Since I had a laid back  few days of letting my wife savor her view I thought I would pen some of my closing thoughts about Canada and the people we have met here. Canada has a complicated history – It is hard to believe that Canada was not Canada until almost 1860. Before that they were just a conglomeration of territories. They seemed to only come together because they thought they would be overrun by the United States after their Civil war. In some ways they are much like us in that they seem to be equally divided on … Continue reading On The Road –Thoughts about Canada

Not much to report today. We did wander into town for about four hours yesterday for lunch, shopping, and picking up food for our in-room supper tonight. Lunenburg is a very picturesque town as shown in this picture I bought. It was set up by the British in the early 1700s so establish an English foothold into the French dominated territory. Spent the rest of the day lounging around the motel room. We had dinner in our room consisting of some kind of lunchmeat of which I didn’t recognize and oreo cookies.  We will be going into Halifax today for … Continue reading On The Road–More about Lunenburg Nova Scotia…

I am sitting in a small motel room in Lunenburg Nova Scotia writing these words waiting for my wife to wake up to tell me what she has planned, or maybe doesn’t have planned for the day. Lunenburg is on the “South Shore” of this province. Two days ago I told my wife that she was going to be in total control of our time in Nova Scotia. I would offer no comments or suggestion and would agree to everything she decided. After the fact she seems to always say that I was the one who decided everything so I … Continue reading On The Road–Hello from Nova Scotia…

Will Rogers answer to education reform. It makes sense to me. . . . why don’t they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody learning anything? And if it works as good as the Prohibition one did, in 5 years we would have the smartest race of people on Earth. Will Rogers -January 4, 1925 Continue reading Will Rogers Quote

Here we are already beginning our third week of our Canadian adventure. Today we did something that we don’t often do and that is take a tour bus. We decided instead of driving the 100 or so miles around the island we would let Graylines do it for us.  It was a very pleasurable trip. Our driver/guide is a lifelong resident of Prince Edward Island (PEI) who told us much about the local history and how the island has changed during his lifetime. The bridge we went over is several times longer than we have ever encountered and several times … Continue reading On The Road — Day 14 – Here is to you Anne…

Today we spent the day meandering around the city of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The island is much bigger than I thought. I expect it is 50 miles or more long and 20 or so wide. It is a separate province (State). We spent quite a bit of the day walking its mile long boardwalk along the bay and collecting a few souvenirs in the shops that lined it. After lunch (I had haddock with lobster sauce, Yvonne had a cheeseburger) we went to Confederation Hall which was where the original Canadian confederation was formed in 1867. The museum there covered the … Continue reading On The Road — PEI and the Canadian Federation….

We had a wonderful day at the Acadian village yesterday. We got there just as it opened at 10am and spend the next four hours experiencing the Acadian life of the 19th century. We had a little rain but not enough to put a damper (pun intended) on the day. There are about fifty building in the village and most of them had an interpreter to tell us about the person who owned the building. All of the interpreters were bi-lingual and I guess they got their clue for your first words as to whether they would talk in French … Continue reading On The Road — Oh Those Acadians….

White House shifts in unpredictable debt debate – USATODAY.com. Political analyst Darrell West of the Brookings Institution said the administration’s willingness to adjust when the situation warrants could put the president at an advantage. “Leaders have to adapt to changing circumstances,” said West. “And if they don’t, their rigidity undermines the political process.”    This whole article talks about President Obama has constantly been changing what he wants to accomplish with all the debt talks. As the quote I pulled out mentions that leaders have to adapt…. but what I don’t see here is that the only one that seems … Continue reading All I Know — "White House shifts in unpredictable debt debate"

We Moved from our hotel this morning about 180 km to Riviere-du-Nord to visit a historic Acadian village. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate with us today. We spent most of the morning and afternoon in constant rain. We found a motel close to the village and checked in. It is another pretty inexpensive motel so I did check out the bed before making the accommodations. ;) After checking in we headed for the village and managed to go through about 20% of it before finally surrendering to the rain and heading back to our room. The rain is supposed … Continue reading On The Road — Day 11 – Those Ornery Acadians…..

This will be a short post as I have already done one today. Here we are at the end of day 10 of our Canadian adventure and we are now in New Brunswick Canada. As I had hoped Yvonne agreed to skip the rest of the peninsula trip and to move on to another English speaking province.  Coping with french only was becoming tiring to me.  We drove about 350 km today to get to Campbellton New  Brunswick which is the gateway to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I’m sure the New Brunswick folk don’t consider themselves a gateway … Continue reading On The Road — Goodbye Quebec Province…

I watched the sun come up this morning over the St. Lawrence River. It was 5:00am here when that event occurred.  It turns out that the bed in our little motel room just proved to be too hard for my bursitis so I spent most of the night in a chair waiting for the aforementioned event. It was worth it. The only other person arousing at that hour was a lonely fisherman. I watched him for about ten minutes. He didn’t catch any fish but I don’t suspect that was the true reason he was out there. I think he, … Continue reading On The Road – Day 10 – Oh What a Beautiful Morning…

I seem to have a medical condition that is somewhat rare today.  No I am not talking about Cochlear Otosclorosis that caused my deafness  many years ago but one maybe even more rare. That condition is called a “Bleeding Heart”. I know this is a condition that my fellow Republicans loathe. Whenever they want to diss someone they call them a “bleeding heart liberal”. But I have to admit that I can’t help having this condition. It is just part of who I am. My heart bleeds for those around the world and even in our own country who don’t … Continue reading My Rare Medical Condition….

I seem to have a medical condition that is somewhat rare today.  No I am not talking about Cochlear Otosclorosis that caused my deafness  many years ago but one maybe even more rare. That condition is called a “Bleeding Heart”. I know this is a condition that my fellow Republicans loathe. Whenever they want to diss someone they call them a “bleeding heart liberal”. But I have to admit that I can’t help having this condition. It is just part of who I am. My heart bleeds for those around the world and even in our own country who don’t … Continue reading All I Know — My Peculiar Medical Condition…

It seems every day in our visit to Canada is not without its challenges. But, then again that is what makes life interesting I guess.  It is kind of like in 1987 during our first vacation as a married couple I lost my wife in a WalMart store in Bozeman Montana. I don’t remember too many other details about that vacation but I do remember searching for my bride for over an hour before I found her. But, that is a story for another post so I will get back on track. We are now in a small motel room … Continue reading On The Road — Day 9 — Another Interesting Day….You Can't….

This is day 8 of our Canadian adventure and we just left Quebec City. That was the last major city we will see in Canada. While Quebec was much more enjoyable than Montreal it was still a hectic time. But we did find the major stopping point we were looking for and that was Place Royale. It was part of the very old Quebec that has been completely restored back to its 1600s roots. That is except for the 21st century add-ons. Here is a picture of the main square in that area. Of course this area is adjacent to … Continue reading On The Road — Adieu Quebec…

When I made the post this morning I commented that since it was Sunday morning our trip through Montreal would be a leisurely one. I was sooooo WRONG!!   We did get to the two sites on our agenda but it took almost four hours of driving to get there.  At first I decided to try to navigate using  just the atlas. I found Mont Royal on the map and after a few misdirected turns and about 45 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic we were at that location. The trouble was that it was not “Parc du” Mont Royal. So … Continue reading On The Road — Au revoir Montreal….

Here it is at the end of day seven and we are now fully immersed into the providence of Quebec.  It seems that everywhere we went in Ontario there was always an English sign followed by one in French.  Now that we are in Quebec the English signs seemed to have all but disappeared?  When we checked into the hotel for the night close to Montreal we did have English speaking front desk person. That was a relief since we spent almost 4 hours going the 100 or so miles we drove today. Half of that time was trying to … Continue reading On the Road — Parlez vous français?

We spent a good bit of today at the National Art Museum here in Canada’s capital Ottawa.  In some ways the building was more impressive than the art it contained. I would say about one-third of the exhibits were for modern art which is really not so much my taste.  I picked out my favorite one in that area and I called it “Big Black”.  It was about a 12 foot square mural of solid black; nothing else!  They seem to have pictures just like that in about every modern art exhibit I have been to. But they did have … Continue reading On The Road – Day 6 — Here's to the Arts

As expected today was an exciting time. We spent most of the day around the Parliament complex. Here are some pictures of that. We also toured much of the area around the complex and went to the Museum of Currency. It was also a very beautiful day here in Ottawa, sunny and in the 70s. I forgot to take a hat along with me so now I have a sun burned bald head! Gotta remember the hat for tomorrow or I can expect some peeling scalp later in the week. The brochure provided at the places we visited gave us a somewhat … Continue reading On The Road – Day 5 — My Canada Adventure

Here is another post on my experiences in our current trek through eastern Canada. I know I have only been in Canada for four days now but I am ready to come to at least one conclusion. That conclusion is that Canada is not famous for food.  Maybe they just take the “eat to live” mentality pretty seriously here. We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner last night and that, along with most of my previous meals here, was the basis for this observation. When we sat down we were given the usual salsa and chips but the salsa was really … Continue reading On the Road — Some Initial Conclusions…

Last night since we were on the road most of the day we ended up staying at a small motel without internet. It was clean and cheap so I guess I should be grateful and I am. We made the last trek through the pine trees this morning and into Ottawa. My first impression was that there was a lot of traffic for 9:30 on a Wednesday morning.  After that soaked in I started noticing quite a few older building in the downtown area. Since this is the capital of Canada I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We went to the … Continue reading On The Road – Hello Ottawa….

Here we are at the end of day two of our trek through Canada. Today was another road day for us. We made it from upper Michigan to Sudbury Ontario and are settled down in our hotel for the night.  I don’t know how many miles that is as I had to convert the car to metric when we got here so we would know how fast we were going. Don’t want to get a ticket for speeding. After we arrived we went out for dinner to a place called Hardrock 42. No, it is not one of those HardRock … Continue reading On The Road — Would you like gravy with that?

I am now sitting in a hotel room a few miles east of Ste St Marie Michigan. We will head through there and up into Canada in the morning. We drove across upper Wisconsin and Michigan today. It was as it has been for the many time I have been here, all pine trees with not much in between. In some ways that is an appropriate way to start this trip which is intended to be a relaxing one. Waiting for my dear wife to get ready to go across the way to the local Pizza Hut for dinner gives … Continue reading On The Road — A Couple of miles…

You know it takes nerve to be a Democrat. But it takes money to be a Republican.  Will Rogers -February 10, 1929 Continue reading Will Rogers Quote

America can carry herself and get along in pretty fair shape, but when she stops and picks up the whole world and puts it on her shoulders she just can’t “get it done.” – Will Rogers March 15, 1933 Wow, it is amazing that Will wrote these words almost eighty years ago. They couldn’t be more true today.  The Republicans want to continuously talk about wasteful government spending but they seldom talk about reducing our military budgets. We spend many many times more per citizen than any other country in the world on our war machine! Why is that? I’m just a simple … Continue reading Policemen of the World…

One of the rites of retirement is being able to take a vacation pretty much whenever you want.  Well, my wife and I want! We will soon be heading out for our Canada and New England trip. This one could take up to a month of our time. That is another privilege of retirement, we can take as long as needed.  We have a house sitter who will take care of our animals and such as long as we are gone. We plan on going into Canada via Wisconsin and then traveling the interior to Ottawa. Then up the St. Lawrence seaway to Nova Scotia … Continue reading The Rites of Retirement….

Do the best you can and don’t take life too serious  – Will Rogers  Continue reading Will Rogers Quote

It’s Done… (but it’s never really done) I finally completed the merging of five of my six blogs to this site! I hope you like what you find here. Don’t forget to bookmark this new blog and remove any of my old ones (I will not be closing them but they will no longer be updated).  This will make my life a little simpler and make it easier for you to see all of what I have to offer in the blog world. I have also purchased one of the premium themes (Tapestry) to make your browsing a little more … Continue reading It's Done