Driving Miss Tracy

Just driving Miss Tracy

Excursions like this along North Cape, Prince Edward Island were central to our travel plan.

We began our road trip to the Canadian Maritime Provinces on July 18 with no more of a specific plan other than to simply travel north, to stop when we wanted, and to continue as long as it interested us.  This was an open plan, and as much as possible, we were going to stick with it.  We realized there were many similarities with traveling in the old pickup and cruising on Layla.  Among the similarities, we adopted the roles that had served us well on the sailboat.  Tracy was the navigator, directing the voyage, and I was at the helm, driving Miss Tracy.  We embraced a typical daily routine of discussing where to go during our morning meeting - sitting in camp with a cup of coffee.  Tracy reviewed and presented options for routes that might include “must see” attractions, interesting side roads, places to avoid, and where we might stop for the evening.  In our previous work-a-day lives, morning meetings were never this much fun.

Site of our morning conference in Parker's Cove along the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.With no schedule and views like this, we always had the option to stay another day.

As we eased into wandering the highways and the country roads without a schedule, the stresses that often accompany travel began to disappear. Each day offered something new, something unexpected and we were eager to see what was next. We discovered the adventure that is often missing in modern rapid-paced travel obsessed with strict itineraries and rushed stops at the obligatory roadside attractions.  
 

Some roads were real highways...

..Some roads were mosaics of patches...

...And some roads were simply breath-taking.

We are reviewing where we went and what we saw, and we expect to discuss selected adventures in coming posts.  The odometer on the old pickup hasn’t worked for several years so we can’t give a precise accounting of how many miles we actually traveled.  As a quick review, we began in Morehead City, North Carolina traveled through Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. In Canada we visited New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.  Our return loop back to North Carolina included travel through the Shenandoah Valley, adding Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.  From a quick tally using Google maps, we calculate our round trip probably covered over 5,000 miles.  But, of course, the mileage only tells part of the story.  

Our journey of 39 days to and from the Maritime Provinces.

 

On The Road – Canadian Maritimes

Our campsite (The Look Off) at the Englishtown Ridge Campground in Nova Scotia.

For those of you who had thought we had simply disappeared in the doldroms of life ashore, bogged down with the routine of running to hardware stores and making and checking lists of "to dos" or being now occupied with the latest drama of some new celebrity, rest assured we are alive and well and still in full control of our senses.

We departed from the heat and humidity of mid-summer in North Carolina for the cool of traveling and camping throughout the Canadian Maritime Providences - New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia - Just the sound of their names cooled us.  We are traveling not by our boat Layla, but by vehicle, our 20 year old Ford pickup.  Our plan is to trace a route along the Atlantic coast where the Native Americans, the early European settlers, fisherman, and farmers met the challenges of life in this region.  The Maritime Provinces have a history of hardship, despair, disaster, and triumph.  We were eager to learn more about the region - the struggles of the indigenous people with the invading foreigners, and the feuds among the French, English, Irish, Scots and other immigrants themselves.  This was also a pilgrimage for us to the home of Joshua Slocum, the first sailor to circumnavigate solo.  And this was an opportunity to reconnect with nature and find solitude.  While we doubted we would travel this way by boat any time soon, we thought we would escape the dog days of summer and the countless old house and boat tasks for a while.  We had earned a break. 

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia.  One of the many picturesque fishing villages along the southern coast.

The Maritime Provinces are lobster territory.  These lobster traps on Prince Edward Island are waiting for the next season.   

We are currently in Englishtown, Nova Scotia, on our way to the “Highlands” of the Cabot Trail.  We will update more in future posts.

Rodeo Days: La Fiesta de los Vaqueros

The beginning of the 89^th Annual Tucson Rodeo Parade.

One of the benefits for a kid growing up in Tucson is that you get to miss school for the celebration of the cowboys (La Fiesta de los Vaqueros) in February. While we had not planned it, we were thrilled that that our visit coincided with this celebration of one of the oldest rodeos (89^th annual Tucson Rodeo) in the country. As a kid, I looked forward to the excitement when the entire city celebrated the cowboy.  At least in those innocent years in elementary school, and less so later on, the boys eagerly wore western shirts, bolo ties and cowboy boots, and the girls wore their square dance dresses to school during that special week. Thursday and Friday were holidays to allow everyone to watch or participate in the rodeo parade, and possibly go to the rodeo through the weekend. At some point in nearly everyone’s school years, you were in the parade, either riding one of the horse-drawn floats or marching in a band or as part of some organization. You took pride in being part of the great event. Many years had passed since I had last seen either the parade or rodeo, but Tracy had never experienced the spectacle of rodeo days. Of course we had to go BOTH the parade and the rodeo.    

Both young cowboys.....

..... and old cowboys look forward to the big parade.

We did not get a huge enthusiastic response from family when we said we actually wanted to go to the parade and the rodeo. They had seen it all before, many times before, and the novelty had long worn off. The exception was my dad as he agreed to join us for the parade, only the parade.

I saw the parade through the eyes of a ten year old boy and it had changed. Many things had changed over the years. The parade no longer lumbered through the center of old downtown Tucson, through the corridors of the few tall buildings I had imagined comparable to the grandeur of the Macy’s Parade in New York. It had been a grand scene. Back then, we would stand or sit on the curb as the colorful floats adorned with the beautiful queens and waving princesses would pass. We were close, very close, and we could almost touch them. The vaqueros, the enchanting senoritas, the cowboys, and the cowgirls, all astride magnificent, powerful beasts, were there. We could see them, we could smell them, and it was real. It was all very exciting and there was nothing else like it. 

There is never a shortage of cowboy hats for sale at the parade.

Today the parade seems tightly controlled, predictable, distant and safe. The thrill had been diminished. It was like a wild river that had been tamed. But even tamed, the Tucson parade, as one of the few exclusively horse-drawn parades in the country, remains an exceptional and exciting event that should not be missed.

Our tickets to the 89^th Annual Tucson Rodeo.

 On the weekend, we headed to the rodeo to give Tracy the full cowboy experience. We had pretty good seats in the central arena, and with our SLR camera, we had a close-up telephoto view of the events.  We could see the expressions of fearless cowboys as they clung to a bucking horse or bull. We could see the dust fly when a 300 pound calf was roped and brought down, and could see the bulging muscles of horses rounding the barrels in the timed race.  We felt like we had even better than front row seats, right in the middle of the arena.  Take a look.....

Flying across the arena on a bucking horse.

Tandem calf wranglers.

Rounding the last barrel in the women’s barrel race.

Clowns ready and cowboy deep in concentration on a bucking bull.

Who ever said that bulls can’t fly?

With the help of a clown, escaping being trampled after dismounting from his bull.

Clowns dueling with a bull at the end of the competition.