I'm back home after 26 days on the road. I covered almost 10,000 miles, and passed through six Canadian provinces and 27 US states. I ate hoagies, grinders, and subs. Actually, I ate none of those. The closest thing I had was a sandwich at a Tim Horton's; I'm not sure what they call long sandwiches in Canada.
This is the first time I've come back to Washington at the end of a trip and not been happy to be home, which is remarkable considering how long the trip was and how eager I was for it to be over. I'm elated to be back with all my dogs (less elated about the workload over the next two or three days), but I want nothing more at the moment than to pack them all up and move them to California, where it's springtime now, not the dead of winter. Washington's been great, and I'd probably not be where I am in terms of my career if I hadn't been living here for the last five years, but that I can return to such a beautiful place and not be happy to be back tells me one thing - it's time to leave. A little history on this nagging itch:
I have a hard time staying in one place. Call it wanderlust, fear of commitment, an inability to ever be satisfied, or whatever you like, but the fact is, even though every time I move I complain that I never want to do it again, it's never long before I'm ready to get going. I moved into this building about two years ago, and I still haven't unpacked most of my stuff, so I guess I never fully intended on making this a long term arrangement, whether or not it was a conscious decision. What tempers my need to keep moving are the facts that my career necessitates a less nomadic lifestyle and that one of my main hobbies, landscaping and horticulture, works better when I stay in one place. If not for those two things, I'd probably be in a new place every few days.
When I first came to Washington, I felt I'd stay here at least until retirement, but it wasn't long before I was looking for a way out, first for financial reasons. When my money situation became more stable and I didn't have to leave, I was content to stay indefinitely, but a drive through California had me, for lack of a better way to put it, seeing elephants. I'm sure that makes perfect sense to anyone reading this, but I'll explain anyway.
Whenever I drive through a place for the second, third, or tenth time, I do so with a new pair of eyes, seeing things differently than I did on the previous occasions. Each trip through a familiar place is a bit like a visit to someplace brand new. So a few years ago, as I drove through California's central valley, I looked out at the golden, rolling hills and their oak-laden ravines, and it reminded me of videos I'd seen of Africa, particularly the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. At that time, I had begun expanding my vision of an animal sanctuary for large carnivores into one for many species; I thought that a California location might be good for a second facility, after the sanctuary in Washington had been established for a number of years and reached its full potential. I set the idea aside, planning to revisit it much, much later.
Then came the winter of 2007/2008, with hurricane force winds that ripped my building apart, nearly killing me in the process. Maybe that's too dramatic - the winds ripped apart 1,200 square feet of the building that had been added onto the original structure, carrying it over my head, across the road, and into the neighbors' yard, where it took out a large tree and a fence. I wasn't hurt, but if the flying metal and wood had hit me, I'd probably have been cut in half. Regardless, I wondered if Washington was the right place for an animal sanctuary, and I decided that if this winter brought high winds like the last one did, I'd be gone before the next one. Then came our current winter - no horrific winds, but it's been one of the coldest on record. I began to worry about my animals getting hypothermia, and kept my dogs inside quite a bit. My pond froze, and I couldn't leave the dogs in that section of the yard, for fear that they would fall through the ice. The snow was fun for awhile, as first snows of the year always are, but it wasn't long before I, and the dogs, were sick of it. It surprises people, but I've spent most of the winter wishing for rain.
I've been thinking a lot about California. Without revealing my entire, long-term vision, (which I've already done in a rather lengthy document for internal sanctuary use) much of California has traits, in terms of weather and location, that make it ideal. Proximity to cities with affluent populations, no snow, relatively mild summers; after scanning the coast with Google Earth, I had some ideas of where to look for property, and I tried to drive through as many of those potential areas as I could on this trip. So back to the trip:
I picked up small dogs in Huntington Beach and Thousand Oaks; I'll do a separate post about all six dogs from this trip, with pictures. I left southern California a few hours later than planned on Wednesday, and drove through Santa Barbara and up 101 to Greenfield to visit a friend, Jason. Jason told me that real estate in the area was pretty cheap, so I've been looking into it, and found small farms for under $7,000/acre. I'd prefer to be closer to the ocean, but I'm not likely to get everything I want out of the first place I buy. I stayed in King City overnight and continued up 101 the next morning.
Just before Salinas, a guy was tailgating me, so I tapped the brakes to get him to back off; I didn't slow down. The guy then passed me on the right, got ahead of me, and gave me the finger, which he did in a way suggesting that he really meant it - not just a casual f-you. I pulled alongside him, not because I was trying to catch up, but because he had slowed down; I looked over and motioned to him to ask, 'what's the problem, ' at which point his wife was leaning halfway across his lap, waving her arms and screaming at me. I don't know if she thought I could hear her, but I couldn't, because my windows were up, their windows were up, and we were driving on the highway. Duh. I kept driving, passed them, and I still have no idea what they were so angry about. But I'll say this - what a couple of a-holes. Which brings me to the one thing I probably dislike most about California: the drivers. Back east, people drive aggressively; they do it because if they don't, they'll never get anywhere. In California, people drive aggressively, too, but not because they need to; rather, they drive that way because they're selfish, self absorbed two-year-olds who don't care about anyone or anything outside of their own vehicles. They crowd into the left lane, all wanting to be the fastest car on the road, but end up just making it impossible for anyone to pass anyone else, and slowing down traffic. They pass on the right, which makes it impossible for a slow vehicle to move out of everyone else's way. They pass you, then slow down in front of you. They drive into your blind spot and stay there for miles. Because I drive a vehicle that's over twenty feet long, I've adopted a driving style for western highways that works particularly well in California, which is that I do pretty much whatever I want as far as lane changes go, but I do it slowly enough that everyone around me has time to react. So in Thousand Oaks, I was moving into the right lane, when I saw a little, sporty car flying up behind me, intending to pass me on the right before I got over. I kept moving over. He decided to pass me on the shoulder. Then when we got to the light at the top of the offramp, he wouldn't look at me. That's California drivers.
Moving on, I drove through San Jose and San Francisco, then crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, got onto PCH, and went to Point Reyes National Seashore. I'd been reading about Point Reyes, which has a large herd of Tule elk, the most endangered elk subspecies in North America. I went to all of the southern beaches, and did manage to see a herd of elk near Drake's Beach, which were smaller and lighter colored than our Roosevelt elk or the Rocky Mountain elk I see in Colorado and Wyoming. The rest of the park was mainly dairies, which seemed a little strange to me, but I guess the mission of that particular park is to preserve agricultural history as well as wildlife habitat. As an animal welfare advocate, I have to say I wasn't especially excited to see what looked like a veal operation at one of the dairies. It may not have been veal, but I can't imagine why else they were confined to such small quarters; they weren't in boxes with their legs broken, but their pens were only about six feet long.
Point Reyes is windy - too windy for me, after the trauma of last winter. It is, in fact, said to be the windiest point on the Pacific coast of North America, and I believe it. Trees struggle to grow there; sand drifts across roads; the ocean is as rough as it is up here, 700 miles north. A little farther up the coast, Bodega Bay is less windy, but despite being only 65 miles from San Francisco and 23 miles from Santa Rosa, it feels a world away - a tiny town of less than 1,000 people, that happens to have a large harbor and a world class golf course, recently renovated to the tune of $1.2 million. So not an especially cheap place to live, but probably the area in which I'd most like to live and build my sanctuary. Land is expensive if you buy a small piece, but the price per acre goes down considerably, the larger a parcel you buy; I guess that's true in most places. So maybe someday... It's hard to put my finger on what I like so much about the area, but I think it's that it has most of the things I like about southern California and western Washington, without most of the things I don't like, plus a few elements of the Dakota Badlands and the Nicaraguan jungle. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I needed to get back; I'd like to go again in the summer and see what it's like in terms of weather, tourist traffic, etc.
From Bodega Bay, I headed back to 101 and stayed the night in Santa Rosa; I like that city, although I haven't been there many times. I've never entered from the coast before, but I was surprised to find myself in a familiar area and I knew right where the hotel was. I continued up the coast the next day, driving through the redwood forests; I like the redwoods, and would consider living there as well as farther south, the drawback being the longer distance to San Francisco. Besides, even though Humboldt and Del Norte Counties are the best known places for redwood trees, they occur naturally as far south as Big Sur. I stopped in Eureka for some Carl's Jr.; the Kentucky Bourbon Burger is gross - stick to the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. I went to Orick, where I always stop to buy redwood and sequoia seedlings, and where I will someday buy some amazing redwood and buckeye burl furniture. From there, it was on to Crescent City, where I took 199 to Grant's Pass, Oregon.
Grant's Pass can go to hell. Someone actually tried to spit on one of my dogs while driving past, and I had the sense that he was one of the more friendly, polite people in that town.
I spent the night and drove home the next day. I found all of the dogs looking good, most of them a bit fat, except for Ruby, who had lost weight and appeared not to be eating much while I was gone. Next time I go away I'll board her at the vet's office. A few of the dogs seemed not to recognize me right away, while others were overjoyed to see me. Spencer, who's been riding with me all this time, acted like he didn't know any of them; he's been pretty nasty with all of the dogs that we left behind, but I think he'll settle down after a few days.
It's weird being home after so long on the road; it almost feels like none of it ever happened. One thing I will never forget about this trip, though, is all of the displaced people I saw, leaving one place to find work in another. It really reminded me of the stories I used to read about the Great Depression, people fleeing the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck novels. If you haven't seen the impact of our economic situation, and you're wondering if it's really as bad as everyone's saying it is, hit the road for a few weeks. People are in trouble and desperate; it's a scary time.
Pictures:
 Coming into San Francisco |  North Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore |  North Beach |  North Beach, looking the other way |
 Tule elk |  Tule elk |  Redwoods |
I guess I didn't take very many:
 |  Driving toward Times Square |  Try to report this guy's bad driving. |  The vicious dog |
 Pennsylvania traffic jam |  There were statues like this all over Punxsatawney. |  Springfield, KY |  Another one for Simpsons fans |
 Mississippi River |  New Mexico sunset |  Navajo Nation in northern Arizona |
Picking up from where I left off, my next stop was Long Island; the guy I was meeting there didn't give me very good directions, so I ended up driving about 200 blocks down Broadway before I got on the Long Island Expressway. I never wanted to drive in Manhattan, but once I did it, I kind of liked it; it's not much different than driving in Mexico or Central America. I got to Long Island to pick up Phoenix, a Lab/pit bull mix with a history of resource guarding and biting people who reached out at him to pet him; it's pretty normal dog 'stuff' and I didn't feel like it was severe enough to warrant me taking him, so I took him to the shelter in Warwick, with the understanding that if he does turn out to be non-adoptable by their standards, I would take him back. So far he's been doing well; he'll probably need knee surgery and he'll definitely need to lose some weight, but behaviorally he's been fairly good for them.
While I was in Warwick, I met Lana, the golden retriever; she was really fat and incredibly strong. I walked her around the outside of the shelter a little, and she dragged me all over the place. She didn't exhibit a lot of the behavioral issues I had been told about, but I did get a lip curl from her at one point. The story was that she always gave fair warning before biting, giving you plenty of time to react and not be injured, but that no one ever knew what was going to trigger an episode; one issue would be dealt with and another would take its place. I didn't take Lana that day, because I was going to be picking up a dog in Richmond, VA who was also going to Warwick, and there was no point in having her spend those extra days in the truck. So I left Warwick and went to New Jersey.
In New Jersey I picked up Lefty, a border collie/American Eskimo mix who had bitten his caregiver's mother fairly severely and had reportedly been getting increasingly difficult to deal with as time went by. Lefty was a victim of college stupidity - his caregiver's roommate, wanting to express his newfound freedom away from home, bought Lefty from a pet store, not bothering to do a little research, which would have taught him that a border collie is not a good first dog, and might be the most difficult breed to work with (border collies and pit bulls are the two most common breeds in my facility). Apparently, Lefty never got along with the guy that bought him, but liked the roommate, so he ended up being his dog instead. Unfortunately, even with far more dog experience, the guy in New Jersey wasn't able to deal with some of Lefty's behaviors, and had been trying to find placement for him for two years, with no luck. Lefty is another one that I think is highly adoptable, but he has been turned down by rescue groups after behavioral evaluations. I've seen some of the problem behaviors briefly, but the dog rides around in the cab of truck with me and four other dogs, I can give him commands and he responds appropriately, and I can pick him up or scruff him when I need to, so I'm not feeling like I have a particularly dangerous dog on my hands, but more about that later.
My next stop was Richmond, VA; a Germen shepherd names Zeus had supposedly bitten a four year old girl he lived with, and the father had called animal control to take the dog. Apparently he was brought into the shelter on a pole snare, as if he was some kind of vicious monster, but after a day or two, shelter staff began to think the dog was not as bad as advertised. The story was a little convoluted, but somehow a retired police canine officer took up Zeus' cause and emails began circulating about this perfectly good, well mannered, purebred dog that was scheduled to be put down, and eventually another city employee who had German shepherds got involved, along with her boyfriend, who had bred and trained the dogs for years before adopting a more ethical, animal welfare based approach. They originally contacted me when the dog had a day to live; I told them to board him somewhere and to have him neutered in the meantime. They were able to get him boarded at the vet's office where he was neutered, which worked out nicely. Unfortunately, when I arrived to take Zeus, he had such a severe inner ear infection that he could barely walk, and he had hip displasia; how this escaped the vet's attention is beyond me, because the dog was in terrible pain and was not healthy enough to travel. He had a painful episode when the vet tech was bringing him out of the kennel that morning, and they said they had never seen it before, slipped him a Rimidil for the pain, and sent him on his way. He had more pain as the next few days went by; I'm certain that the biting incident was related to his pain, nothing else. I'm also fairly certain that the dog was kicked around and severely neglected by the family that turned him over to Animal Control to be killed. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of person cares so little for a dog that he calls Animal Control to pick the animal up, rather than driving the dog to the shelter himself.
I took the next day and went to North and South Carolina, thereby visiting two of the last three states on my list; from there I went back to Virginia, and did a consultation in Fredericksburg with a couple whose pit bull mix had killed one of their other dogs. I explained some safety rules that they should follow, including keeping her separated from their two remaining dogs at all times, with two locked doors or gates between them. The dog is on my waiting list, and if a space opens up she may come to Washington at some point.
The next day I met my friend Jen near Washington, DC, who I hadn't seen in ten or twelve years. Jen is in charge of the State Department's armored vehicle fleet, and used to work Colin Powell's security detail, which took her to dozens of countries. I'm a little jealous of the travel part, although the government tours don't sound as fun as the stuff I do when I go abroad. It was good to catch up and hearing about government work is always interesting, even if there was a lot she wasn't able to tell me about, due to it being classified.
I returned to Warwick and dropped of Zeus; he'll have a long road ahead of him, but because medical rehabilitation is part of the Warwick shelter's specific mission, I believe he's in good hands and will make a great companion for someone. I spent some time at the shelter, walking Lana and talking with the staff. Some of the staff members were interested in Lefty, who was in his crate in the back of the truck; they began talking sweetly to him, to which he responded by snarling. So I guess there are some behavioral issues, they just aren't ever directed at me. That's one of the toughest things for me - I rarely see the unwanted behaviors, at least not to the degree that they've been described to me. For me, Lefty, Malaki, and Max are practically angels, but in someone else's hands I have no idea what they would be like. Certainly there are people that could adopt them, but finding them is the hard part.
Lana, who the staff had been calling "Beauty", had never been in a crate before, and due to her questionable history with other dogs and her reportedly unpredictable behavior, I wasn't comfortable having her in the cab. The staff was trying to get her into the crate, and she simply would not go in. They suggested putting the crate on the ground, but I pointed out that I was going to have to put her in and out of it quite a bit without their help over the next week or so. After trying treats, to which she responded by snarling and trying to intimidate them into giving her the whole bag, they opted to let me put her in on my own, which I did within seconds of them walking away. Now she goes in on her own, and always waits until her leash is on before she comes barreling out. As far as her name, we don't want to use Lana, in case she has negative associations with that name as a result of her abuse, but I already have a dog named Precious and I'm not about to have one named Beauty; when the shelter staff described her behavior as seeming to be a result of multiple personalities, I immediately thought of Shirley McClain for some reason, so I've been calling her Shirley. I don't think Shirley has dissociative disorder - I've only seen one personality, and it's a dog that's been through something horrific and still loves people. I've had a few resource guarding incidents with her, and she definitely distrusts other dogs to a certain extent, but from what I can tell, there's nothing more severe going on than some post traumatic stress and some bad habits.
I left Warwick and headed southwest, passing through Pennsylvania Amish country and through Punxsatawney, where the annual Groundhog Day celebration is held. There were certainly a lot of dead groundhogs along the roadside. I didn't go to Gobbler's Knob; instead I just laughed at the name. I passed through West Virginia, the last state I hadn't visited, so I've now been to all fifty states. I went through Kentucky, Tennessee, and spent the night in Little Rock. The next day I went through Oklahoma, where my paternal grandfather was reportedly purchased from an Indian reservation; I wanted to stay and do some research, and try to figure out what tribe he came from, or if the story is true at all, but I didn't have time on this trip. I'll have to uncover my roots some other time.
I crossed the Texas panhandle and saw the biggest cross in the western hemisphere; I wanted to congratulate the person responsible for completely missing the point of the very thing he cared most about, but I didn't feel like stopping, even if the billboard promised the spiritual experience of a lifetime. I guess living in Israel wasn't it.
In New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Gallup, I think I saw a dead dog every mile. On the way up 89 between Flagstaff, AZ and Page, I saw a pack of dogs eating a horse. The Navajo Nation is a mess on so many levels - they are the poorest people in the country, they have the highest unemployment rate, only 30% of homes have plumbing, and of course, their animal welfare is abysmal. Like other reservations, it's very difficult for animal welfare and human services organizations to get access, and the result is right in front of the face of anyone passing through. I can only imagine the horrors that longtime residents witness.
I spent the following day at Best Friends; it's important to see other facilities and get ideas from other people in the field, and everyone at Best Friends has been very supportive. I was able to see virtually all of the dog facility, and spent some time with a few of the Michael Vick dogs, who reminded me of some of my own. I left Best Friends feeling good about my own facility and the work I'm doing, having found people with similar philosophies to my own; it turns out I'm not crazy, and what I do really is as simple as I think it is.
Olympic Animal Sanctuary is approaching a crossroads, and we either have to start getting into adoptions, or we need to start only taking wolf-dogs and dogs that are non-adoptable due to court order. I'm leaning toward the latter, only because I have so few adoption resources available. Best Friends has 500 dogs and thousands of volunteers they can use as Guinea pigs to determine whether or not a dog can go out into the real world again; I don't have the same luxuries. I'm limited in the number of dogs I can take, but so is Best Friends; they have so many difficult to place dogs that their adoption rate is quite low. Trying to find someone qualified to adopt a dog with special needs is especially hard, not because the people don't exist, but because they already have more animals than they probably should. It's easy to hold Best Friends up as the ultimate no-kill group, and what we should all be aspiring to, but the truth is that despite their millions of dollars, thousands of acres, and dozens of qualified staff members, they're struggling just like the rest of us. They have a goal of a ratio of one staff member for every eight dogs, and they're nowhere near achieving it; they've downsized their number of dogs from around 700 to 500, and the more tough cases they get, the lower the percentage of animals that can realistically be placed in homes. They do great work, and they're doing a wonderful job, but it's also comforting to see that they aren't perfect, that there are areas where they need improvement, and that like all of us, they have a long way to go.
I left Best Friends and drove through Zion National Park, where I had an irritating conversation with a ranger about the difference between a commercial vehicle and a non-commercial vehicle owned by a nonprofit organization. Commercial traffic is not allowed in National Parks, but a nonprofit organization is non-commercial by definition, a point that far too many people seem not to understand. The fact is, if I was driving a company car on a business trip and decided to go through a National Park, no one would even question it, but technically, it would be a violation of park regulations. Yet, if I take a side trip through a park in a vehicle with a logo on the door, that also has the words "NON-COMMERCIAL VEHICLE" printed on it, I will occasionally be hassled by rangers who don't know what the hell they're talking about. I know it makes sense that a guy who sits in a booth and sells tickets all day would know more about business designations than someone who runs a nonprofit organization, but in this case, it happens not to be true. Regardless, Zion is worth seeing, and I recommend at least driving through if you're ever taking I-15 through Utah.
I arrived in California yesterday afternoon, after dealing with a lot of traffic west of Vegas. The wind was blowing hard from Utah all the way to the coast; I've been in almost every imaginable kind of weather on this trip: blizzards, white-outs, torrential rain, ice storms, severe winds, sand storms, and a new one for me, a sand mixed with snow storm. I've also had my share of pleasant, sunny days, which apparently can't be said for Forks, where I've been told it is still the dead of winter. Hopefully spring will arrive before I do.
I have two more dogs to pick up, a few friends to see, and I'll be on my way. I'm ready to get home, even if the hotel beds are more comfortable than the rollaway I'm sleeping on in the kennel. But at least I have a good TV.
I'll post pictures in the next day or two - they're just more shots from a moving truck, but you might as well see the country the way I've been seeing it.
I haven't posted anything in a few days because I've been spending every waking hour driving or walking dogs, and Internet access has been spotty. I'm in Kanab, Utah today, getting ready to visit Best Friends, who referred all but one of the dogs I'm picking up on this trip. For those that don't know, Best Friends is the organization that operates Dog Town, which has its own TV show on the National Geographic Channel. I originally became involved with them and with United Animal Nations after the Gabbs, Nevada hoarding case where a woman died, leaving behind a ranch with 144 dogs, of which I took the five most 'socially challenged'.
I'm not going to upload any pictures today - I'll do that when I get to California. Today is all text. I haven't posted since Vermont, so I'll start there; I woke up and left Vermont. Next: New Hampshire. New Hampshire's slogan is "Live Free or Die", and they don't require people over 18 to wear seat belts, thus, in New Hampshire, you can live free and die if you feel like it. Now that's freedom. I didn't get to spend a lot of time in Maine, but the part of it I saw looked a lot like Vermont and New Hampshire. While in Maine, I got a call from Best Friends about a Golden Retriever in Warwick, NY, who had watched her drug addict owner overdose and die, then sat on the body for eight hours, guarding it, only to spend the next few weeks being ritually abused by the dead man's alcoholic widow - same old story. I spoke with the Warwick shelter and initially told them that I couldn't take the dog, at least not right away, but they offered to take two adoptable dogs in exchange, and I had two dogs I was going to be picking up that I thought might work for them, so we tentatively planned to trade at least one of them after I picked them up and had some time to evaluate them.
I went to the Boston area to pick up Malaki, a dog who had bitten his dog walker's face badly enough to remove the tip of her nose and require 28 stitches; this was a tough one because Malaki's caregiver really loved him and was having a hard time letting him go. I even tried to talk her into keeping him and setting up some safety protocols for him, because he's actually a pretty easygoing dog, but has an issue with biting the moment he wakes up (which he just did as I was writing this). Unfortunately, the biting turned out to only be part of the issue; there is anxiety that leads to destructive behaviors, and it turns out there are some issues with other dogs. I was uneasy about taking Malaki before, because I felt like I was taking a happy dog from a good home, but I'm feeling a little better about it now, and he's doing well.
I need to get going; more later.
I left Brooks and headed toward Medicine Hat, discovering that Canada appears to be entirely unaware of a common site along northern highways in the States -- drift fences. Drift fences, for those who haven't had the pleasure of driving across the high plains in winter, are fences with horizontal wood slats that prevent snow from drifting onto the highway. But in Alberta, they apparently just let the snow go wherever it wants, even if it means no one can see. So I ended up in what was essentially a white-out. I did the only thing I really could do, which was to follow a semi, the theory being that if he hit something, he wouldn't stop right away and I'd have time to brake before becoming part of a pile-up. In other words, better him than me.
Once I got to Medicine Hat, the weather cleared and I made good time for the rest of the day, finally ending up in Winnipeg for the night. I've seen a remarkably small amount of wildlife on this trip, but I did see a snowy owl, which is a bird usually associated with the Arctic, but which winters in the northern US and about the southern two thirds of Canada. Apart from the owl and some bald eagles, all I saw was one, small herd of antelope and a couple of coyotes.
The next morning I left Winnipeg and crossed over into Ontario, where the speed limit immediately dropped to 90 KPH, the highway dropped to one lane, and quality of the roads became reminiscent of driving in Mexico. I suddenly found myself making lousy time, not only because the roads were bad, but because Ontario is a lot wider than the rest of the provinces I had already crossed, so what seemed like it should be a day's drive turned out to be about 24 hours of driving, which is only a day's drive if you don't sleep, which I barely did. By afternoon the first day, I had only made it to Thunder Bay, which is not as cool as its name. I pushed on and managed to get to within about 150 kilometers of Sault Ste. Marie, where I parked in a turnout and slept in the back of the truck from about 2:30 AM to around 7. I got up and kept pushing, making it to Toronto by around 5 PM.
Like the rest of the trip so far, there was very little wildlife to be seen from the road; I saw a couple of foxes, some eagles, and a lot of ravens. There are a lot of porcupine-killed birch trees along the roads, and I found trees gnawed down by beavers in a few spots, but never saw either animal. From all the signs you'd think there were millions of moose lined up along the highway competing for the opportunity to be mowed down, and yet I never saw a single one. I saw one deer -- the first deer I've seen the whole trip; driving across the States, even in the dead of winter, I'd have seen hundreds of antelope, at least 20 deer, and maybe some elk. I don't know why there seems to be more wildlife in the US; it doesn't seem like it should be that way, when I know the forest is full of wolves, grizzly bears, and other species we have far fewer of down south.
I managed to get my first Canadian speeding ticket from the nicest, most polite cop I've ever met.
I have a rescue in Syracuse, so I decided to drop down into New York tonight, which, from the time I arrived in Toronto, only took about three and a half hours. (Yes, I am implying that it took a really long time.) Instead of the snow I've been driving through all week, in Toronto it was raining -- hard. I could barely see the lines on the highway. It wasn't necessarily the weather or the traffic that kept me from making good time through Toronto, but rather, the fact that Toronto is huge. The map is misleading, because the Toronto area is so much more developed than the rest of the province that it looks like a detail map, but it isn't. It's just an enormous area with millions of people, and it takes forever to get across it.
But I did manage to make it through, and I figured if I was in Buffalo, I had better find the place where Buffalo wings were invented and eat my dinner there. I got directions from the Border Patrol officer, and drove only a few blocks to the Anchor Bar, birthplace of the Buffalo wing. I started with ten Suicidal wings, and cooled down with ten hot wings; a shot of crappy Tequila and a couple of 7-Ups completed the meal. It ended up costing almost $40 after the tip, which I suppose I'm willing to pay once, but at the risk of committing some kind of chicken wing blasphemy, I like Jim's Wings in Fort Collins, CO better. After that, Mr. Magic's in Jaco, Costa Rica is a close second, and he's definitely number one when it comes to variety, and the size of the wings. But if I hadn't found the Anchor Bar, I know I'd be kicking myself for years to come, and the wings were still really good. It was also nice to be in a real bar; I don't drink much, and I don't like drunk people, but there's something I like about a good bar -- it's a chance to be with a lot of people without being with a lot of people. It's one of the big things missing from Forks -- sure, we have bars, but they're logger bars, and I just can't get into it.
Tonight I'm staying in Buffalo, and after I pick up the dog in Syracuse, I'll decide if I want to go the rest of the way across Canada or abbreviate my route a little. To finish the entire Transcanadienne is about 1800 extra miles, and if Quebec is anything like Ontario, we're talking about two full days of driving. The question is, will I regret it if I don't do it now when I have the chance? Another option is to skip going back to Toronto and miss Niagara Falls, and just go from Syracuse, which will save me driving across the rest of Ontario, and cut the extra drive down to about 1500 miles. If nothing else, I'm definitely going to Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, even if it's just a quick loop across their lower corners, which is admittedly pretty weak. I guess I'll see how I feel tomorrow; yesterday I probably wouldn't have done it, but today I probably would have. Either way, here are the pictures I've taken out the window of the truck; I don't know what's going on with the layout, but until I figure it out, scroll down:
British Columbia: | |||
 I expected this town to have more Medieval costumes and hair metal. |  |  |  |
 |  |  A backhoe was scooping up pieces of this semi and putting them into a dumptruck. | |
Alberta: | |||
 |  Banff National Park |  |  |
 |  |  Calgary |  Calgary children's hospital |
 Dirty |  The white-out: this wasn't that bad; when it was really bad I couldn't take pictures. |  The truck I followed through it |  All clear |
 Giant teepee in Medicine Hat | |||
Saskatchewan: | |||
 |  You'll have to trust me. |  |  Different generations think of different things. |
 I remember wondering why anyone would live in a place like this, and being a little angry at the people who did. |  | ||
Manitoba: | |||
 |  |  Winnipeg |  Capitol building |
 Train station |  |  | |
Ontario: | |||
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  Around Lake Superior |
 |  Lake Superior, where I parked overnight |  |  |
 Toronto |  |  |  |
Buffalo Wings: | |||
 |
I decided to stay in a hotel in Brooks, AB last night and hold off on the sleeping in the back of the truck until I'm in warmer climes and have no hope of being allowed into a hotel with the number of dogs I'll have traveling with me, which has grown by two since I left. I'm glad I slept indoors last night, because it's so cold outside that it's taken me five minutes to get the heat back into my hands. I've been in really cold weather before; I've lived in places where it was routinely -30 F, but it's been a few years, and I have to say I don't miss the way I feel this morning. Accu Weather Canada says its -8 C here, but that it feels like -20 C, which convert to 17 F and -4 F respectively; it feels colder than that, though. Apparently it's going to be that way all day. Can't wait.
I had some problems with my camera yesterday after I cleaned the lens with Purell and some got stuck between the lens and the cover; it's working today, although I discovered it doesn't like the cold. So far I've missed out on two pictures I wish I'd gotten: the first was the Coast Guard Zodiac with a mounted machine gun on the bow that accompanied the Edmonds ferry; the second was a billboard near Vancouver for Spandex shorts, that read, "Your balls and your legs need some time apart." You couldn't put up a billboard like that in the US.
Today I just shot pictures as I drove, so nothing spectacular; I went through Glacier, Yoho, and Banff National Parks, and drove through Calgary. There has been a lot of snow to drive through, and my truck was filthy by the time I got out of the mountains. I took it through a car wash, which scared the dogs pretty badly; hopefully I won't need to do that again, but it was so bad that I couldn't close the door from the outside without getting my hand dirty. The roads are pretty clear out on the plains, at least for now, so here's hoping they stay that way. This is my first time in Alberta, and it reminds me of Wyoming, except Calgary is a lot bigger than Cheyenne. I'd like to see Edmonton, but it's too far out of my way, and I'm more interested in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; if I'm going to take an extra day on the road, I'd rather it be there than here. Honestly, besides the metric system, the bilingual road signs, different brands of gasoline, and the Tim Horton's every 100 yards (sorry, meters), this feels like middle America, but with minorities. It's not the worst place to be, but I wouldn't want to be here too much longer. get me to an ocean, any ocean, and I'll probably be in a more favorable frame of mind. I did decide to stop early tonight, though, just in case there is actually something worth seeing as I drive; tomorrow morning I'll go through Medicine Hat; I don't know anything about it, but I like the name. Any name that's obviously Native American seems to be thought provoking and have a good ring to it, but especially the Anglicized ones. Of course, nothing beats Bucket of Blood Street in Holbrook, Arizona -- that's another picture I wish I'd gotten. Maybe I'll pass through there on this trip.
