Nature

24,000 trees in Worcester were cut down this year due to Asian Longhorned Beetle infestation. They'd gone unnoticed for probably 10 years.

These are before and after photographs. If this was my backyard I'd be devastated. How about you? They have spread to the town of West Boylston for a total zone of 74 sq miles.

Scroll down for YouTube clips...good closeUps of live beetles.

As you can see the spruce trees in the backyards are not desirable for these beetles. They prefer maple, willow, birch, poplar, elm, planar, horse chestnut and other deciduous trees.

If you know what to look for we can all help to catch new arrivals before they spread. Massachusetts has the biggest infestation--more than all other states combined. ALB were first found infesting trees in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York in August 1996. It is believed that ALB entered the U.S. in wood pallets holding pipe shipped from China for a sewer project in the late 1980s. In September 1996 an infestation was also found in Amityville, NY, several miles east of the Greenpoint infestation. It is thought that this infestation occurred as a result of movement of infested wood from Greenpoint. They have also been found in Chicago, several towns in NJ. And recently in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Since the beetles favor maple trees states where maple syrup is harvested must be on the lookout. Know how to I.D. these beetles if you live in Vermont, NH, or Maine.

Here is a picture of the adult beetle...their bodies are shiny black and white with powder blue feet. The Asian longhorneed beetle is 0.75" - 1.5" long with antennae that are 1 to 2 times its body length.

Spotting ALB damage in winter. Easier to see in winter. This webpage has photos of egg laying sites and exit holes which are perfectly round and 3/8" in diameter.
http://massnrc.org/pests/blog/2008/12/spotting-asian-longhorned-beetle-damage.html

Mass Dept of Agriculture Resources has a great FAQ page and lots of ways to learn more and participate in training sessions, etc.
http://massnrc.org/pests/pestFAQsheets/asianlonghorned.html

YouTube clips I have previewed and recommend to learn more:

If Plant Could Talk website Youtube clip with SciFi music track:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeLkIcGZnOU

About infestation in NYC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt4LEWiXu3U&feature=related

Our little Coleman tent survived a major downpour in the middle of night. Plenty of thunder and lightning for visual and sound effect fun. The raindrops splashing on my toes through the half zipped front door flap woke me up. I groped around and found my digital recorder....Barb woke up after a few minutes. Here is a short audio clip from our little bubble of a tent.

Barb: What're you doing Ruthie?
Ruthie: I'm recording. Any comments from the other side of the tent? [giggles]
Barb: We're still afloat. We're not awash.....[.....and more...]

Click to hear sound clip:TentRain_1.mov

We got up shortly after dawn to catch the light on our favorite multilayered mountain--now drenched with rain. Since the clouds were playing hide and seek we waited patiently admiring the changed landscapes. Three hundred and sixty degrees of deep nature.

BEFORE THE RAIN

AFTER THE RAIN

We packed up...drying everything as best we could. Very sorry to be leaving this beautiful place. Decided to drive for a few hours and catch breakfast somewhere along the way.

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Sacajawea was kidnapped during a raid from her eastern Idaho Mountain Shoshone nomadic tribe as a young girl and taken to live as a slave in a Mandan village in eastern North Dakota. Fairly certain it was Fort Mandan. Oral history says her French Canadian "husband" to be (Toussaint Charbonneau) won her in a game of cards as a second wife. He was 40, she was 15. We would be traveling most of the day across this land where once she wandered--first as as terrified 10 year old girl on a horse traveling east to be sold as a slave and next as a young mother with the Lewis and Clark expedition traveling west. A bridge carried us over Lake Sacajawea. http://famousamericanindians4.homestead.com/Sacajawea.html

Stopped in New Town at Fort Berthold Reservation for breakfast. For some reason I like taking photos of breakfast!

Stopped into the post office for stamps. Lingered as long as I could in the annex transfixed...listening to two elderly men speaking a soft melodious ancient native language. Found Barb later on at the local drugstore. We needed new reading glasses and ear plugs for me (to drown out night sounds) and a few other essentials. I commented on the sweet accents the women waiting on us at the counter had. "OUR accent!" they said. "Ha! YOU two are the ones with the accents!" We all started laughing. They were right out of the movie "Fargo". They thought we were right out of a movie sitcom like Will and Grace except called Grace and Grace. I was amazed that we all had a conversation about sexuality. Once again, "Do they or don't they?" Thank goodness (for once) for mass media culture and movies, performers and comediennes like Ellen Degeneres, k.d.lang, Melissa Etheridge, films like Boys Don't Cry, The Philadelphia Story, Will & Grace (for better or worse), Two and a Half Men, to name a few. At least a dialogue can start between strangers in a place as remote as New Town North Dakota, population 1400. I do not think that would have been possible 10 years ago. Barb eventually gets around to mentioning her husband, but enjoys playing the curiousity card with provocative behavior like pinching my behind.

Pushed on along rural Route 83 through some of the most beautiful verdant rolling hills dotted with big round hay rolls. We really needed to push so could not take the time to stop and shoot. Took a GPS photo from the car window to remember for a future drive.

Lots more to tell and show before this day is over.
Total miles today: 568.

Map of the north unit. We camped at the Juniper Campground site #23.

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Awoke before dawn to go out and take photographs and explore. Cliffs were carved out by the Little Missouri River.

Looking down onto desert terrain: prickly pear with big spines, fragrant sagebrush.

Petrified wood with orange lichen and crystal quartz. The south unit of the park has an entire Petrified Forest.

Back to the tent for some grub, camp-style coffee and gruel. Barb shows off her new backpacking stove with windguard. Picnic table is made from recycled plastic bags, pigment, and sawdust pressed to look like woodgrain (TREX). Good stuff.

Camp coffee. Next time I'm bringing my little single espresso pot to put on our little campstove. And a tablecloth! The "What Would Mary Dee Do" on a camping trip list was officially started.

Product placement here with the Coleman tent. We had not figured out how to make the rain fly tarp taut. We would test the mettle of our little abode during the deluge to come in the middle of the night! Barb has Tina Turner hair in the morning.

!!! Buffalo!!! Mountain Sheep!!! Rattlesnakes!!! Rock & Sandstone Formations !!!

The eyes of the mountainside.......

Barb was clicking away with her tripod so I wandered off along the Buckhorn Trail, to explore the deep walled ravines to my right. The sun was low in the sky to my left so the steep walls were brilliantly spotlighted with shadow filled nooks and crannies. The air was still, hot and dry. No one else was around. I walked slowly, noiselessly, respectfully exploring....hoping to see a cougar (!) or to meet some other creature. Sure enough...walking deep into the third coulee my peripheral vision caught some movement at ground level about 3' ahead of me to the right. A snake slithered into the base of a tall sagebrush, curled into a circle around itself and started shaking the end of its tail in a rapid movement. My first rattlesnake! It was small (3/4"-1" in circumference and approx 16" long). The tail end didn't make any sound so I figured it must be a juvenile and not developed enough for the telltale sound. But what do I know about rattlesnake sounds? NOTHING! This is what an article in Nature (the journal) has to say: "SOUND production is one of the most energetically costly activities in animals.Rattlesnakes produce a sustained, high-frequency warning sound by extremely rapid contraction of their tailshaker muscles." Maybe this little rattlesnake was tired? I kept a respectful distance in case it were to lunge out at me, which it did not. I was able to get just a few photos...shooting into the sun...so just this one came out. What a beautiful creature!

Map of rattlesnake sighting. Barb was shooting the "Cannonball Concretions". *** is location of coulee where I saw the snake.

More to share....tomorrow.

Miles traveled: 30 (to go buy drinking water in Watford City).

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Woke up at the AmericInn hotel on Rte 2 in Havre MT on Sunday in our ADA equipped room with the giant kingsized bed in time to wander in for group buffet breakfast with a full room of conservative looking young parents with lots of kids. Too much commotion for us so we got some cartons of milk, styrofoam bowls, a cinnamon bun, a toasted bagel, a cup of coffee for me (Barb doesn't drink coffee or alcohol---not that she'd drink alcohol for breakfast on a Sunday but she did mention liking Baileys in her coffee...hmmmmmm) and went to our cooler to fill the bowls with our own whole grain cereals and fresh huckleberries. Plus the peace and relative quiet of a car trunk picnic not too close to the highway seemed somehow more appealing.

We took off on Rte 2 headed east taking turns at the wheel. Started realizing Barb has a tendency to fall asleep driving after eating: yikes! But she doesn't realize she's doing it so when you ask her she declares "I'm fine!". We worked through that without any mishaps but a very stern "Pull over NOW" remark was necessary a few time. A 30 minute nap did wonders for her attention span. I was amazed that she could fall sound asleep--deep into delta--at the wink of an eye.

The rolling countryside looked a lot like the central Palouse of western Idaho....golden wheat, corn, some yellow/green rapeseed blossoms. Hot and dry. Very dry. Barb got sick of me commenting on the general overall total lack of humidity. We drank lots of water from our metal thermoses (what is the plural of thermos?).

Stopped at he Nelson Reservoir near Saco MT to see the campsites and use the bathroom. Lots of bugs sent us packing to find the Sleeping Buffalo Rock Hot Springs which turned out to be an old byproduct of exploratory drilling for oil that found hot water instead of crude. A health resort built by the govt WPA during the depression helped the local economy then tanked and fell into disrepair. New owner Roger Ereaux staged a publicity stunt to get into the Guiness Book of world Records by making the world's largest hamburger (weighing in at 6,040 pounds) back in 2000. He proudly showed us the news clipping taped to the wall, and the "grill/cooker" out front that needed a crane to lift the cooking lid on and off. I joked that any burger that big must technically be a meat loaf, but he wasn't biting...having (at the time) won the contest---until bested a few years later by a rival town. Hats off to Roger for showing us around the indoor hot and medium pools. He also showed us several books of First Nation carvings and petroglyphs from all over this part of Montana. A note about Roger: he is the one who told us about the underground town built by the Chinese railroad workers we'd missed in Havre the day before.

The Sleeping Buffalo Rock (sacred) we saw was moved to a safer corral circled roadside resting spot with another larger rock held sacred by the nomadic tribes that inhabited these rich lands for at least 5,000 years-- if not, most certainly, many more. I was bothered that a big overly full garbage can was inside the sacred stone relic area so Barb helped me move it off to the ground outside the monument which felt like the respectful thing to do for this revered space. Again...we were sorry to be passing through without more time to explore.

Sleeping Buffalo Rock

We pushed on stopping for late lunch/early dinner at a random place--eating broasted chicken from chickens raised who knows where and processed for the market by who knows who---prepared for the table by two barely functioning teenaged girls. We then realized we were following the Lewis and Clark route along the Missouri River. Two hundred years ago 16 year old Sacajawea helped gather plants and tubers (camas in eastern Montana?) to supplement their meat diet. Can't help seeing the irony. Did Sacajawea want to embark on this journey to unknown lands with a newborn on her back? Or did she have no choice? Barb and I wondered if the young women waiting on tables had children of their own and if so how were they managing? Was this diner job their only choice? Picked up a brochure in the diner [Bergie's in Nashua, MT: population 325] that had daily entries from both men's journals in May of 1805 as they traveled west and August of 1806 on their return east. Two hundred years ago their writing was filled with descriptions of all the animals they were seeing...buffalo, wolves, grizzly and black bears, antelope, deer, cougar, beaver felling trees 3 feet in diameter. They were traveling 16.5 miles a day, or 20 miles, or 27 miles on a good day. We are traveling 300 miles or 450 miles a day. Mixed feelings of awe, respect, sadness for a time that is forever gone. The majestic river Missouri still flows on its way to the Pacific and with it the magnetism of its experience, its past, its eyes and ears. What will another 200 years bring to this fragile wild place?

Spoke to a college student traveling on his motorcycle who told us Route 2 was under repair just over the border into North Dakota....dusty and rocky and slow going. So we opted to cut down south on Route 16 through Sidney MT [population: 4,774] along the mighty Yellowstone River. Local temperature posted digitally on the local bank: 99°. My my my.

Kept pushing so we could get to Theodore Roosevelt National Park's North Unit with plenty of time to set up camp during daylight hours. We just had to stop along the Yellowstone to take photos and walk around in the hot summer wind over the bridge and back again.

The land once we crossed the state line into North Dakota was agricultural, rolling hills, tame, dotted with small farms, cattle, wheat fields, power lines. All this surrounding the hidden jewel that showed itself as soon as we crossed the line to a vista point from the 2400' high bluff on route 85, revealing the deep cut badland canyons etched over time by the water of the Little Missouri River. Spectacular jaw dropping beauty. Only intensified by the deepening shadows of the sun sinking slowly in the west.

First thing we saw as we drove into the park: a lone coyote crossing the road in front of us...set against the hills and the deep canyon cut over the millenia by the Little Missouri River.

Uh-oh! Time to find a camp site. Welcome center was closed. Ranger station was closed. found our way to the Juniper campground area easily enough. Realized we had no firewood: doh! I asked a friendly lady at the washroom who brought us over an armload of cut up pallets, used furniture pieces and one cut up fencepost. Yay! This park is designated wilderness so you cannot pick up brush from the ground or even tie a clothesline to a tree so the fragile environment will stay preserved. We got set up before dark, then got ready to wake up before dawn to go out and shoot.

Total miles traveled today: 507 miles

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Miles and miles of Montana began with early morning campsite gear and tent packUp. All food had been carefully stowed in the car's trunk or burned in the campfire to avoid attracting any grizzly bears. Metal trunks 5' wide x 24' front to back and 3' deep were provided as FOOD LOCKERS. Serious big bear country. A big breeze came up on the lake from the northeast for most of the night so between lapping waves and rustling leaves I didn't sleep much. Morning has never been an energetic time for me, but I was eager to get going to Glacier Natl Park. Stopped in Kalispell for coffee. Asked for a breakfast recommendation and ended up at Julie's Cafe. Super friendly waitress ended up being Julie herself. She let us know she'd be back in a minute to tell us what to order. Feisty! Everything had cabbage in it. I got the veggie omelet with the PURPLE SAUCE. Not the best alluring description, but it was a damn good breakfast. Frank Sinatra theme in all the posters lining the walls, but no music!! Julie explained it was too loud for her older clientele! Too bad. Cool photo by William Gottlieb from 1947 session of him recording with Alex Stordahl (I could just make out his lead sheet for "Laura"). Julie was originally from Wisconsin, had run a bar in another part of MT, and now had found Jesus (especially in the cafe's restroom), her cafe, and Sinatra....not sure in what order. She was great. I gave her a signed copy of "Mood Indigo"--the first recording by the swing vocal trio group I'm in these days called (ironically I wish) The Sisters of Swing http://www.thesistersofswing.com . She was delighted. Haven't heard back from her yet.....

Gassed up and headed due north to Glacier Natl Park and the Road to the Sun that winds its way across the park from the entrance at Angar and West Glacier through the switchback overlooking Mt. Jackson to St. Mary's Lake at the eastern entrance. Nothing but being there could have prepared me for the grandeur, the magnificence of the Rockies, the glaciers, the trees, the wildlife...the sheer audacity of carving a road through this temple for so many to see. We stopped at the McDonald River to shoot and met a curious little ermine in its summer coat of pale brown above, white below and with a black tuft at the end of his tail that stays black through the winter when the rest of its coat turns white to blend in with the snow. He/she darted in and out of the rocks/boulders between Barb and me for about 10 minutes to say hello (or "get out of my little hideaway!").

Lots and lots of beautiful short horned grasshoppers! Hard to photograph since they are cautious about having a camera lens anywhere near their large compound eyes!

Shelf fungi de-watering or collecting water?

Our pal the ermine at the edge of McDonald River

Duly noted grizzly pawprint in concrete next to my big size 11 Keens. Respect the bears and give them room! Yikes.

The switchback overlooking Mt. jackson in the distance (with Jackson Glacier) has to be seen to be believed. If you look carefully in this photo you'll see a line of cars about 1/3 up from the bottom. The original engineer had devised a plan that included 13 switchbacks. That plan got the 'thumbs-down' for all the ecological and environmental havoc it would have created. Perhaps Ken Burns will mention the winning engineer's name since he went on to design roads in many other Natl Parks (his 12 hour series on the Natl Parks debuts in late September on PBS).

One of Barb's photos:

And another one of Barb's photos:

Barb's photo of the rapidly retreating Jackson Glacier

A photographer from India offered to take a photo of us:

Valley vista photo by Barbara Pleason Mueller.

Sooooooooooooooo sad to leave the park after only a slow drive with many stops, but felt blessed to be there at all.

Drove on through exiting the park at the spectacular St. Mary Lake where Barb and Marty had kayaked one full mooned night several years ago. Magnificent place.

Next we picked up Route 2 in First Nation country...Blackfeet Reservation land. Lots of horses, hills, wildness.

Miles and Miles of Montana

Drove on and on and on to Havre to bed down for the night at a local AmericInn we found with the help of Barb's GPS. Love it muted! Unfortunately it did not tell us about the underground "mall" left behind from the Chinese railroad workers who had built a saloon, brothel, and 3 opium dens all underground. Bummer! Would have loved seeing that.

Next stop: Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Unit.

Miles driven : 327.

Greetings!
Day One: Map

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Started the day later than we expected, which was great since I got a good nights' sleep in the comfiest of snuggly beds. How nice it would be to bring a bed like that for tent camping! HA! I got up and made my way through the woodland path to the beach dock for some minimal yoga stretching while Barb and Marty went rowing.....snapped a shot of them as they came back in. After breakfast they tested the Yukatat inflatable kayaks. I especially liked the way they deflated them. See morning photos here:
Dock Yoga:

Barb and Marty Rowing:

Deflating kayaks:

Drove north to Sandpoint situated on the northwest edge of Lake Pend Oreille, then picked up Rte 200 through Hope ID. Stopped at Pack River where it empties into Pend Oreille (Clark Fork River also empties into this 1150 foot deep lake...5th deepest lake in the US). Beautiful reeds, plants, birds, grasshoppers, big clouds, hot dry weather. Barb marked waypoint on Garmin Oregon 550t hiking GPS. Read about rich history of Native American life in this area with birch bark canoes, fishing, hunting, gathering plant foods. Basically everywhere we traveled in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Ontario, Michigan, and upstate New York was Indian country, First Nation land and we were keenly aware of a presence....a feeling of their belonging to the earth: nature reverence.

We met Troy, a young energetic biker riding from Virginia to Seattle at the mouth of the Pack River. Good natured, friendly, full of life. Undaunted or jaded after crossing the Rockies: good golly! Felt pampered and privileged to be driving a car...5 speed Nissan Maxima.

Stopped at hydroelectric dam on the Clark Fork River with signage explaining glacial and geologic history. Barb had told me about the great Missoula floods and this explained in more detail that a humungous lake called Glacial Lake Missoula had formed above the Cordilleran Ice Sheet glacier to the depth of 2,000 feet. An ice dam kept melted water in this massive lake and when the ice dam failed at the end of the last ice age the flood water roared across Idaho, Montana, and Washington to the Pacific Ocean in the largest floods known to have occurred on earth. Never heard of this. It was so humbling driving east and north toward Flathead Lake along the rim of the surrounding mountains realizing we were driving along the old bed of an ancient lake that when active only showed the tops of the mountains barely visible ringing the surface of the old lake.

Stopped at Belknap Store on the right (Route 200) in Belknap, MT. Large signs offering produce for sale attracted us to stop and get some fresh veggies and fruit for our to-be- determined camping spot for our eventual campout dinner. We thought corn on the cob would be yummy and easy. The Cabinet Mountain range was along the north side of the road and the Kaniksu National Forest was along the south side of this road following the Clark Fork River. The few towns we drove through were sparsely populated with just an occasional store or gas station. When we went inside this rural shop we were amazed to find organic produce, many kinds of flour (white rice flour, brown rice flour, high gluten, vita spelt organic, rye flour, white rye flour, harvest king unbleached, wheatland organic unbleached, self-rising, organic corn flour, organic hard white wheat flour, organic hard red wheat, etc etc.), dried fruit (cranberries, cherries, dates, 6 kinds of raisins, homemade jams/jellies, large crates of fruit for canning, canning supplies, bushels of corn...you name it....they had it. I guess there's some gosh darn good cooks and bakers in them thar hills but all we were seeing for miles upon miles were mountains, rivers, trees. The store was run by Mennonites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite and we continued bumping into people from this peace loving Anabaptist sect through MT and then into North Dakota. We were grateful to stock up on all the goodies we purchased here. We set a WayPoint on the GPS we brought with us so we'd remember such a great source of organic food and homemade canned goods. First we took a photo of the store front (false fascia front like old wild west movie set) ...then we set the WayPoint and made comments and/or set icons to remember why the heck a WayPoint was set). Of course we needed closeUp glasses to read the wicked small screen and to figure out all the multiple screens and interface buttons needed to enter comments etc. Basically we were learning on the fly. This took time, of course, so our meandering style was established, making it deliciously impossible to get anywhere quickly.

Stopped for lunch in the small mostly deserted town of Plains at Phyllis's Outdoor Café. The big sign offering buffalo burgers, buffalo dogs, buffalo tacos and huckleberryade was too alluring to pass up. Who'd have thunk I'd ever see Barb eating a hot dog? But here you have it.

When they found out I was from Boston they asked who I thought would be picked to replace Ted Kennedy's vacant senate seat. They admitted they admired him and many of his accomplishments even though they were conservative Republicans themselves. They had watched the funeral and were especially moved by his son Edward's eulogy. However, in their opinion, the rote nature of his grandkids' politically charged speeches were inappropriate. I had just heard an emotional testimony from a friend in Somerville a few days before saying exactly the opposite! She thought it was important to use his funeral as a soapbox to help spread the word about issues he fought long and hard to win. People are so different!!!!

So we pushed onward toward Glacier National Park and ended up finding a camping spot at one of the 6 state parks flanking the banks of Flathead Lake. West Shore State Park had some space so we bought a small bag of firewood from the ranger who also politely asked if we needed a site big enough for 2 tents? Then she apologized adding she didn't mean to pry into our private lives by asking us directly if we were a couple or not. Thus began the first of many obvious remarks by people wondering: Do They? Or Don't They?

Quickly found a site with panoramic view overlooking the lake from up above then set up the tent. Barb got out her new backpacking stove and started boiling water for corn. I grabbed my bathing suit, sarong and towel after a friendly couple walking by with their dog mentioned the 2 choice campsites right on the water. Since I wanted to go swimming before dinner I walked down and flipped over the clear warm water and the 2 empty campsites. I snapped a few photos to bring back to Barb so I could rally her to pack up and re-set up camp here at lakeside. Since the sun was setting I knew I had to act quickly. I ran up the hill, huffing and puffing right into the rangers who told me these sites were reserved for marine campers until 6pm. If none came, then anyone could have them. They drove on toward Barb to collect our money and when I got there Barb thought I was nuts, but she said if I wanted to move then she'd do it. What a pal!!!!! The rangers warned us we've have to park at the top of the hill and walk our stuff down about 150 yards into the site (quite a schlep). I was determined and since Barb was willing, she extinquished the fire under the corn, wrapped the warm cobs in tin foil----then poured water on the wood fire. I collapsed the tent with bags inside and folded it in half into back seat of the car. All this while wearing wet bathing suit, towel around waist, and wet hair. We drove to new site and ran back and forth with the rolled up squashed tent in hand and re-set camp as night fell. The other campsite stayed empty so we were the only ones down at lakeside. Just us, the smooth flat multicolored stone beach, the bright stars...and soon the full moon rising in the east straight ahead of us over the water. We unwrapped the warm corn and ate dinner in front of the fire. Yum.

Anti-Grizzly Bear Food Locker near our campsite: yikes!!!!!!!!!!

Moon Woman Ruthie

Moon Woman Barb

End of the day lakeside campsite:

Day is done: mileage_231.

There is so much to tell and share and since we have not been in WiFi land. I will need to reconstruct the story in bits and pieces. Both Barb and I are sooooooo tired, but we're ediing photos tonite from our queen sized beds after driving all day long so we are basically fried. The entire north coast road of Lake Superior today was breathtakingly beautiful and wild....almost totally undeveloped except for provincial parks. The first 250 miles were partially enshrouded with fog moving inland from the water on our right as we drove east. Two big crows appeared at sporadic intervals...one on either side of the road as if somehow watching over us. We thought they were MaryDee and Allen--our dear friends from north Idaho cheering us on.

The painful part was not being able to stop and explore since we need to be back in Brattleboro late Sunday night. We traveled King's Hwy 17
View Larger Map all day (630 miles) hitting the road at 8:30am after packing up at Ojibwa Campsite #100 in the Dawson Trail section of Quetico Provincial Park. At Quetico we hiked the WhiskeyJack Trail which seemed to me like a cloud arboreal forest since it was so verdant....just packed full of sphagnum moss, club moss, ground pine all forming a thick cushion on the forest floor. The mixed conifers and deciduous trees were thick and all types of fungi were poking out from under the duff...and visible en masse everywhere you looked (the rangers said it had been a very rainy summer). Here are a few picts ....I think the orange balls covering this leaf is a slime mold. Barb took a photo of me peering out from behind a felled evergreen at the beginning of the trail. It was as if we were walking through a hobbit forest glen from one of Tolkien's books.

We were able to inflate the portable Yukatat kayaks we brought along for 2 days of trial and error on French Lake and the Pickerel River at Quetico. We floated and paddled among the rocks, reeds, turtles and loons meeting only a few other 'water' people since it was late in the season. Most of Ontario's provincial parks close for the season on Sept 13th, so we were glad to be there with perfect weather helping make our stay a bit less harrowing than our thunder/lightning/downpour experience at Theodore Roosevelt (to be continued).

We were searched at the border which was a bummer but we had nothing to hide. However, explaining who we were and what we did for a living and how we know each other, where we lived, etc etc. was more than a bit confusing for the poor homeland security guys. After we went through we realized it was the anniversary of 9/11....and as you might remember a bunch of the guys who flew on the planes out of Boston got into the country from Canada, so who knows? Maybe security was heightened today....

I am signing off....it's way too late (again) and we have a long day of driving tomorrow....Buffalo or bust!!!!!!!!!! xoRuthie