"Home is where I want to be...." lyrics from Paul Simon, for those of you who are fans of his music. We finished our USA odessy yesterday afternoon. Sunday morning we did two hikes in Capital Reef NP (SE of Salt Lake City a couple of hours), doing the obligatory daily 5+ miles. Great views, neat canyon, more semi-desert terrain. After coming off the last trail, we drove to north of Salt Lake City, just into Idaho. The next day we got to Missoula, MT, and Tuesday we made it home, just catching the Kootenay Lake ferry by a couple of minutes. I'll write about Capital Reef and other areas we visited in a day or two once we get unpacked and organized.
Speaking of getting organized, we arrived home to find the driveway full of snow. That in itself wasn't a surprise, but the condition of that snow was a bit of a shock. We had about 50 cm of hard, packed, crusty snow that the snowblower just wouldn't chew through. All we had the time for last night was a space big enough to pull the van into for the night. Today, I spent about 7 hours clearing out the driveway. The technique was to use the rototiller to break up the crust and then blow the remains out of the way. It was a long day. The sun was nice, though.
But back to Paul Simon. The lyrics continue along the lines of "Everywhere I go, I get libeled, slandered. I hear words I never heard in the Bible..." Our trips, this winter and last, were very pleasant. We found everyone we had contact with was friendly and helpful. Food was cheap, wine was cheaper (see an upcoming blog), US National Parks (and Monuments, Forests, etc) are fantastic, their roads are great to travel on.... In short, we had a nice time south of the 49th. I remember the beginning of our trip last winter, the feeling that this (the USA) was definitely a "foreign" country; the sense of it's militarism and being "different from us" almost palpable, in my mind. This time, however, I felt none of that. I know Canadians like to slag the US, but if there's one thing travel does for one, it's helping you understand other countries better. Our two extended trips have been excellent.
Now I have to upload some pictures to Facebook and write some blog entries about the neat places we visited. Stay tuned....
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I couldn't agree more about your impressions of the US. Living here, you really get to know that people are not their government, or their collective identity to outsiders. The US is not without it's faults, to be sure (and many, if not most Americans would agree), but there are a lot of positives about the country and, more importantly, it's people. I find the reflexive anti-Americanism that is so pervasive in Canada to be tiresome, narrow-minded, and even saddening. Reading the comments section of the Globe and Mail can be really depressing when the most constructive thing many Canadians can contribute to a conversation is to rip the US.
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