 80 km south of modern-day Naples,” says World History Encyclopedia.

“Prospering as a trade centre it was conquered first by the Lucanians and then, with the new Latin name of Paestum, the city became an important Roman colony in the 3rd century BCE. Today it is one of the most visited archaeological sites in the world due to its three excellently preserved large Greek temples.

“Paestum is most famous today for its three magnificent temples which are amongst the best surviving examples of ancient Greek architecture anywhere,” the encyclopedia continues. I’ll vouch for that. They were impressive indeed, and I also delighted in walking along such a well preserved Roman road.

A bonus thing to think about in that text: Lucanians, an Italic people who spoke Oscan. The Roman juggernaut eventually absorbed them, lock, stock and barrel, and I’d say they and their language are even more obscure than the Etruscans.

On the whole, it seems to be a well-written article, but I’m not sure about Paestum being a “most visited archaeological site.” It might not be entirely authoritative, but Travel & Leisure published a list in 2012 regarding the most-visited ancient ruins. Paestum doesn’t make the cut; the closest places are Pompeii and Herculaneum.

My own experience was that Steve and I had the place to ourselves on that summer afternoon — the same summer when we encountered a well-populated Pompeii. Of course, those recollections are decades old, but I suspect even now people don’t show up at Paestum in any great numbers, but rather go to Pompeii as always.

Clichéd the term might be, the beaten path is a very real phenomenon in mass travel, with its own discontents. The odd thing is that you don’t have to go very far or think that hard to find marvels away from the path.

Trotsky Postcard (Maybe)

Come on, fraudsters. You’ve got to try harder. These things need to be in perfect English.

Then again, maybe not. I have impossibly high standards when it comes to phishing.

Below is a more recent postcard, though maybe not actually a postcard, but a postcard-sized image of exiled Trotsky. There’s nothing printed on the other side. Maybe the revolutionary considered postcards to be bourgeois frivolity.

I don’t actually know that, just a hunch. Could be I need to read The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects more closely to ascertain his take on postal items. Somehow, I don’t think that would be worth the effort.

In any case, I picked it up at the gift shop of the Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in late 2017, which I wrote soon after was “heavy on socialist books and portraits of Trotsky for sale and light on tourist gimcracks.”

Most of an Empress Hotel Postcard

Postcards are sometimes educational, if you let them be. Another of the cards that I dug up this weekend depicts the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC.Empress Hotel

I picked it up during my only visit to that city (1985), though to judge by the image, the picture might have been taken ca. 1970. I filled the card with correspondence, even to the point of stamping it, but I never sent it. At some point I removed the stamp for other usage.

Curious about the property, vintage 1908, I looked it up and thus learned about an entire class of hotels — namely, Canada’s grand railway hotels, mostly built by Canadian railway companies in a style that evokes French châteaux: Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway.

Some of the properties don’t exist anymore, but many do, such as the recently mentioned Banff Springs Hotel. That there are such palatial hotels is a good thing to know about Canada, I think.

Alberta 2006

It’s been a year of getting near Canada — Buffalo and Detroit so far — without crossing the line, since the border remains stubbornly closed even now.

That wasn’t the case 15 years ago this month, when we drove from Illinois to Alberta by way of the Dakotas and other places. At the time I wrote: “So, to sum up: very long drives, a lousy exchange rate, high fuel costs. Was it worth it? Was it ever.”

What is it about mountains? Pre-modern generations considered them obstacles to their forward motion. Now that we have mountain roads and tunnels, we admire the view. Do people who live close to mountains take trips to see flatlands? That makes me think of busloads of Swiss out admiring Kansas, but I don’t think it works that way.

Anyway, it was a trip of wide horizons, long roads, lofty mountains, mighty waters (liquid and frozen), endless forests, vivid wildflowers, sweeping Canadian farms, campsites, elk and bears and bison, clouds of mosquitos, national parks, vistas and towns of the tourist and non-tourist variety.

Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks. Too good a vista not to post again.

Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks

This looks like a view from some remote spot, but actually I was standing in back of the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, which was a sight all its own.

Banff Springs Hotel back view

This view, on the other hand, is roadside on the Icefields Parkway, which remains one of the great drives of my life. A place called Moose Meadows.

Moose Meadows, Alberta

More Alberta views.Alberta

I told Ed Henderson (d. 2016) I’d take the cap he sent me various places. I haven’t lately, but I did for a while.

The girls had a good trip.

Even if they don’t remember much, in the case of Lilly, or anything at all, in the case of Ann.