Take me to the Sea of Cortez

How weird? After dining with Jeff, Sue and their sweet friend, Anne, at wonderful Wilcuma lodge on Wednesday night, who do I find on the ferry to Port Angeles Monday afternoon (Oct 23rd), the day I started Mexicoward? Jeff and his delightful father Paul! While crossing, a pod of humpback whales passed, then a nuclear submarine. Except for the submarine I took all these as good omens.




By next day noon Mt Shasta welcomes me to California and the run into San Francisco. A couple of days with sister Carolyn, and a wonderful dinner party with a Morrocan theme, eased the driving blues.


Then I drive off into the Sausalito sunrise, well, almost, then over the Golden Gate and on to LA.




By nightfall I have had it with California driving. Bleery-eyed, nearly hypnotized by piercing beams of light, somewhat delirious from the jostle and perhaps drugged by fumes and life in the fastlane, I yearn for Mexico. LA is a great big freeway! And that sucks!




Next day I do my San Diego shopping, cross the border and loll along slowly to familiar old Ensenada where I overnight. Then it is south, crossing the great Baja Desert, a marvel of nature and geology, mostly vulcanism, on to Scammon's Lagoon. Alas the Gray whales do not return until December.


Next morning I continue through pristine desert dodging burros. But things, things they are a changin'. Greening!




Baja has hundreds of species of xeroscopic plants and when the rains come they react instantly, with green vehemence. They must flower and go to seed before relentless dessication resumes control once more. Insects must find mates and reproduce, and quickly reproduce again, multiplying their seed, as it were. So brilliant butterflies are everywhere. This is all a consequence of the three hurricanes that harassed the Sea of Cortez and sweet Anya earlier on. So cactus, chaparral, yucca, mesquite and all their kinds erupt into lushness. And the aroma!




Finally down off the plateau and mountain passes to the sea, to La Paz and to Anya.

John, Paul and I hope like hell No Peter!

Victoria, Monday morning, October 23rd

I am doing clean up before heading south, later today, to Baja and sweet Anya so this morning my good friend Denton calls in an alert. Seems that I have a late season hurricane to worry about. First it was John, then Lane and now Paul. Hope there is no Peter.


Anya is just below the "W" in Wed and it ain't looking pretty two days out. Hang on to your hats. It was precisely this time last year that I sailed down the Baja coast on the outside, thinking it was safe out there.

Tale of two cities

September 26th



Being a liberal but ever vigilant parent is contradictory I suppose. But necessary. Let them go but not too far from sight and never beyond reach of the wisdom of the papa.


So first I am off to Toronto to see Verity. Then Montreal to see Felicity. And while spooking around I might as well stop at a few graveyards and vigil the ancestors.

My flight arrives long after Verity's bedtime, so in the wee, dark hours I launch out north of Toronto to ancestral grounds, such splendid places as Coe Hill, Hastings Road and, of course, Ormsby.



With its present population a mere twenty souls, Ormsby was founded upon indomitable granite. Little wonder my grandparents headed west to places where dynamite was not the preferred soil-turning technology. In Coe Hill Cemetery I touch my great-Grandfather's headstone.


Back in Toronto Verity provides me the young urban sophisticate's turn. Dinner parties, then late night movies in VIP lounges with her friend from Sienna, Italy, Fabia, and early autumn rain showers at midnight.




Another day we are off to the Royal Ontario Museum where I dress the armed churl and Verity the chainmail warrior princess.



After four days of Toronto glamour I head off, by train, to Montreal. It is near full moon and while walking at the foot of Mont-Royal one sparkling evening I made a most disturbing discovery. There is no moon! It is merely an apparition projected upon the sky by some Montreal weirdo. The accompanying picture presents incontrovertible evidence.


Felicity and I dine in Vieux-Montreal on such delicacy as wild boar and then stroll the Latin Quarter. While she is in class I jog Mont-Royal and walk and do touristy things like go to the Cathedral. Montreal is a grand city.

Some days later I attend to the ancestors and drive just over the Ontario border to Vankleek Hill. It was there that my grandfather's grandfather lived. While I could only find graves of near kin, I felt that my ancestors might have had a hand in the founding of the Presbyterian church, in 1825, so I cop a picture of it.




Later I return to Calgary, then an autumn drive through the Rockies and down to Victoria and the sea. There I will clean up my affairs before heading to the Sea of Cortez.