I’m writing this five days into a road trip H. and I are taking, from Manitoba to B.C., then down the Oregon Coast, eastward to Denver, Col., to visit my brother and his wife, then back home to Winnipeg by mid-September. The first day, across the prairies, was the familiar section of the drive, not uninteresting, but too often done and too well-known to be really interesting, so we added some interest by reading aloud in Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford, which is the first book in this year’s “Take and Read” session with Paul Doerksen of MBCI. I’m probably going to have more to say about this book once we’re finished and we have the book discussion, but just to say now, it’s great!

We took the # 3 highway through the Rockies, stopping for brief visits with my aunt and a friend in Lethbridge at the gateway to the route. Our drive through the mountains was wonderful. For a good while the last day we drove blissfully along a section of the # 3A, not realizing we were off the route we intended. This error in reading road signs cost us several hours time, but since it’s a holiday, we enjoyed the unexpected detour and also the ferry ride that got us back on track. “And it’s free!” the woman at the little grocery where we stopped to inquire about our situation, once we realized we’d gone off course, announced. Apparently it’s the only free ferry in the province; I guess that’s why she was so eager to say so. Still, it was a long day, and that night, in bed, I felt my brain was still turning into the corners of all those winding roads as we traversed one mountain range after the next.

Yesterday we helped our daughter move into more permanent digs in Vancouver, in rain that was pouring buckets all day, and now we’re in Tsawwassen with our son and his wife and their four children. This morning H. and I took the oldest two of them to the local bird sanctuary. Our grandson, 8,  is amazing with birds: four times he had a chickadee land on his hand just by patiently waiting for it. He and his sister each have more energy than two of me would have, but they’re growing up into it well. Not only did they remember their mother’s instructions to thank us for the outing, but at lunch at the DQ, after he’d started his meal, our grandson said, “Just to get the lunchtime conversation started, what was your highlight from the bird sanctuary, Grandma?” Well that both impressed me and made me proud. Isn’t it wonderful when children learn the arts of conversation?

Travelogues (this sketchy, I mean) aren’t the richest of blog posts, I confess, but we’re travelling, and I just wanted to let you know. Friday it’s off to Oregon. Next time I’m near a computer (we don’t bring one along), I may stop by again.