As a finale to our series on Lisa’s trip to Alaska, here is a collection of images from the journey. Enjoy!

Click on an image to see it full size

As a final note, for those of you who waded through my “infinite slide show” . . .

My one sadness is that I never took the time or spent the money to have Dungeness Crab or Halibut while I was on shore. Mostly, I was daunted by sticker shock ($42 for a crab roll) and the huge lines of cruisers all doing exactly the same thing.

Cruising is not my preferred way to travel. I like having more control over my itinerary, both in terms of where to go and what to do each day. I also am not a consumer, and the constant sales pitch of the ship, and locations visited were overwhelming.

That said, My friend and I had a great time. We saw beautiful even magnificent scenery and learned interesting things about this small portion of Alaska. Vancouver, BC and Alaska were amazing and I am profoundly glad I went on this journey.

Early the next morning (as in 5 am, by dawn’s early light) the ship slowly cruised up the 30-mile long Endicott Arm Fjord paused at the Dawes Glacier, then turned and began its return journey.

Such dull language to express an outrageously spectacular experience. The Endicott Arm Fjord itself is a frozen wonderland full of granite cliffs, verdant valleys, and several gushing waterfalls. Then there is Dawes Glacier, a 600-foot-tall and mile-wide active icecap that “calves” all day long. (It’s a bit sad to see just how many pictures I took of bits of glacier floating alongside the ship!)

A professional naturalist narrated the journey for us, telling us about wildlife we might see (not much) and what the landscape revealed.

During the last ice age, over 16,000 years ago, most of Alaska was covered by two miles of ice. Glaciers slowly carved out spectacular valleys and fjords, one of which we were currently traveling down in a 112-year-old, beautifully converted wooden tugboat. Dawes Glacier, the one we were heading 30 nautical miles up Endicott Arm to see, once extended this far out. It pushed rocks, gravel, and silt, digging out a massive “gully” up to 1,000 feet deep in some places, leaving behind a picturesque terminal moraine called Wood Spit, where we had conveniently anchored the night before. You can’t look around at Alaska’s landscape and not see evidence of how glaciers sculpted this place—it’s everywhere.

As the ship steamed further up the fjord, it grew narrower, and the air got colder, as if we were entering a gigantic freezer. The mass of ice that makes up Dawes Glacier begins with the Stikine Icefield at an elevation of 5,200 feet (1,585 meters). From this source, the ice flows slowly—about 15 feet per day—along the path of least resistance. Multiple tributary glaciers feed into the main tongue, like streams into a river. This mass of ice cools the air around it, and the cold, dense air stays within the confines of the fjord, flowing outward.

The first visible sign that there’s a tidewater glacier ahead of us is the presence of small pieces of ice, looking like sculpted crystals, floating by the ship. These aren’t icebergs—these are mostly bergy bits (1-5 meters in size) or growlers (<1 meter in size). They’ve crumbled off the face of the glacier into the water and are flowing out with the wind and tide. And they are an eerie pale neon blue. It’s unearthly.

You see, glacier ice is blue. Ice traps long wavelengths of light, such as red and green, while allowing the shorter wavelengths, like blue, to pass through the ice and reach our eyes.

This is a long morning of slow movement, a 360* turn so everyone has a chance to see the magnificence from their balcony, or breakfast. Truly a highlight of the trip, and a “bucket list” event that I am very glad to have done.

A huge draw for me on this journey was a guided tour of Saxon Native Village, one of several “totem capitals of Alaska.”

Many of the totem poles on display at the park today were carved in the 1940s to preserve native culture, and they are replicas of the original poles left in abandoned villages by Native Alaskans. Each pole tells unique stories through intricate carvings and vibrant colors. In addition to the 11 on the Totem Way, there are 14 more near the clan house. Of the 25, the Eagle Beaver Pole is repeated three times, and there are four Totem Guards on either side of the steps. Outside of the carving center, where we caught a glimpse of the celebrated carver, Nathan Jackson, lies a “sleeping totem.” (I would love to tell you more, but the guide was clearly reluctant to say anything about it and I don’t want to be the revealer of private knowledge.)

Some things I learned:

• Inanimate objects are forbidden on poles and all of the figures represent living beings.
• Among the Haida poles you will see many whale carvings as the Haida Indians have a spiritual connection with the whale. They believe the whale’s display of loyalty and obedience amongst themselves parallels the values of their clan system.
• The Tribal House was traditionally used as a communal house for several clans or families of a tribe. The Totems inside are family poles that tell the history of the clan or family living inside.
• The Tlingit of Saxman are the Saanya Kwaan, or “People of the Southeast Wind”.
• The “low man on the totem pole,” isn’t an insult; the bottom figure is often the most important one – and usually, isn’t a man.

Totem poles are often not meant to be clear in their meaning (a very non-Western attitude). The story of the pole is primarily shared between the person commissioning the carving of the pole and the carver. Upon completion, it is up to the owner whether to share the story. (To my mind, this “secrecy” is an example of intellectual property within a cultural perspective.) This explains why most of the poles have no informational signage. To my mind, this encourages visitors to buy materials at the (pretty nice) gift shop on the grounds. I think such materials are excellent souvenirs, much better than a mug or shot glass.

Totem poles serve a variety of purposes. They are not only artistic expressions but also symbols of family lineage, tribal heritage, and the natural world. The animals carved onto the poles often represent the clan’s totem or the spirit guides that are believed to protect or guide the people. The significance of each animal varies depending on the cultural context and the specific animal’s traits, behaviors, and role in the ecosystem. In this way, totem poles serve as a visual language, communicating the spiritual beliefs and connection to nature that is central to these cultures.

Note that you do not need to take a tour here. You can walk to Saxman Native Village 2-3 miles along an oceanfront path, take a public bus ($2 — cash only — at time of writing) near Berth 2 of the cruise terminal, or catch a quick taxi ride (approx. $15 one way). The village welcomes independent travelers with a self-guided tour option for just USD 5 per person.

The Totem Pole Art is magnificent. It boggles my mind how each is carved by hand and I enjoyed trying to figure out which animal was represented on the poles. Not being Native, the symbols aren’t easy to decipher. (A place where I really would have appreciated signage, even just the names of the totems). The street that the Totem Poles are on display is on an incline with a paved sidewalk that was easy to navigate. The Clan House features a magnificent carving of a Beaver on the outside and inside are four carved house posts as well as another large panel carving inside the building. Outside the Clan House are two short, gravel lined, walking paths through the rainforest that surrounds the park. Along these paths are the native trees, shrubs, flowers, plants, berries, & more that is found in the rainforest.

This wikipedia entry has a list of all of the poles on site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxman_Totem_Park

We also went through Ketchikan with its National Historic Landmark District. Alaska’s first city and the salmon capital of the world, we had a chance to stop and visit a small park where we watched salmon swimming upstream. The salmon run is a primal moment of deep connection to nature and her rhythms. Here is a video I took — no jumping, but you can get a sense of how many fish were doing their thing.

Otherwise, there is Creek Street, once the town’s red-light district. The area is distinct for its brothels built on stilts over a salmon-filled creek. Today, it’s a colorful stretch of shops and galleries with a few small museums that tell the story of Ketchikan’s salty past. Otherwise, the city (8,000 year-round residents makes this a very small city) is primarily a collection of jewelry stores (56, according to our guide) most of which are owned and operated by the cruise ships and tour companies.

We stopped at Skagway, Alaska, also known as the “Gateway to the Klondike,” and one of the most interesting places we visited.

While a few places told us the Tlingit origin of the town’s name, sha-ka-ԍéi, it wasn’t until after I returned home that I learned of its richer history. Sha-ka-ԍéi is a verbal noun which means pretty woman and is a Tlingit idiom which figuratively refers to rough seas in the Taiya Inlet, caused by strong north winds. The story behind the name is that Sha-ka-ԍéi [“Pretty Woman”] was the nickname of Kanagoo, a mythical woman who transformed herself into stone at Skagway Bay and who (according to the story) now causes the strong, channeled winds which blow toward Haines, Alaska.

Gold was discovered in 1896 in the klondike region of Canada, 500 miles away, and Skagway was the closest city from which prospectors could travel to (hopefully) find their fortune. The journey, as you can imagine, was brutal. Within one year of the discovery of gold in the Klondike thousands of people were attempting the journey. Animals brought to Skagway were often not cared for by anyone knowledgeable. Some animals were forced to stand for two weeks straight and did not get the luxury of food and water. If they didn’t die on their way to Skagway they were threatened by accidents, shipwrecks, or on the trails. Horses, mules, oxen, sheep, and dogs were loaded down, forced to wait in long lines, and exhausted by the trail leading over the pass. Horses were not trained or equipped to deal with the constant physical demands, boggy mud holes, and slippery rocks. It’s estimated that 3,000 horses died in a one year period on the White Pass Trail, earning it the nickname “Dead Horse Trail.”

In an attempt to find a better way to get goods to the Yukon, construction of the narrow gauge White Pass & Yukon Route railroad began in 1898. Thousands of people worked together to finish the 110 mile track from Skagway to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory Canada. There were many challenges to completion, including harsh weather and phenomenally high labor turnover. Nonetheless, the track was completed in 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days.

The main part of town is a gorgeous collection of “Old West” storefronts, often used in movies and television sets. There is a ton of locally made art and goods available, and we had a lot of fun shopping and admiring the high quality offered.

A highlight was the White Pass Railroad tour, a 20 mile journey to the Summit (a 2,865-foot elevation) Narrated by interesting and informed guides, we learned a ton about the history of Skagway and the gold rush. The rail cars are vintage coaches, with lovely wooden benches and wide/ tall windows. The train follows the original route to White Pass summit, passing Bridal Veil Falls, Inspiration Point, and Dead Horse Gulch.

Despite deep fog, we were treated to a breathtaking panorama of mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, tunnels, trestles, and historic sites.

Our final point of interest during our time in Philadelphia was indeed the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art, and we for sure took the back entrance to avoid climbing two stories-worth of elevation. This doesn’t lead to some hobbit hole entrance, it’s basically the same lobby as the front entrance, just… you know, further back. Bonus, it put us directly at the entrance to their fascinating temporary exhibition, “Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s.” It wasn’t strictly about war-time art although (naturally) that took up a lot of conceptual space. The picture on the left, for example, was an example of propaganda posters that were generated fresh, daily, by Russian artists to keep the home fires burning. Like seriously, there were hundreds of these images plastered everywhere in the cities. (This one in particular was showing up around the time that formal alliances were being announced between Russia and the English-speaking powers.) There were also numerous examples of artistically-designed scarves that were sold as fundraisers for war efforts. I’ve got an acrylic scarf with a print of Van Gogh’s “Cherry Blossoms” but some of these were just bonkers.

And speaking of Van Gogh, it was only a mild irritation to realize we hadn’t needed to make a special trip to London last year to see Sunflowers… not that London isn’t a good time, but still.

PMA is a world-class museum, something that Americans can sometimes have an inferiority complex about. All the great museums are in Europe, right? While there certainly are great museums all over Europe, for better or for worse the primary driver in the “greatness” of a museum is the money behind it, and there’ve been plenty of rich jerks in the States over the years who got bees in their bonnets to put their home cities on equal footing with the capitals of Europe. The results of such efforts are on ample display here and it’s definitely worth the visit.

The thing about the Barnes, the defining story above and beyond anything else about the place, is its bizarre layout. Mr. Barnes left his art collection to the city of Philadelphia on the condition that it remain in exactly the state that he left it – display arrangement, building, wall colors… everything. He had some very firm beliefs on the best way to display art, beliefs that he executed in his own home. It’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before, but he was certain that his preferred method was the optimal way to experience art. Like so many rich men before him, he decided to enforce his will through militant benevolence, tying his bequest to his philosophy of curation.

What does that have to do with the museum I visited and it’s layout? So, excising a tale of red tape out, what you should know is that the specific language of the bequest meant that the collection couldn’t be moved, yet the house was in the middle of (relative) nowhere and (natch) succumbing to the passage of time. Huge expenditures of bureauticatrons (the god-particle of all bureaucracies) yielded a compromise wherein a new building would be constructed but, within it, exact replicas of the rooms of Barnes’ house would be created – size, color, ornaments, all of it. It makes for a queer experience, going into a beautiful, modern(-ish) museum in downtown Philadelphia, only to be presented with a labyrinthine recreation of a restored arboretum from the early 20th century. Compounding the strangeness of the experience is Barnes’ curation philosophy, which eschews any sort of signage except for the artist’s last name demurely placarded within the frame of the painting or display stand as appropriate. You are otherwise on your own.

Here’s the thing, though – for all of its opaque practices the Barnes is an absolute must-see if you are a fan of Impressionist or post-Impressionist art. Every luminary of the period is well-represented, as well as dozens of minor but notable figures. From Renoir to Monet, Van Gogh to Seurat and all points in between (har har) it is a truly astonishing collection gathered by an obsessive mind.

Honestly, even providing a representative sample is difficult – maybe my brain just isn’t programmed properly but I’ve been overwhelmed by the walls of paintings during both of my visits. It really is astounding how this tucked away little museum holds such vast treasure.

Our next stop on our grand tour was San Francisco, the city by etc… The agenda was deceptively simple – we would spend a couple days in the city, highlighted by one day at Lisa’s sister’s home and then the other day in her mom’s end of town. There was an extra bit of serendipity that fell into our lap, too. Well, John’s lap at least. Mostly, though, it was a couple of days of a very over-used but appropriate phrase: quality time. Of course, the most important quality time in our lives is the time that we spend with each other. We love all of our adventures together and wouldn’t change a thing about being there for each other, each and every step of the way. So, naturally, the first thing we did when we landed was for John to put Lisa in a cab and then head in the opposite direction for the day.

So, about the serendipity. John has a deep and abiding love for the musical group Nickel Creek. He’s seen them on almost every tour they’ve ever had, but it had seemed like that streak had come to an end. OH, there had been some near misses. The band actually toured in the UK and a little smidge of Europe at times that were mostly convenient. They were even in the UK a couple of days after the end of our time in Dursley. Each time, Lisa would say it was totally ok for him to go, and each time would scribble on a napkin and decide it was just too expensive. Even with cheap travel and cheap lodging it would be hundreds of dollars just to indulge this little urge. Long story short, the stars aligned and it turned out that Nickel Creek was playing in Oakland on the very day that we landed. The cost had been reduced to a few bucks in public transportation, plus the cost of a ticket. Sold. We aren’t here for concert reviews, so he simply reports that it was a great show and he’s so glad that he went.

Meanwhile, Lisa was whooshed away to our hotel downtown, where she dropped the luggage before meeting her sister Corynne for some nice face-to-face time. We actually do a pretty good job of staying in touch, but there’s still nothing quite like locking eyes, clinking glasses, and reconnecting while breaking bread. It was lovely, even if the place we ended up at was so noisy that “putting our heads together” wasn’t just metaphorical(!). It was that or shouting.

The next day was highlighted by a dinner being hosted at Corynne’s place. We hadn’t spent much time in a kitchen in a dog’s age, so we volunteered to take care of the cooking. The assemblage consisted of Lisa, her mom, her sisters, and the attached partners and children. It’s one of those clusters of folks that don’t get together that often, a lot like John and his immediate family. And just like at his parents’ anniversary dinner a week or so prior, this was a grand time. We grilled salmon (the nature of Pacific vs. Atlantic salmon is a conversation for another day, but suffice to say we were thrilled to be in on the proper side of the country) and put together salad and such, and the hours just galloped on by. The gathering eventually broke up as night fell, and back we went to our hotel. Our agenda for the following day was to meet Lisa’s mother in Golden Gate Park at the deYoung Museum.

Mmmmmmm . . . deYoung!

One of the nicer surprises of our trip was seeing the de Young Open 2023 exhibit at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The second triennial of this juried community art exhibition celebrates the voices and visions of 883 artists who live in the nine counties that make up the Bay Area. 7,766 artists submitted, and the chosen works are hung “salon style” — installed nearly edge to edge and floor to ceiling — and grouped by theme: political and social issues, the urban environment, the human figure, nature, abstraction, and surreal imagery. The full web gallery is available here and it’s a gorgeously curated collection of Bay Area art.

For Lisa, this was deeply familiar. She knew this art from her time here as a child, even to recognizing specific images or areas depicted. The variety was vast in both scope and perspective. I what we thought was a particularly Smart Move, the museum provided only a number for each piece and encouraged visitors to look up the artist and other information online (link). As with most collections, each piece stood on its own, and some weren’t as appealing or provocative as others. The total collection is 860 works spanning acrylic, oil, photography textiles, chalk, mixed media, and cast metal.

It was reminiscent of the philosophy behind the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, another place where a large amount of art is hung “salon style.” Doing so allows viewers to make associations and linkages between works that otherwise would not be readily apparent. For some it feels like a kind of visual cacophony; for others it is stimulating.

Some pieces were fascinating in their illusion, such as Empty Nest by Iva Hladis. What looks like an excellent ink pen drawing is actually created from cream paper mounted over a black surface, with a sharp instrument used to create the image.

Then again, Yi Wang’s Farmer’s Home strongly evoked the “Old Masters” with its rich detail, despite the sepia-toned palette.

Some artists got too cute for our sensibilities. Such as “A Tribute to Frans Hals.” The artist, Calvin Bohner, says this piece was conceptualized and structured using a variety of instruments directly upon an enlargement of a close-up photograph he took of a small segment of the painting “Portrait of a Young Man” by Frans Hals (1648).

Bohner felt that his efforts on the surface of the enlargement allowed a landscape to emerge which removed the realism of the photograph, making it abstract. We just wondered how much of a tribute it could be when we could not find a connection to Hals.

Jean-Marc Brugeilles’s The Fountain of Youth was brilliantly surreal, and worthy of Hieronymous Bosch

Alas, tempus fugit and tomorrow so would we, and so after an invigorating afternoon (and a late lunch at the robust cafe in the deYoung) we parted ways and caught a rideshare back our hotel. We had a crack-of-dawn flight to the east coast to catch, for the next-to-last stop on this whole expedition: Philadelphia!

Seattle was a surprise for both of us in much the same way. It’s honestly a little weird focusing our little travel blog there; it feels like we packed our luggage and went from our bedroom to our guest bedroom if that makes any sense? We aren’t really what you’d call “tourists” on this trip, but everywhere else we’d been there was cause for at least a little exploration: the natural wonders of Halifax, the accumulated treasures in Washington. Hell, even in Sumter John likes to poke around the old haunts and see what’s changed. Landing in Seattle felt like coming home… which is only a problem because we do not, in fact, live there anymore. Yeeeeeeaaaaahhh, we were definitely going to have an interesting time, one way or another.

We stepped off the plane, grabbed our bags, and started to make our way to the taxi stand all the while experiencing a strong sense of familiarity. It didn’t even register at the time that we were on auto-pilot as we navigated through the airport to the baggage pick-up and off to the taxi stand; didn’t look at a sign once. If we were Anywhere else in the world we might have called it deja vu, but we had been here before; we knew this place quite well and it held no surprises. Even the banter in the taxi was the same as it had always been; this may surprise you, but a discussion about precipitation typically features heavily.

We both found ourselves feeling . . . emotional about being back. It was all so familiar. As John put it later, “all the best things in my life happened over the 20 years I lived there.” Chewing the fat later in the trip (spoilers!) we pieced together that we spent a tremendous amount of energy and effort in the process of moving to Portugal (you may have read about it!) that we somehow managed to completely ignore what a momentous event it was for us to close up shop on the place we’d both called home all those years. Broadly speaking, we both migrated to the Pacific Northwest in the wake of relationships that weren’t so great (in very different ways, but still). Fresh starts in mind, but no firm plans to stick around. We found work and eventually we found each other, and the story pretty much wrote itself from there. Great friends, a flock of critters, homes… it was a hell of a lot for us to not really give much thought to leaving behind. Coming back to our old home was like stepping on an emotional rake – it smacked us both right in the foreheads. But hey, travel stories amirite?

Our first surprise was a strange one – we stayed at a Residence Inn and liked it a whole lot! Not that we were suspicious, just had never had cause to use one. It was clean, spacious, and thoughtfully prepared for folks that’d be staying for awhile. I mean, “duh” in retrospect, but it was nice. Turns out we are a lot less charmed by giant marble lobbies than we are by enough towels and a thorough selection of cutlery. This particular one was nicely located down in our old neck of the woods. There’s a big park just across the street that sits on Lake Washington, and we used it as a meet-up spot for friends we hadn’t seen in … well, years of course. A nice stroll with the ducks, geese, and some unidentified weirdo bird, up and down the nature trails, was a great way to catch up.

Really, this whole portion of the visit was one big catch-up session. We had a fantastic meal at one of the local steakhouses – hardly a shocker, but if you’re looking for a good night old and like beef, El Gaucho will treat you right. They needed to train a new server for their private dining space (at least, that’s John’s theory – we certainly didn’t ask for it) so we got bumped into an amazing room with a view of the kitchen; we killed several hours with a great meal and one of those moments where you aren’t starting a conversation so much as picking up the thread you’d set down however long ago, then set it gently down again, to be picked up once more in the future. Another night, we met friends at what had been “our joint” for years and years. Not fancy, in fact more on the homespun side, but always great food and a staff that we’d come to know over time. Boa Boca (in Braga) is probably our favorite place to eat back home, but the highest praise we’ve given it is that it’s “our new Peyrassol“…. which doesn’t make sense to anybody in Braga so we mostly say it to each other. We’ve said it a lot, though. One of John’s best friends was in the midst of a bout of COVID, so he went over and hung out in their back yard – masks on and seated at safe distances, like back in the bad old days – and still chewed things over for hours.

One little side bit of business – despite getting firm advice to the contrary, our route took us directly past our old neighborhood and John just couldn’t resist the temptation. Lisa was game, so we pulled in and poked around. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose as they say. Little changes were everywhere, but it was overwhelmingly familiar. John had a route tree (a football term, roll with it) of walks he would take the dogs on and he could practically visualize the different ins and outs of side streets and walking paths and which turns they’d be in the mood for at that time of day and in that weather. Strangest of all… or not… was that our old house was unchanged. Not that it looked much the same, it was exactly as we left it. They even still had the decorative blue pots we’d had on the front porch, exactly as we left them. I swear, if you told yourself that the car in the driveway was just company that we had invited over, it was easy to imagine that we still lived there. It’s not that we wanted the place back, but there was still something comforting to see that, apparently, the space we’d created was valued by the next residents.

Like we said, a lot of the value of this stop turned out to be the bow we finally put on our time in the Pacific Northwest. We hadn’t thought that we had any regrets, but we finally eaxmined the idea thoroughly and put it to bed. Combined with an abundance of gratitude for the recharged batteries our friends helped us achieve, it was truly a wonderful few days. Really, all the days had been pretty good so far – which raised our suspicions just a smidge as we went back to Ye Olde SeaTac to make our way south to San Francisco.

The overall purpose of this trip, or at least the inciting obligation (ooo fancy) is to check in with our scattered family units every couple of years. Despite the modern advances in communication and travel there has still been a visceral, emotional reaction to us moving across the Atlantic Ocean. The sensation is that we’ll be so far away, out of sight and out of communication range… as if we’re Irish immigrants on our way to pass through Ellis Island and into the New World. The truth is that the net increase in travel time between us and our family has only been a few hours, and the dawn of the Zoom Era has meant that people have never been more able to connect with one another over any distance, but the truth isn’t always the right answer. Sometimes the right answer is that you get your butts back to the United States and spend some quality time. And so, having indulged ourselves with an extended detour through Halifax and DC, we headed south while taking the time to indulge in one of the great American past times – the road trip.

We scooted back to the airport and picked up our rental car – we usually roll with compacts but this was a longer drive, hauling actual luggage, so we got a “standard” size. Don’t laugh, this qualifies as upgraded amenities for us! If we were going to drive straight to our final destination – Sumter, South Carolina – it would only take us 8 or so hours straight down I-95 with just a little dog leg at the end. We aren’t going straight, though. When John was but a wee bairn his father was in the military, and during John’s life his stations were mostly in the Southeast US. BuuUUUuuut all of the relatives were back in Tom and Wanda’s original stomping grounds in the hills surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So, the Caskers made frequent drives up and down the coast for family visits. Often, they drove through the Blue Ridge mountains. Fast forward to this trip, and with no schedule but our own to keep we decided to head south through those mountains. It took a lot longer, but it really was beautiful. Face it, there’s no reason to go through West Virginia unless you have business there, so it’s easy to forget just how dang pretty it is there. We took most of a day just making a wide, swooping curve, west and south, just taking in the wooded mountains. (Alas, a little early for leaf peeping.) At one point John exclaimed “Hey! We’re in Breezewood!” This left Lisa nonplussed, and he realized that this was a landmark from those childhood drives. Breezewood is an on-ramp/off-ramp for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and the Caskers often stopped there, either for the night if it was late or else for a burger lunch before making the final stretch of the drive to their ancestral home. Other than memories, though, there’s not much to recommend it (sorry, Breezewoodians, it’s lovely, really) and we pressed on.

Because of the extra miles we tacked on to the trip it would’ve been hellacious for a one-day journey, so we hit a waypoint in North Carolina with our friends Liz and Brett. Funnily enough, while most of our visits with friends were the first we’d seen each other in years, Liz we had seen less than a week earlier! She’s part of the same social circle as the people we met up with in Halifax, and that had turned into too tempting a gathering for her to miss and she made the trip up – Brett has family in Boston, so they made a whole thing out of it. Still, a second crack at hanging out with friends is never a bad thing, and we passed a lovely evening in their home. (Bonus – not the antiseptic hotel environment!) Refreshed, we legged it the last four hours or so to Sumter.

John’s folks recently transitioned into an assisted living facility after more than 30 years in their house there. For better or worse it was not a sudden thing and some amount of advanced planning was possible, which seems to have led to a fairly smooth transition for them. No matter how smooth, though, suddenly not keeping up with a two-story house with a big yard a pool… heck, suddenly not even cooking for yourself!… takes some getting used to. His folks seem to be doing really well, though. In fact, having three square meals a day provided like clockwork has actually put some meat back on his dad’s bones. We were there for a little more than four days. The centerpiece was an early celebration of the Caskers’s 65th wedding anniversary! His brother and sister came in for the weekend (they both live much closer than we ever did, even when we were in Seattle) and we all got gussied up for a nice meal in a local restaurant. The restaurant, by the way, fed into John’s Grand Unified Theory of Picking a Restaurant – it was the first family-owned joint we’d eaten at in the United States this trip, and was easily the best meal we had. It wasn’t all that fancy (mostly slightly jujed-up southern comfort food) but the food was good and the service was friendly without being cloying. Other than that meal, the whole visit was decidedly low-key; a few meals in the assisted living facility, a couple of meals out (John got to check “American Mexican food” off of his checklist of “food he misses”), and we had a nice time catching up with the extended Casker clan.

To every time there is a season, however, and we needed to hit the road. We actually called an audible at this point. The plan had been to stay a last night in Sumter, then get up early to make the drive to Atlanta, thence to drop off the car and jet to Seattle. The more we chewed on the math, though, the earlier we set our planned departure time and at a certain point it felt like too much of a grind in one day. So instead, we had dinner with the folks and then hit the road the night before. We killed the last night of our Sumter reservation and booked a night near Hartsfield-Jackson (the big Atlanta airport). John dropped the car off in the evening, and we were able to have a leisurely morning, catch breakfast, and meander to the airport via the hotel shuttle. All in all, part 1 of our North American tour, from Halifax to Sumter, was a series of pleasant successes. We weren’t feeling any drag from traveling yet, and so we happily pointed our noses northwest to return to the only other place we had ever, as a family, called home.

We left the charming, perfectly sized Halifax airport and flew south to begin the American portion of our North American tour. And really, if you are going to visit “America”, what better place to start than in Washington, D.C.? It gets blown up in all the movies, it’s on the money… face it, New York may be a cultural and economic hub but Washington still has a gravitational pull regarding the image of America. And yes, we’re both very aware of how politically fraught that sentiment can be, but here’s the thing – one end of American politics wants to lay claim to the trappings of the United States, but we don’t actually have to let them have it all. This isn’t a “them” and “us” idea – in fact, we repudiate the notion. No one side of politics should own American symbolism, it’s up to all of us to decide what they mean. And an easy way to take hold of these ideas is to visit the Capitol and make our own relationship with them.

Let’s step back a minute. It would be a lie to say that we decided to go to Washington out of a sense of renewing patriotism. Truth is, we have some close friends that are a military family, and one of them has been stationed in the D.C. area for awhile now. They have 3 kids all under 10, and it makes us sad that at least one of them has no idea who we are, and the middle one “probably” doesn’t either. Small daggers to the heart when you babysat them as wee bairns, but anyway. When we started to plan our “grand tour of North America” they were one of the first pins that we dropped on the map. So, yeah, D.C. was an easy choice but honestly, if they were stationed in Lexington, Kentucky our next stop would have been in the bluegrass state.

The first funny thing about the trip to D.C., though, was arriving at our hotel. Keep in mind, we’ve been living in Europe for almost two years (with a couple of emergency visits back tossed in). We come in to Reagan airport and catch the shuttle to our hotel. When it pulls up, we see… well, we aren’t sure what we see, not at first anyway. Walking in the doors ahead of us is a cluster of people in various wild costumes. John recognizes a couple of them as niche Star Wars characters, but they aren’t all science fiction. Come to find out, there’s an anime convention going on at the hotel that weekend! John said it felt like a deleted scene from David Byrne’s “True Stories”, with this weird only-in-America vibe going on while we’re going about some totally normal business. Nice kids, in any case.

The next day our friends picked us up and we got to spend a nice chunk of time catching up with the whole clan. As two people who have never had children, it was a lot of energy being in a household with 3 kids bouncing around. Honestly, we don’t understand how actual, full-time parents manage it, and from the looks we sometimes get from our parent friends we’re not sure that they do, either. But it was all good natured and it’s never boring having a child give you a tour of their room. Odd life-intersection: they have a Brazilian au pair helping out in the house who, like young people all over the world, could not have been less interested that there was some minor cultural cross-over going on that day. “Boa tarde!” we said to absolutely no response, and that was that. She stayed with the kids that evening while the adults skedaddled to Lyon Hall, which was a very nice restaurant that also served as a reminder that we weren’t paying Portugal prices any longer; yikes!

The next day we divided our forces; John was really keen to go to the National Gallery, and while the original plan had been for everyone to meet up the parents called an audible and decided that all 3 kids would have been too, too much to handle. So, dad and the eldest daughter met John. Which was a fine team-up, except that Lisa is a big fan of Alexander Calder and a huge piece of his work was hanging in the West(?) Hall of the Gallery; that’s the picture at the top. Still, there was plenty to entertain, including evil dolphins! (If you aren’t a long-time dedicated reader of this blog: before photos (or curiosity I guess) artists only had the stories of sailors to go by for what dolphins look like, and the result was a traditional of monstrosities like the one pictured below.)

John used to be surprised that there were outstanding collections of Western art in the United States since almost all of it was produced outside of the United States – and a fair amount before there really was a United States to speak of. Then it dawned on him (Lisa was gracious enough to let him figure it out on his own) that there were buckets of rich dudes in the United States just like everywhere else, and why wouldn’t they flex on their pals by owning fancy collections. Fast forward a couple centuries and the bequests to the National Gallery are on par with many of the best of Europe. The collection reminds us of the gallery of the same name in London – it isn’t the largest collection (at least on display at any one time) but they’re able to put on a heck of a show.

Now, these are the same friends that we traveled with through Scotland, and apparently at some point during that trip we must have had the classic “what is different about eating in Europe?” conversation. That’s because for dinner that night they laid on (homemade all) fried chicken, biscuits, baked potatoes, and corn on the cob. It was a heck of a feast, and an incredibly thoughtful one as well. Nourished in both our spirits and our bellies, we bid farewell and scooted back to our hotel. The next stage of the trip would be a drive south and we wanted to get an early start. So, off to early bed we went!