On the Home Stretch

There is nothing quite so pleasurable as stopping and resting after a voyage of many months. And so we are. We have been languishing in Vermont with daughter Stephanie and her family. We're parked in their side yard and at last have found a mechanic who was able to diagnose and order the parts to repair the emergency brake system on our RV.

The miracle, to me, is that I have been able to nurse this rig across the whole of north America, from Haines, Alaska, to here in Colchester, Vermont. It has meant many stops and much scrunching under the rig, pouring transmission fluid into the emergency brake reservoir. This allows the dying pump to activate and release the emergency brake when I put the rig into gear. Without that fluid, the pump would be unable to disengage the brake. Now the parts are ordered and will be installed next Wednesday. Then we'll head south to daughter Lynn's house in Kent, Connecticut.

While we've lingered in Vermont, we have celebrated birthdays of our grand kids, as well as Stephanie's mother-in-law and ourselves. I took our grandson, Graham, to see comedian Bill Cosby at the state fair last Sunday. Graham is a huge fan of the reruns of the Cosby Show. The comedian now is 73 and, as Graham noted, “he's pretty fat.” I enjoyed the show much more than did he because Cosby's 90-minute live show is nothing like his old TV show.

Graham Bertoni (right)
He is a master or the pain of growing up – at least, what growing up was like 60 years back when parental brutality was more the accepted norm. This is so far outside the understanding of an eight-year-old boy today and Graham sat with an unknowing smile on his lips while we watched Cosby's riff on parental beatings, teacher beatings, and assorted other abuses of small people. It's a different era.

Isabella, who has just turned 12, is an aspiring and talented singer. She presented three half-hour concerts at the state fair in which she sang and played her keyboard for the entertainment of the general public. Imagine the excitement when a woman approached after a performance and asked for her autograph.

Isabella

Jo has been sewing, as well as practicing her portable spinning wheel. And she knits like Madame DeFarge, creating socks in many splendored colors.

We spent a wonderful time in the middle of Michigan with two people Jo and I have come to cherish. Mary and Merve Parsons live in our RV Resort in the wintertime. But they scurry north each year and set about tilling their garden. They raise an astonishing range of crops - from potatoes to beans, to tomatoes of all varieties, to Indian corn, peaches, apples, cherries, squash, watermelon, carrots, beets. And the list goes on. Mary then cans much of this so they have a year's supply of food. Their knowledge base of this natural world is both inspiring and quite awesome. It reminds both of us of the very best of America. They embody that take-care-of-yourself ability that is sliding away with the years.

Then we passed back into Canada one more time to visit with my sister, Rose. She was widowed a couple of years back and it was heartening to see how she is reinventing herself and coping with her new world.

Our journey to Alaska will go down as one of the great adventures of our lives. It was hard work and it was physically challenging for us both. But we are so glad we persevered. We will never forget the encounters with grizzlies, bald eagles, orcas, humpback whales, wolves, caribou, moose, Dall sheep, goats, and a dozen other creatures great and small. But, as inevitably always is the case, it was the people with whom we interacted that leave the lasting memories. So many native Americans, the Russian Orthodox priest, so many settlers who have carved their spot in the wilderness, so many people who lent us a hand of friendship both on the land and aboard the ferries on our way south.

We have another 2,000 miles ahead of us before we park our rig on Florida's west coast for the winter months. So the potential is there for more adventures. But we are already thinking about 2011.

Thanks for coming along with us on this adventure. We hope you have gotten some unique glimpses into a rarely visited land.